Guest Post – “Wages or Gift?” – Steve Robinson

"The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 6:23 By Steve Robinson It's amazing how a "framework" can constrain how you understand a piece of text. For example, 2x4 is either 8 or a piece of lumber depending on whether you are a mathematician or a carpenter. The "juridical/accounting/transactional" framework always told me that St. Paul meant "Jesus paid the debt to God for our sins, and the zero balance of the ledger was our free gift from Christ."  Over the years the "substitutionary" framework (as it is usually preached) made less and less sense of "the gospel" in light ...