All-Access Pass

When my wife and I spent our honeymoon in San Francisco, I had no idea where to go or what to do. So what brilliant me did was to buy an all-access pass to certain attractions that we had to go through in two days. And the other part of me being brilliant wanted to do as many activities and to go to as many places that we can squeeze in the limited time that we had there, primarily because the all-access wasn’t at all cheap.

To cut the long story short, in our effort to make the most of our all-access pass, my wife got sick on the first night of our honeymoon, mainly due to exhaustion.

There are people who believe in Jesus and embrace His grace and forgiveness who often consider His sacrifice as an all-access pass to sin again. On one hand, His death on the cross DID pay for ALL of our transgressions – past, present, AND yes, future.

But we have to consider two things: first, that what we consider an all-access pass to sin again (which is by the way, not really a free pass to sin but rather a free pass to eternal life) did not come cheap. In fact, it was paid with an extremely steep price – it cost the life of Jesus Christ. The other thing we have to consider though is what we learned from the life of David this past Sunday, that although we are forgiven, sin has its consequences. In fact one of the more compelling reasons for believers to not sin, although we are already forgiven, is that sin hurts our relationships – with others, and with God. It is this kind of collateral damage that makes the payment for our sins extremely costly – that when you sum up the sins of the world, it does justify taking an innocent man’s life.

So the next time  you or someone you know uses forgiveness as an all-access pass to sin, you’d be better off just getting physically sick – same thing that happened to our honeymoon. Because in the case of sin, it doesn’t only make you physically sick – it can also torment you emotionally, spiritually, and it did lead to someone’s death.