Is the grace of God "free grace" or "cheap grace?" One thing is certain...it cannot be both; it must be one or the other. Something that is cheap has some cost and therefore cannot be free; something that is free has no cost and therefore cannot be cheap. A gift is not something that has been stolen or procured at a bargain price; it is something that is received by one person without any cost because the cost has been borne by another. Every gift that you or I have ever received was purchased with money or with time or effort by another and, consequently, given to us gratuitously.

In God’s Letter to Rome, Paul tells the Romans and God tells us, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." Sin is personified here, and some view it as sin as a principle, or sin in the abstract. In context, I believe it has to be the sin nature, but, however viewed, it is seen paying wages. It is vitally important to note that the great contrast in this divine statement is not between the wages that sin pays and wages that God pays, but between the wages sin pays and the gift that God gives. There is a world of difference! Wages are never a gift, and a gift is never wages.

The only time we ever met Loretta was as she lay, only hours from death, in a Chicago area hospital. Knowing that time was short and wishing to keep it simple, we said to this dear lady that Scripture had persuaded us that Heaven, far from being a reward for good people, was actually a gift for bad people. She drew her cancer-emaciated frame as close to a sitting position as possible. Wide eyes stared more widely from the skull-like remains of a once pretty face. In astonishment she gasped, "Pastor, you must be kidding!" The gift nature of salvation is always a source of amazement to a works-oriented human race. Everything we have known in life seems to have a price-tag. "No, Loretta, I’m not kidding," I said, turning to Romans 6:23. We read together God’s astounding pronouncement, "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." "What are wages?" I asked. "Something we’ve earned," she replied. "And what is a gift?" "Something we get....FREE!" Loretta said slowly, the excitement mounting as she moved from word to word, and her weak voice almost booming the word "FREE."

I believe that she trusted Christ as she said that little word. When Mary and I had entered her room, she had urged us in a terrified voice not to close the door. She was afraid that she might begin her death throes at any moment and wanted access to nurses and doctors if possible. With a trembling voice she had told us of her fear of death...of being confined in a "box" six feet underground. We had shared with her that saved people are not confined in underground boxes at death, but released to go home to their Father; that she wouldn’t need her old earthly body anymore, and that the body that goes into the box has no more feeling than discarded hair or nail clippings. All of her fears had vanished with the word "FREE." Just hours later she left that hospital for her home in Heaven. Nurses informed the family that she died confidently, peacefully, victoriously.

Loretta’s salvation was not the result of "cheap grace." "Cheap" implies that salvation must have some cost to the sinner, but God’s Word teaches clearly that the cost of salvation was wholly borne by His Son. Religion will always insist that man must throw something into the kitty, denying that Christ paid it all on Calvary, leaving nothing -- not one single thing -- for us to contribute. Grace is the most expensive commodity in the Universe; it cost God the life of His Son. The greatest price that will ever be paid for anything in all of Eternity was paid when our Lord laid down His precious life for us, but God never collects a debt twice!

When Loretta trusted Christ, in the final hours of her life as she was standing on the threshold of Eternity, she was not indulging "easy-believism." The hardest thing for us humans to believe is that God is so infinitely generous that He would actually die for His enemies, fully paying their otherwise unpayable debt. When Loretta trusted Christ she did something so simple that a little child can do it, but something extremely difficult for fallen Adam’s fallen progeny to do. It is beautifully simple, but awesomely difficult to give up every other avenue to God and to trust only the finished work of Calvary.

It is ingrained in the very nature of man -- this feeling that we must somehow do something to help rectify our ruin. It exists because man does not recognize the full extent of that ruin; the total lostness of his condition. It exists also because man's estimate of the value of Christ’s death is always meager. Only God sees the true magnitude of the death of His Son for sinners. An infinite price was paid to cancel a monstrous debt.

Grace is not cheap, nor believing easy! Grace is all that God is free to do for you and for me because of the death of His Son on the cross. That’s why salvation is free... NO strings attached!