Earning death, receiving life

I just read Romans 6:23 during my lunch break and it blew a fuse in my mind:

"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

Wages = what one works and strives hard for

Free gift = what one does nothing to deserve yet receives anyway

Can you imagine if your paycheck or degree was replaced by a paper bag filled with fermented fecal matter? Yet this isn't even close to what the Bible says our situation was.

We used to be people who worked incredibly hard to earn death - not money, fame, comfort, peace or joy, which we thought we were working for. Now, we are counted as those who do (and should) not (have to) work at all, and our reward for that is eternal gift, at no cost to us. (The last two words there are infinitely important.)

This is our salvation, this is our gospel, this is our God.