When studying investing and the Bible simultaneously, some interesting metaphors for salvation came to mind. God’s order of salvation can be compared to a Cosmic Corporate Bond or a Heavenly ESO.
The Cosmic Corporate Bond:
Paul says the wages of sin is death in Romans 6:23. Think of it like this, we owe God a bond (debt) of life because of our sins and once our bond reaches maturity (our lives get the end), the “principal” (our life) is paid back because of our sin. The sacrifices of animals in the Old Testament could be seen as interest payments, but we still owed the principal. However, God uses this to save us by having Jesus pay our debt (principal and interest) with His own life, and since He was sinless, He had the right to take on greater eternal life. When he returns for the first resurrection, he will fulfill God’s promise to repay the believers for their lives, and this time they will have eternal life with new bodies that are free from the sin nature (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18, 1 Corinthians 15, and 2 Corinthians 5:1-10). The whole reason we have death is because of sin, but eternal life is still an option because Jesus used this system to free us from the bond of sin/death. As Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself, for God bought you at a high price. So you must honor God with your body.”
Heavenly Employee Stock Options:
One could also view salvation like Employee Stock Options, and if we don’t exercise the option before expiration, it will expire out of the money. This would be like an American-style option, where one can exercise at any time before expiration. In this case, the value of the option is predetermined to expire out of the money, making it worthless. In other words, we have until death (expiration day) to choose (exercise) the option of salvation that Jesus paid for. If we exercise this option while it’s in the money, then we’ll get the gains of the value of heaven’s stock, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit and dividends of new bodies with eternal life, but if we don’t then it will expire worthlessly and we would lose the chance. This principle follows the conditional statement from John 3:16-21, which states that those who believe in Jesus will receive mercy on judgment day and be resurrected into eternal life. Still, those who reject Him will be condemned on judgment day, experiencing a second death (Rev 20:4-6, Rev 2:11).
We could never afford to purchase shares in heaven because of our sinful nature, and the price is so high that we can’t even pay the premium debt for the options contract. However, just as an employer may offer their employees call options for shares in the company as remuneration for their work, Jesus paid the contract’s strike price so that we could have the choice. In contrast, this was not a reward for our service because none of us could keep the boss’s commands, but because Jesus loves us, and only He had the power to do what He did, because He can keep the boss’s commands, after all, He is the boss’s son. The Holy Spirit helps us follow God’s instructions and prepares us for new bodies with eternal life. His son paid the price because he loved us and wanted to make us joint heirs in the cosmic company we call creation. However, if one does not exercise the option before expiration, there will be no passive income of eternal life. In addition, those people will be fired, because without the Holy Spirit (which He offers freely), no one can keep His commands. Galatians 6:7-8 says (NLT), “God is not mocked, we reap what we sow. Those who sow into their flesh nature will reap corruption and death, but those who sow into the Holy Spirit will reap eternal life.”