Romans 6:23

The third fruit of grace is the attainment of eternal beatitude. Whence the Apostle to the Romans: "The wages of sin is death: but the grace of God is life eternal." You have the planting of life and of death. The grace of God is …

Eternal life is unjustly given for good merits. Rather, merit is first given freely by a benevolent Savior.

Then when he says, for the wages of sin, he clarifies what he had said about the ends of evil and of good. First, in regard to evil he says: we have stated that the end of sins is death: for the wages of sin …

Death - Temporal, spiritual, and eternal. Is the due wages of sin; but eternal life is the gift of God - The difference is remarkable. Evil works merit the reward they receive: good works do not.

Death is as due to a sinner when he hath sinned as wages are to a servant when he hath done his work. This is true of every sin. There is no sin in its own nature venial.

There is no proportion between the glory of heaven and our obedience; we must thank God, and not ourselves, if ever we get to heaven. And this gift is through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is Christ that purchased it, prepared it, prepares us for it, preserves us to it; he is the Alpha and Omega, All in all in our salvation.

For the wages of sin is death,....

For the wages of sin - The word translated here “wages” ὀψώνια opsōnia properly denotes what is purchased to be eaten with bread, as fish, flesh, vegetables, etc. (Schleusner); and thence, it means the pay of the Roman soldier, because formerly it was the custom to pay the soldier in these things. It means hence, what a man earns or deserves; what is his proper pay, or what he merits. As applied to sin, it means that death is what sin deserves; what will be its proper reward.

IN the fifth chapter of this Epistle, Paul had shown, at considerable length, our justification from sin through the righteousness of Jesus Christ our Savior. Our Apostle goes on to speak of our sanctification in Christ, that as by the righteousness of Christ we have been delivered from the guilt and penalty of sin, so by the power and life of Christ in us we are delivered from the dominion of sin, so as not to live any longer therein.

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through--"in" Jesus Christ our Lord--This concluding verse--as pointed as it is brief--contains the marrow, the most fine gold, of the Gospel. As the laborer is worthy of his hire, and feels it to be his due--his own of right--so is death the due of sin, the wages the sinner has well wrought for, his own.

IN the fifth chapter of this Epistle, Paul had shown, at considerable length, our justification from sin through the righteousness of Jesus Christ our Savior. Our Apostle goes on to speak of our sanctification in Christ, that as by the righteousness of Christ we have been delivered from the guilt and penalty of sin, so by the power and life of Christ in us we are delivered from the dominion of sin, so as not to live any longer therein. His objective is to show that true servants of God cannot live in sin—that by reason of our newness of life in Christ, it is not possible that we should continue to yield our members, instruments unto iniquity. We have passed out of the realm of death. We have come into the domain of life and, therefore, we must act according to that life and that life—being in its essence, pure, holy and heavenly—we must proceed from righteousness unto holiness. While he is driving at this argument, our Apostle incidentally lets fall the text which may be regarded as a Christian proverb, a golden sentence, a Divine statement of Truth worthy to be written across the sky! As Jesus said of the woman who anointed Him to His burial, "Wherever this Gospel shall be preached, in the whole world, there shall also, this, what this woman has done, be told for a memorial of her." And so I may say, "Wherever the Gospel is preached, there shall this golden sentence which the Apostle has let fall, be repeated as a proof of his clearness in the faith." Here you have both the essence of the Gospel and a statement of that misery from which the Gospel delivers all who believe! "The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." First, it will be my painful duty to dwell, for a while, upon death as the wages of sin. And then, more joyfully, we shall close our morning's meditation by considering eternal life as the gift of God.

For the wages of sin is death - The second death, everlasting perdition. Every sinner earns this by long, sore, and painful service. O! what pains do men take to get to hell! Early and late they toil at sin; and would not Divine justice be in their debt, if it did not pay them their due wages? But the gift of God is eternal life - A man may Merit hell, but he cannot Merit heaven. The apostle does not say that the wages of righteousness is eternal life: no, but that this eternal life, even to the righteous, is το χαρισμα του Θεου, The gracious Gift of God. And even this gracious gift comes through Jesus Christ our Lord. He alone has procured it; and it is given to all those who find redemption in his blood. A sinner goes to hell because he deserves it; a righteous man goes to heaven because Christ has died for him, and communicated that grace by which his sin is pardoned and his soul made holy. The word οψωνια, which we here render wages, signified the daily pay of a Roman soldier. So every sinner has a daily pay, and this pay is death; he has misery because he sins. Sin constitutes hell; the sinner has a hell in his own bosom; all is confusion and disorder where God does not reign: every indulgence of sinful passions increases the disorder, and consequently the misery of a sinner. If men were as much in earnest to get their souls saved as they are to prepare them for perdition, heaven would be highly peopled, and devils would be their own companions. And will not the living lay this to heart? 1. In the preceding chapter we see the connection that subsists between the doctrines of the Gospel and the practice of Christianity. A doctrine is a teaching, instruction, or information concerning some truth that is to be believed, as essential to our salvation. But all teaching that comes from God, necessarily leads to him. […]