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| Picture taken from: http://www.qeacademy.org.uk |
‘Furious
students at a failing Mansfield school are demanding money owed to them after
they were promised cash for grades – and not paid’. This is the opening
sentence of a story featured in the CHAD local newspaper. It would appear that
students at the school were offered cash incentives to improve their grades at
GCSE but have not yet been paid.
For
many, this would seem a strange state of affairs. Why should students be
offered payment for results? Is it necessary to offer money to ensure that
students work, and fulfill their potential? Yet aren’t such questions denying
the whole thrust of society? The government and its advisors have argued that
teachers should be paid by results for a long time. Bank employees,
particularly at the highest levels, have had some considerable bonuses, based
upon results so-called. Isn’t that the way the economy works? Why apply it to
adults, if it is considered to work, and not children?
This
is one way in which the Christian gospel message goes against the thinking of
so many today. That message tells us, guilty sinners, how we can be forgiven by
God, cleansed of our sin, and made fit for heaven. How is that possible? Do we
have to work for it? No! Will we be forgiven based upon our effort and results?
No! Do we have to pay for it in some other way? No! Do we have to attend church
and become “religious”? No! How, then, can guilty human beings, you and I, be
forgiven by a holy God?
The
Christian gospel message is about a person, Jesus Christ, God’s Son. It tells
us that He died on a Roman cross some 2000 years ago. He died there to provide
a sacrifice for sin, to pay the penalty that was rightly due to us. On Calvary,
outside of Jerusalem, God judged His Son in my place that I might go free, be
forgiven, be cleansed, and received into God’s presence. He bore God’s
punishment for my sin. What about you? Have you accepted God’s Son as your
Saviour?
It
would seem that some students at the school above feel they have been cheated –
they have not yet been paid. Promises were made but not kept, or that is how it
seems. Let us be clear that when God promises He keeps those promises. He
cannot do otherwise because He is God. What are you trusting in for heaven?
