A Free Video Game?

A few months ago I was at Chuck E. Cheese's for a birthday party.  Part of the time I sat at one of the tables near the video games, bottle-feeding my five-month-old daughter.  There had been several people come and go, playing a particular race car arcade game near where I was sitting.  I noticed a group of boys gathered around the game for a while.  The next thing I know, the game is asking the player to choose the type of car, wheels, auto or manual drive...and then the game began.  The car was in 6th place and then after a few seconds it began to go own its own down the road...except without anyone to play the game. Surely, I thought, those boys didn't pay for that game and then walk away!  But I then realized, because the car kept crashing every few seconds, that the game had been purchased but abandoned.

There was no way I could have gotten over to play the game while also holding my baby and her bottle.  So, I resigned myself to being intrigued with watching this game without a player.

Then a group of girls ran up to the game, one of which had a token she was about to put into the game.  "I didn't have to pay for this!" she excitedly declared once she discovered what she had found.  She then proceeded to play the remainder of the game for free because the cost of the game had already been paid.

Salvation - from sin and death and separation from God - is something, like that free video game, we don't have to pay for.  In our culture today we have to earn almost everything we get.  There are usually "strings attached" even to getting something for free.  So actually receiving something for nothing is rare.

The Bible says the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23).  Even if we attempted to paid for our sins by dying both physically and spiritually, the end result would be the same - it wouldn't be enough.  We can never be made right with God and receive His forgiveness through our own strength, might, ability, or sacrifice. 

Jesus, both fully God and fully man, lived a sinless life, was ridiculed, mocked, beaten and killed even though He was innocent.  He was more innocent that you or I could ever imagine.

The price we owe is too great.  Too great for us to cover the cost.  Only Jesus could pay it by taking upon Himself our sin and the sin of the whole world, that we might be made right with God.   "...Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God."  2 Corinthians 5:20-21

"I didn't have to pay for this!"

Eternal life is free just like that video game was free for whomever was willing to sit down and play it.  The only way we can have God's free gift of eternal life is by responding to God's drawing us near to Himself.  Will you surrender to Him, repent of our sins, and trust in Him?  If you already know Him, how will you let others know about this free gift He offers?

"that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved; for with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation."  Romans 10:9-10