Denial on Death Row

One of the amazing things about visiting death row is seeing such a large number of people who don't deserve to be there. One prisoner will tell you that he didn't do it, and another that he got framed. The next one will say no one understood him, and the next will tell you that many others have done the same thing and have not paid with their lives. Despite their insistence that they don't deserve to be there, we can be quite certain that most are indeed lawbreakers.

Likewise, all of us who break God's laws are lawbreakers. Indeed, we are prisoners of sin who are on death row. We may not think we deserve it, but that is where we are. The Scripture says,

Those who do such things deserve death.
-- Rom 1:32 NIV

We protest, "Surely not me! Tell me, what kind of person deserves death?" The answer is those "filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity," those "full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice," those who "are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful," those who "invent ways of doing evil" and "disobey their parents," and those who "are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless" (Rom 1:29-31 NIV).

Even one of these sins means we fall short of the glory of God. There is absolutely no sin that does not separate us from God. God is the giver of life and every good gift, and when we separate ourselves from the Giver by our sin, we will eventually die.

"The wages of sin is death."
-- Rom 6:23 NIV

We cannot deny our condition. The sooner we accept it, the sooner we will discover the gift of God.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
-- Rom 6:23 NIV