As I grew older, one message was repeated so often that it became deeply engraved upon my mind:
"The wages of sin is death."
Our Sunday School teacher reminded us of this truth almost every week. She explained that this death was not merely physical death. It was something far more serious—separation from God. The final result of that separation, she warned us, was eternal punishment.
Those words filled me with fear.
More than anything, I wanted to belong to God. I wanted to be accepted by Him and to know that I was on His side. Yet every time I heard that verse, I was forced to face a painful reality: I was a sinner.
The problem was not that I wanted to sin. In fact, I sincerely desired to do what was right. The problem was that I could not stop sinning.
Time after time, I resolved to obey God and live a better life. Yet before long, I would find myself failing again. Sometimes my failures seemed small. At other times they felt serious and overwhelming. But whether great or small, they all pointed to the same verdict:
"The wages of sin is death."
Those words followed me wherever I went. Long after Sunday School had ended, they continued to echo in my mind. They accompanied me through daily life and returned whenever I was alone with my thoughts.
I began comparing myself with other people. My Sunday School teacher appeared so holy. The older Christians seemed so righteous and devoted to God. I imagined that they rarely sinned and that heaven surely belonged to them. As for me, I feared that I was headed in the opposite direction.
With every failure, my discouragement increased. The more I failed, the more ashamed of myself I became. I could not understand why doing right seemed so difficult. Why did sin appear stronger than my desire to overcome it?
These questions troubled me deeply. I longed to be free from the guilt that burdened my conscience. I longed to stand before God without fear and to know with certainty that I belonged to Him.
Yet no matter how much I desired peace, I could not find it.
Instead, another fear slowly took hold of my heart—the fear of death.
If the wages of sin was death, and if I was a sinner, what hope was there for me?
That question haunted me throughout my youth, and the fear it produced followed me for many years.