He Cannot Believe Anything Is Actually Free

Somebody gave him a coat in February and he thanked them properly and then spent eleven days waiting.

Not consciously waiting. It is more that a small process starts running in the background, and the process is looking for what this is going to cost, and it stays running until either the bill arrives or enough time passes that he can file the thing as genuinely strange.

The coat never cost anything. He still has it. He is aware, when he thinks about it, that eleven days of low-grade watchfulness is a peculiar price to pay for a coat somebody gave him for nothing.

He learned this early and he learned it accurately. Things came with strings, and the strings were usually not mentioned at the time, and the people handing them over were often not being malicious about it either. That is just how it worked where he grew up.

So when somebody uses the word free about anything, his hearing changes slightly. He is not refusing it. He is checking the edges of it, which is a completely different activity from receiving it, and he has never done the second one in his life.

Paul rules out the payment and then says why

There is a sentence in Ephesians that people know and that has one clause in it doing all the work.

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9, King James Version)

Not of yourselves.

He rules out the contribution and then names what it is instead, and gift is a category word.

And then, importantly, he gives the reason for the design. Lest any man should boast.

That is what settles the search for the catch. If there were a hidden price, the design would have failed, because a man who paid part of it would have something to say about himself afterwards, and the whole thing is built so that nobody does.

You are inside something designed so there is nothing to pay. Ephesians 2 gives the design reason in the same sentence, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes an old purpose clause do something to a background process.

Isaiah puts it in the language of a market

There is a passage in Isaiah written like a street trader calling out, and the offer in it is deliberately strange.

Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. (Isaiah 55:1)

Come, buy, without money and without price.

That is a contradiction on purpose. He uses the verb for purchasing and then removes both halves of what purchasing means.

And notice who is addressed. He that hath no money. Not everybody in general. The offer is aimed specifically at somebody who could not pay if he wanted to.

You are the one the offer names. Isaiah 55 addresses the man with no money by name and then removes the price twice, and it is His Spirit who makes an old market call land on a man watching for a bill.

Paul says why a person cannot see it

There is a sentence in Corinthians that explains why this is so hard to take in, and the explanation is not that somebody is slow.

Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. (1 Corinthians 2:12)

That we might know the things that are freely given.

Read what the Spirit is described as being for in that sentence. Not to make a person more religious. To make it possible to recognize something that was given for nothing.

Which means the difficulty is a real one and is acknowledged, and there is a specific provision made for it.

You have been given something whose stated job is the recognizing. 1 Corinthians 2 names the purpose in the verse, and it is the Spirit of God, named in that same line, who is the one doing it.

Romans puts the two side by side in one line

There is a sentence in Romans that sets a wage against a gift in eleven words, and the contrast is the whole teaching.

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

Wages on one side. Gift on the other.

He could have made both halves symmetrical. He could have written the wages of sin and the wages of righteousness, and the sentence would have scanned better.

He does not, because they are not the same kind of transaction, and the asymmetry is the point of the verse.

You are on the side of the sentence that says gift. Romans 6 breaks the symmetry deliberately, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes a piece of sentence construction reach a man who has been checking the edges of everything.

And the last invitation in the book says it again

There is an offer at the very end of Revelation, and it uses the same word one more time.

And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely. (Revelation 22:17)

Let him take the water of life freely.

That is nearly the last thing in the collection. After everything, the closing sentence is an offer with the price removed.

And the Spirit is the first one named as saying come, which is worth noticing in a book that ends the way this one does.

You are being told to take it rather than to qualify for it. Revelation 22 puts the taking in the imperative and the price nowhere, and it is the Spirit, named first in that verse, who does the inviting.