When I look back on my journey today, I can see the hand of God guiding me even when I did not understand what He was doing.
As a child, I feared God's judgment.
As a young man, I struggled to overcome sin.
As an adult, I labored under the weight of guilt, uncertainty, and self-effort.
For more than thirty years, I searched for peace, yet I looked for it in the wrong place. I looked within myself. I examined my obedience. I measured my performance. The result was always the same: fear.
Only when I understood the gospel did everything change.
I discovered that salvation is not about what I do for Christ. It is about what Christ has done for me.
Looking back now, I also understand more clearly the meaning of the verse that troubled me throughout my life:
"The wages of sin is death."
God's verdict upon sin is death. Therefore, the moment man finds himself a sinner, only one thing lies before him: death. No amount of sincerity, religious devotion, good works, or self-improvement can remove that sentence.
Scripture declares:
"No payment is ever enough to redeem them, to ransom them from the grave."
Man does not naturally understand this. He believes he can somehow solve the problem himself. He tries harder. He becomes more religious. He makes promises. He performs good works. Yet all these efforts fail because the problem is greater than man can solve.
A sinner cannot save himself from sin any more than a slave can free himself from slavery.
That is why God Himself provided the solution.
The judgment that stood against me was not ignored. It was carried by Christ.
The debt was not cancelled without payment. It was paid in full at the cross.
The wages of sin is death, and that wage was fully satisfied when Jesus died in the place of sinners.
Now I understand why Christ cried, "It is finished."
Nothing remained to be added.
Nothing remained to be paid.
Nothing remained to be earned.
Today, I rest not in my own righteousness, but in Christ alone—my Savior, my righteousness, and my peace.
Perhaps you are walking the road I once walked. Perhaps you are trying to earn what God offers as a gift.
If so, I leave you with this question:
Are you trusting in your own efforts to solve the problem of sin, or are you trusting completely in the finished work of Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners?
For me, the search ended when I found the answer—not in myself, but in Him.
To Him alone be glory forever.
Amen.