The Wages of Sin

The daughter of a close friend of mine is serving in short-term mission in a country where poverty, disease, violence and death are nearer to everyday experience than here in "civilized" society. She recently witnessed the laboured expiry of a small baby. It had been brought to a mission clinic in an advanced state of malnutrition and disease. The technician had to tell the father that it was too late for human intervention to help. My friend's daughter and the technician simply watched and prayed as, over the space of half an hour, the baby grew fitfully weaker and finally passed into eternity. What follows is my note to her about what happened.

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I read your diary entry about the dying baby. There are a number of things described in the Bible as "profound mysteries". Christ Incarnate is one and the gospel another. Unity in marriage is also one, along with its representation of our union with Christ. Death is one more. Sin is yet another.

What you wrote reminded me of two incidents in my own life. One was when my kids were still young and they brought to me a tiny baby rabbit they had found in the wild. They had taken it from a cat. It was still alive, but barely. When it stopped breathing I tried to gently push in and out on its chest, which was no bigger than my own small fingernail. Then I took a straw and tried to gently blow air into its tiny lungs. It revived a couple of times but then it finally expired for good. We were all somehow humbled and quieted by this - even this - small example of the passing of a life.

Then there is the story of my own brother-in-law. He had suffered from type 1 (juvenile) diabetes all his life and hadn't been very good about his medication. He loved the outdoors - hunting, fishing, snowmobiling, cottaging - that sort of stuff. But in his 30's the damage done to his body from the ravages of neglecting his treatment began to appear. His kidneys failed and my wife donated one to him. His eyesight started to go from the effects of diabetic retinopathy. The he developed glaucoma and had to have his eyes removed. After that came neuropathy (deadening of the nerves - particularly in the extremities) which led to gangrene in his toes. They removed both of his legs. During his recuperation from that, he started to have seizures. Within a few weeks he died.

The whole process was difficult to witness (let alone undergo). He was not a Christian. For a while, when he was in the hospital, he wanted me to read to him from the Bible - which I did - starting in John. But by the time we reached chapter 3 he had decided that he didn't want to hear any more. He only ever asked me one question which was, "Do you believe I'll go to hell when I die." I didn't love him enough to give him a straight answer. Today I would have said, "Yes - unless you repent and receive Christ." But I was intimidated at the time by the apparent cruelty of such a bald truth needing to be delivered in such poignant circumstances.

When he was slipping away from life - no longer conscious and gripped with convulsions - there was a man of the cloth in the palliative care area of the hospital who was ministering to the family. I will always remember the overawing sense of this man's profound humility and quiet in the face of the mystery of the very real death that was occurring. No glib answers. No cold theology. Just a sort of bowing of the whole soul under the omnipotent, final, mysterious will of God. It was almost - no, it was - a moment of the most beautiful worship I have ever witnessed. And it was found in the darkest of places at one of the darkest of moments. Your story reminded me of that moment.

But, now that the moment has passed - both for me and my brother-in-law and for you and that tiny, helpless child - there are lessons to be learned. Death is the very real consequence of sin. Never forget that moment of profound humility that you doubtless felt when the ravages of sin did their worst to this child of Adam. It will keep you from ever preaching a cheap grace or a cold and unconnected theology. The wages of sin is death. And all sinned in Adam - even the tiny baby that died. That is why he/she died. Sin is why the baby died. As a child of Adam, the baby was a sinner by birth and so was already condemned to die - as are all men who were ever born. Don't miss this. The fact that it was an "innocent" baby ought to humble us to the very core at the profound consequences of sin under the flaming fire of the holiness of God. Meditate upon it and you will never become sentimental about death and dying. Come to grips with the reality of the light of the truth of God about original sin and its universal application to all men everywhere and everywhen.

But physical death is not the end. In Christ God has provided the way of salvation from eternal death - the Way to eternal life, which life starts the moment a sinner believes and receives Christ. The baby you saw and loved briefly (and will see again in heaven) did not come to this. God was merciful. He removed all doubt as to whether the little being would grow up to receive Him, by snatching that child from the world even before he/she could commit that conscious personal and unrepented sin for which all receive the sentence of eternal death from a just and holy God. Like John Piper I believe that God provided in Christ a just and eternal solution to the death of babies who never sinned after the likeness of their father, Adam. It is this confidence (which comes from God) that produces that deep and humble sense of His sovereign, holy, just and loving nature - a sense that strikes us all dumb in His presence - that stops every mouth and causes every knee to bow. Just as I also was humbled in the presence of that pastor so many years ago - when I witnessed a soul passing from life to eternal judgement under the righteous wrath of God.

We are saved by grace alone, through the intervention of God. It is entirely His work. It is monergistic (the work of God alone - not the result of the cooperation of God and the person being saved - which would be synergistic). The salvation of the baby proves sit. What could that child have done to be saved? Yet can we doubt that the God of love nevertheless justly saved him in Christ? So it is with all who are saved. We are all saved as from the dead. All who come, come into the kingdom by God's gracious election and intervention. Understanding this will keep you in that place of awe and humility. God saves whom He wills. No one can boast except in Jesus Christ. We see God save one and we rejoice. We see God pass over another and we are humbly reminded of what could have happened to us.

May God bless you and keep you. I am jealous of the true, sharp reality lessons that God is revealing to you through your obedience of faith. The real world is where mere theology dies and true spirituality comes to life. You are there. Don't divorce the truth from the experience. You are in my prayers always.