McDonald’s Basement, October 3, 2007
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Romans 6:23
If you want to know the answer to the question in verse 15, “shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace,” you go to verse 23, because in verse 23 Paul draws out the answer in such drastic, and vivid lines that you cannot miss it. In fact, this verse is a condensation of the whole of chapter 6. This chapter is mainly concerned with one question. It is essentially, “shall we sin because we are justified?” The answer in the first part of the chapter (v. 1-14) is, “No, the very reason you cannot sin because you are justified is that you are justified. You have been unified with Jesus and are dead to sin and alive to God.” The answer in the second part of chapter (v. 16-23) is, “If you are a slave to sin it proves you are not justified. And the outcome of that is death.”
Verse 23 brings both of these ideas together. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life . . .” This first part of the verse corresponds to the second part of the chapter; you cannot live in sin because slavery to sin results in death and slavery to God results in life. Now here is the second part of the verse, which corresponds to the first part of the chapter. “. . . in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Eternal life is in Christ Jesus. If you are justified and have eternal life, you are unified with Jesus and are dead to sin and alive to God.
Tonight we will look at the three contrasting pairs of verse 23—Sin and God, wages and free gift, death and eternal life.
Sin and God
There are no neutral people in the world. There are no free-floating, self-governing entities. Every person is a slave of one of two masters. They are either a slave of sin or a slave of God. If a person is a slave of God, he is not a slave of sin. If a person is a slave of sin, he is not a slave of God, because anything less than slavery to God is sin. If you are a Muslim and serve Allah, you are a slave of sin or God. If you are an atheist and do not even believe in God, you are a slave of sin or God. If you are a person who has never heard of Christ, you are either a slave of sin or God. And if you do not even care, you are still mastered by one of the two. There are no autonomous in-betweens.
I have known this verse for a long time and I have always thought that what Paul means when he talks about “the wages of sin” is “the wages that you get when you sin.” But that is not what he means. I now understand that Paul is contrasting two masters and what they give. Two reasons make this clear.
1. If you take “the wages of sin is death” to mean “the wages that you get when you sin,” it is logical to understand the other half of the verse the same way. So “the free gift of God is eternal life” would mean “the free gift that you get when you God.” That obviously does not work.
2. Most importantly, the picture that Paul has used for all of chapter 6 is the picture of two opposing masters, sin and God. It is no surprise, then, that he continues this imagery.
When Paul writes about slavery to sin, he wants you to view it in the blackest, most death-like way possible. In chapter 1, he describes some of this slavery. “And just as they did not see fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper, being filled with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, malice; they are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy, unloving, unmerciful . . . (1:28-31)” What is that? That is slavery to sin. Paul wants you to look as sin as a master and hate it, and loath any thought that you could continue in it as a Christian.
That is not what Paul means when he writes about slavery to God. Slavery to God is slavery; you are totally dominated by righteousness and by God. But this is the slavery that we were created for and yearn for. It is the one true slavery. Sin is a fake, usurping master—taking the good reality of slavery and making an evil reproduction. The reason that the world thinks slavery (being controlled by something) is bad, is because their experience with slavery is slavery to sin. But that is not the true slavery. It is a shadowy, depraved imitation of the real thing. There is a real slavery, and it is wholly good and satisfying.
In Ephesians 1, Paul says that God has “made known to us the mystery of His will, in accordance with His kind intention . . . with a view to the . . . summing up of all things in Christ, things in the heavens and things on the earth.” What is that? That is the final subjecting of all things in slavery to Christ, and it is a “kind intention.” For the church this slavery to Christ will mean righteousness, Christ-likeness, true worship, and complete satisfaction to praise of God’s glory.
So do not think of heavy burdens, and pain, and death when you think of slavery to God. Think of what you most yearn for.
Wages and Free Gift
There is an important connection between verses 21-22 and verse 23. In verse 21, Paul shows the outcome of bad fruit and ultimately slavery to sin—death. Distinguishingly, in verse 22, he talks about the result of good fruit and ultimately slavery to God—life. And then he says in verse 23, “For the wages of sin is death and the free gift of God is eternal life.” In other words, death is the outcome of slavery to sin because that is what Sin gives its slaves. And eternal life comes from slavery to God because that is what God gives his slaves.
But there is a vital difference between these masters and what they give. One gives wages. The other gives gifts. “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life . . .” The tremendously important contrast that is being made here is that you earn the wages of master sin, and you cannot earn the free gift of master God. That is the fundamental distinction between a wage and a gift. One is earned and the other is received.
The wages of sin are in you. I mean by that that you are the worker and representative of yourself as a slave of sin. The wages that you get are exactly what you have earned and deserve. You, in yourself, have not honored God and you have not conformed to His image, and therefore you get death as just payment.
The free gift of God is in Christ. He is the worker and your representative as a slave to God. All gifts are earned—just not by the recipient. Gifts are earned by the giver. And it is by virtue of Christ’s work and your union with Him that you have the free gift of eternal life. It is in Him. This is what Paul says in verse 23, “For the wages of sin is death [that is in you], but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Death and Life
Now let us ponder for a moment the third contrast—death and life. Paul’s emphasis here is not the death and life that is experienced by people on earth. It is not the death that non-believers have currently or the life and resurrection that believers have now. While those may be implied, his true emphasis is the end—the final results of slavery to these two masters—eternal death and eternal life.
Here, the contrasting picture of the two opposing masters breaks down. These two masters are not equal. God is completely free and autonomous in His giving of gifts, but sin is subordinate to God in giving of wages. Ultimately it is God who gives the wages of death as well as the gift of life.
Maybe it will be helpful to rebuild the illustration that I used a few weeks ago. There is a kingdom with a ruling King, and throughout the kingdom there are castles and villages that are ruled by a lesser master, Sin. All your life you are made to work as a slave to that master, fighting and working against the greater King and his kingdom. Then, at the end when the King is purging out the domain of Sin and is besieging your castle, Sin flees. And you and your fellow slaves are left to receive the just consequences of your rebellion from the King. Perhaps that is the picture Paul has in mind. Sin lures you and dominates you and then, as payment, leaves you to die.
We should never lose the reality of these truths in our contemplation of the Bible. Slavery to sin does result in death. Slavery to God does result in life. Sometimes we talk about these things as if they are some fairy tale or fictional story, and we are trying to discover the author’s meaning for an upcoming exam.
Jesus Christ was an actual person. He was a real as James Madison or Ronald Reagan. His death was a real as the death of my grandmother. I love Francis Schaeffer’s statement because it is so shockingly true: If you had been there, you could have rubbed your hand on the cross and gotten a splinter in your finger.
Eternal death and life are also real—as real as the chair you are sitting in. I live for this. It is what keeps me from committing suicide. I do not rest my hope in a fairy tale, but in actuality. The life that I have been promised—the righteousness, the worship, the new heavens and earth, the salvation of the nations—will be given.
Battle and Believe: My Exhortation from Chapter 6
I have one more point from this verse. It is the point I am most eager to make.
We know from verse 22 that sanctification is necessary for eternal life. It is the pathway and there are no detours. We also know from verse 23 that eternal life is a free gift. Now here is the point. If eternal life is a free gift, and if sanctification is necessary for eternal life, sanctification must be a free gift as well. If God had said, “You can have eternal life for free.” And then He said, “But you have to have good fruit, you must walk this pathway of sanctification, in order to obtain it. And as for that, you are on your own.” It would not be a free gift any more. It would be based on something that you did. But eternal life is free and therefore sanctification must also be free.
John Piper gave an illustration that is very useful. Let us say you went to the train station to take a trip to St. Louis. Outside, a man came up to you and said, “I will give you a free trip to St. Louis. All you have to do is get on the train and you are there for free.” And then as he walked away he said, “Oh, by the way, you do have to have a ticket. And I am afraid I can’t help you out with that.” Is that a free trip? Not at all! If it is free, everything necessary must be free as well. And if eternal life is free, so is sanctification. Sometimes I like to think of salvation as a package. Regeneration, justification, faith, sanctification, and eternal life are all yours as a free gift in Christ Jesus.
There is a very thin walkway between two equally dangerous extremes in the relationship of justification and sanctification and eternal life. On one side you have a ditch that is sanctification and no justification. At its root it is works righteousness. On the other side, you have a ditch that is justification and no sanctification. People in it say, “I don’t need sanctification, I have justification. I can sin because I am not under law but under grace.” Does that sound familiar? Both of these are wrong and dangerous.
I think that the truth can be summarized in two words: Battling and believing.
We battle knowing that sanctification is completely necessary for eternal life, and that God uses our battling to produce sanctification in us. We fight like we are fighting for life itself. But we believe that eternal life and all that is necessary for it is a free gift in Christ Jesus. He is our justification and our sanctification. In His merits and His work alone do we have eternal life. This gift is ours in Christ and God will bring it to perfection.
So my simple and earnest exhortation, from all of chapter 6, is this: battle and believe.
Bryan Elliff © 2007
