General labour laws demand that wages and salaries should be commensurate with skills, knowledge, and experience. No wage is given for free. No increment of wages and salaries is credited on any other basis apart from skills and experience. You receive what is due to you. And so wages and salaries are earned in exchange for labour. A just employer would render what is just to the employee. The employee should have justly earned it by justifiable means, using justifiable systems in place.
The main question, however, goes beyond this subject. How do you get to earn salvation? What kind of labour earns it?
God’s Holy Law demands a just and right living record across every facet of life. Not once or twice, He demands it all the time. It demands that even the one who labours must be first untainted with any unholy imperfections at the core of their being. The one who qualifies for such labour must have their description, “JUST AND HOLY”, and the terms of labour are encrypted in bold letters, “FAIL TO ATTAIN EVEN ONE, SUFFER WRATH”.
There is a heavy reality of God’s Law, and the paradox of salvation. There is not even one person who has the qualification about their souls that meets the description, “JUST AND HOLY”. There is not one person who can keep the Law of God to its standard. Everyone falls under the title, “THE UNGODLY OR UNRIGHTEOUS”. The reality is, man is inculpable, unskilled, and unable to avail any labour to earn for Salvation. The just recompense for the unrighteous is death.
It is, therefore, through God in Christ (the person and the work of Christ), that a sinner is justified. It is Christ bearing the just recompense of a sinner by living a perfect life and bearing the wrath of God on the Cross. In this way, God grants the sinner Christ’s own perfect wages, eternal life. There is a great exchange here called penal substitution. Christ labours on behalf of the ungodly. This is how God justifies the ungodly. Apart from Christ, God grants every sinner their just wages, condemnation, and wrath. The most justifiable reason is that Christ is Just and Holy by nature, and His sacrifice is sufficient to offset every debt.
What kind of labour, then, must you do to obtain salvation?
The only labour that you must do then is to trust in the person and the work of Christ. You lean on Christ’s labour, which is sufficient for salvation. He is the one who qualifies for the work of redemption. This is the only way the just and Holy God justifies the ungodly. He uses the just means to justify the ungodly.
The work you’ve already done reveals the fact that you have lost it, and there is no way you can earn salvation by your own ability. There shouldn’t be even the slightest piece of your own labour. It must be all of Grace.
Grace to you,
Evans Odhiambo.