Orange Moon Wednesday, May 27, 2026 "Who Paid?"

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

    “Who Paid?”     

   

    “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).

    Whose death?  The question can be answered in terms of our own death, of course.  Every member of born of Adam’s race will physically die, save those believers who remain upon the Lord Jesus Christ’s return for His church.

     “We shall not all sleep… For the Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first,  Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord (I Corinthians 15:51; I Thessalonians 4:16:17).  

    Unbelievers will also suffer “the second death” of eternal judgment by rejecting God’s grace offered in the Savior (James 4:14; Revelation 21:8).  However, when considering “the wages of sin,” we must begin with a death of far greater magnitude that serves as our first answer to the question of sin’s deadly wages:

    “Christ died for our sins” (I Corinthians 15:3).

    While “the soul that sinneth, it shall die” must be known as a vital aspect of truth, the Soul that never sinned, but died nevertheless must form our primary understanding of sin’s deadly consequence (Ezekiel 18:20).  “You killed the Prince of life” declared the Apostle Peter to Jewish leaders.  Peter also well knew that his own sins led to that which which seemingly could not occur - the death of He who declared, “I am the… life” (Acts 3:15; John 14:6).   The saving grace and truth of the Gospel declares that Christ died, remitting for us a price too terrible for our minds to ever understand, but which our hearts must believe in order to be redeemed from our deserved death.  

     This seemingly simplest truth of the Gospel forever abides as the greatest of all mysteries.  How could life itself - Himself - die?  The Incarnation provides the answer, although the Apostle Paul acknowledges this also as a profound enigma: “Great is the mystery of godliness.  God was manifest in the flesh” (I Timothy 3:16).  The greatest of all mysteries, however, involves the wonder that our Lord became human in order to die for a race of beings who rejected Him.  “The love of Christ passeth knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19).  In this holy light, the simple becomes the eternally sublime, and that which will amaze our hearts forever as we remember who earned sin’s deadly wages - us - and Who paid them - Him.

“For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him.”

(Romans 5:6-9)

Weekly Memory Verse

   And when I saw Him, I fell at his feet as dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not, I am the first and the last.

(Revelation 1:17)

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