Bob Lee was the founder of Cash-App. Cash-App is a mobile payment service that allows users to transfer money to one another using a mobile phone app, and it is the #1 finance app in the App Store. This made Mr. Lee quite a wealthy man.
On April 4th at 2:30 AM, Lee was stabbed to death. He was found staggering around a San Francisco neighborhood bleeding out, and died shortly thereafter. At first, authorities thought this was a random attack, but the killer turned out to be his lady-friend’s brother.
As it turns out, Lee was involved in “The Lifestyle.” This is an underground party scene in San Francisco that features recreational drug use and casual sex. It is known to be frequented by a lot of swingers, cheaters, and liars. And according to an autopsy report from San Francisco’s medical examiner, Lee had cocaine and ketamine in his system when he died.
Lee’s friends say the he was passionate about the tech industry, and that he was an extremely generous person. By all accounts, he was basically a good guy who liked to party with sex and drugs.
So this begs the question: What does it mean to be a good guy? Is it okay to just do anything you want as long as you are not hurting other people? That does tend to be the standard that most people in modern society go by.
But that kind of standard is a relativistic one that can be anything anyone wants it to be. It doesn’t accept any kind of objective view of morality, so by just claiming to be moral, people can consider themselves moral.
The truth is, though, relativistic morality is no morality at all. In order for something to be considered objectively moral, there has to be an objective moral standard that is true for all people at all times – and this requires an objective moral law giver.
While Christianity is not a legalistic religion, it does acknowledge an objectively real moral standard. The morality that it advocates is that which is found in the Bible. But while the standard is objectively real, people do not get accepted by God by living up to the standard. The truth is, no human being is even capable of living up to the standard God has revealed in the Bible. Certainly following the standard does please God, but it is not the way people get on His good side.
Rather than being a legalistic religion, Christianity is a relationship religion. God accepts people when they enter into a personal relationship with Him by faith in Jesus Christ. When they do that, He adopts them into His family, forgives their sins, and enters their life by the means of the Holy Spirit. Based on God’s revelation, people don’t follow God’s moral standard in order to please (or appease) Him, they do it because they want to do it out of their love for Him. Obedience to God’s moral requirements is not the cause of salvation, it is the result of it.
For every single person on earth, the wages of sin is death. This is not a reference to physical death, though some sin can leads to that, as well, (note what happened to Mr. Lee). Rather, it is a reference to spiritual death – eternal separation from God.
If you really want to know the truth, once a person reaches a place in life where they are aware of their moral choices, they live in spiritual death. It is the default condition of humanity. The only way to get off of the road to spiritual death is to enter into a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. So, to answer the original question, “Yes, there are consequences for sin!” – both in this life and in eternity.