When we
see people who clearly do not follow the will of God thriving, we feel a little
hard done by. Why do we go through trails and difficulties while people who do
not care about God or the state of the world or anything else live in
prosperity and luxury?
While there are many reasons why we ought
not to envy them (appearances can be deceiving; we should be content doing the will of God not compare ourselves to others etc.), one reason that often gets overlooked is the wages of sin.
Now, God is merciful and He is just as merciful to people who we wrongly view as the embodiment of evil as He is to us who pridefully consider ourselves beacons of righteousness in these comparisons. If any one of us turns away from whatever evil we do and choose instead to follow the path God has set out before us, He will forgive our wrongdoings and show us His infinite mercies. That will never change. It is the gift of our faith, of salvation and redemption.
Nonetheless the wages of unrepentant sin remain the same: death. Physical death, the eventual expiration of our bodies, is not something we can avoid or escape in any earthly sense. But our bodies, however precious they seem to us on this plane, are not the most important part. Our souls are. And the cost of sin is not the death of our bodies but the gradual corruption of our souls.
No matter how enticing the earthly success of people who live their lives apart from the will of God may be, it can never be worth losing your soul, not on this present earth and certainly not in eternity.