The Wages or the Gift

Sixteen weeks. That’s how long we’ve spent working our way through this series I’ve called “Sin, According to the Experts.” Sixteen weeks on sin.

Now, part of me wants to think that this was overkill. And surely, from the perspective of preaching consultants, 16 weeks is FAR too long to spend in one series. People get tired of hearing sermons on the same topic, they tell us.

But, as I’ve told you throughout this series, this is, unfortunately, a topic that’s near and dear to us. We LOVE sin; otherwise, we wouldn’t keep on doing it.

We’re experts on sin, just like Adam. Just like Cain. Just like Noah. Just the the people of Babel. Just like Abraham. Just like Samson. Just like King David. Just like King Hezekiah. Just like Peter and Judas. Just like Ananias and Sapphira. And just like every other person named in the Bible, except for Jesus.

Every one of us — whether we’re followers of Jesus or not — has, for some period of time, sought to name what’s good and what’s evil according to our own desires. Just as Adam and Eve did when they ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of good and evil.

Every one of us, like Cain, has allowed himself to be caught up in jealousy and even rage. Every one of us, like Noah, has simply given up on faith at some point in our lives, allowing the tragedy of this world to overwhelm us.

Every one of us, like the people of Babel, has sought to remove God from authority over our lives and install ourselves on the throne that only He should occupy.

Every one of us, like Abraham, has used half-truths to protect ourselves and get what we want.

Every one of us, like Samson, has pursued the sensual things of the flesh, instead of pursuing the spiritual things of God.

Every one of us, like King David, has tried to claim something that wasn’t ours to have. Every one of us, like King Hezekiah, has allowed pride to make us forget that every good thing we have comes from God.

Every one of us, like both Judas and Peter, has betrayed Jesus, either by denying Him in our love for our sin or rejecting Him in our unbelief.

Every one of us, like Ananias and Sapphira, has tried to appear to be more spiritually awake and alive than we really are, which may well be the predominant sin in any Christian church on any given Sunday.

Our sins are great. But God’s grace is greater. You may recall that it was a version of this statement that caused the Apostle Paul to transition to the chapter in the Book of Romans that we’ve been studying for the past five weeks.

Paul had written his own analysis of sin earlier in this book. Not surprisingly, it was both shorter and more eloquent than mine. And he’d followed that analysis with one on the doctrine of salvation by grace alone, through faith alone.

He’d explained how mankind had cut itself off from the life-giving righteousness of God in our sins against Him. He’d shown how the only way we could then be saved from God’s righteous wrath over our sins is by the grace of God, through faith in Jesus Christ.

And then, having provided all the doctrinal background of chapters 1-5, Paul began to describe the application of this doctrine of sin and grace.

Now that we understand how we related to sin and to God when we were lost, how should we relate to sin and to God as followers of Jesus?

That’s the message of Romans, chapter 6, which we’ll conclude today as we also conclude our longer series on sin.

Paul tells us in the first seven verses or so that we were all slaves to sin. We were under sin’s authority.

But we who’ve turned to Jesus in faith have been released from sin’s authority over us and have now come under the authority of Jesus. We’ve DIED to sin with Christ Jesus.

And if we’ve died to sin, Paul says, we’ve also been raised into new life WITH Jesus. In Him, we’ve been made alive to God.

And that means that our sinful flesh no longer controls our spirits. Instead our spirits are enabled by the Spirit of God living within us to control our sinful flesh.

Therefore, we shouldn’t go on presenting the members of our bodies to be used by sin as instruments or weapons of unrighteousness, but rather present them as weapons of righteousness to God.

So, sin should no longer be our lifestyle as followers of Jesus. But we also shouldn’t use God’s grace as an excuse to take time little vacations from righteousness.

In other words, sin in the life of a believer is a problem, whether it’s one’s lifestyle or simply the occasional choice we make.

God’s purpose in saving us is to make us more like Jesus. But every time we sin — every time we answer the phone when sin calls — we interfere with that work within us.

Every time we go BACK to sin, we’re defiling the image of Christ within us with the image of sin, the image of Satan. Every time we go back to sin, we’re choosing impurity and lawlessness over the purity and righteousness of Jesus. We’re choosing death over life.

And those are the main themes of the last four verses of this chapter, which we’ll study today. Let’s take a look at them together.

Romans 6:20–23 NASB95

20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. 22 But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let me ask you something, and I want you to think about it carefully. Think about it honestly. What’s so attractive about sin? What is it that DRAWS us to sin?

There must be something, because we ALL sin. Which, in biblical terms means we all fall short of God’s glory. We all fail to represent the righteous character of the God in whose image we were created.

So, what IS it about sin that draws us, that compels us, that entices us?

I think it’s ONE thing, and it doesn’t even matter what kind of sin we’re talking about. Whether it’s lust or drunkenness or anger or greed or anything else, it call comes down to one thing: Sin promises us FREEDOM. Sin promises us that we can be free from God’s authority.

Think of the people of Babel. They built that tower, trying to reach into heaven — for what? To kick God off His throne and place themselves upon it. Remember what they said?

Genesis 11:4 NASB95

4 They said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

“Let us make for OURSELVES a name,” they said. In biblical terms, naming something denotes having authority over it. So, to make for yourself a name is to give yourself authority over yourself.

Sin preys on every person’s desire to be in authority over himself. It says, just as the serpent said to Eve, “You will be like God.” YOU’LL have authority over yourself, not Him. You’ll be FREE.

But remember that Paul’s argument throughout this chapter of Romans has been that we are all slaves, either slaves of God and His righteousness or slaves of sin.

Sin promises freedom, but the freedom it promises is an illusion. It’s a freedom, as Paul says in verse 20, from righteousness. But there is a tradeoff. And the tradeoff is increasing slavery to sin.

Warren Wiersbe gives the Prodigal Son as an example of this deepening enslavement to sin.

“When he was at home, he decided he wanted his freedom, so he left home to find himself and enjoy himself. But his rebellion only led him deeper into slavery. He was the slave of wrong desires, then the slave of wrong deeds; and finally he became a literal slave when he took care of the pigs.

“He wanted to find himself, but he lost himself! What he thought was freedom turned out to be the worst kind of slavery. It was only when he returned home and yielded to his father that he found true freedom.” [Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 1 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 533.]

And think about what the Prodigal Son got for all his sin. At first, it was fun. All the ladies loved him, and life was a big party, as long as he had money.

But as soon as the money ran out, the reality of his situation hit hard. He had to work as a slave among the pigs just to get by, and soon he had to eat slop with the pigs, just to survive.

As I said last week, “sin will take you farther than you want to go, keep you longer than you want to stay, and cost you more than you want to pay.”

I imagine those first few weeks of so-called freedom were a whirlwind of sensual pleasures for the Prodigal Son. Do you think he felt shame over his sins during that period? Probably not. He was much too busy enjoying himself.

But when the money ran out, and the party was over, and he found himself knee-deep in pig poop, shame hit him like a freight train. Remember what he decided then?

“I will get up and go to my father and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in your sight; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.”

That sounds like shame. And I believe that shame has a place in the life of a believer. We shouldn’t live in the shame of our past sins. But I think we SHOULD be motivated toward righteousness by the kind of shame the Prodigal Son felt in the pig sty as he realized the depths of his sin.

Shame is — or should be — the immediate result of sin in the life of a believer.

But your conscience can be seared — it can be scarred to the point of no longer having feeling — by going back to sin over and over again.

That’s exactly what we saw in the life of Samson. As he slid further and further into sin, he decided that he no longer wanted to be a Nazarite — one whose life was devoted to God.

Instead, he wanted to be “just like any other man.” He wanted to trade his life of servitude to God for a life in service to sin.

This wasn’t a sudden decision on his part; it was a series of little choices he made. It began in Scripture with his desire to marry a Philistine woman, proceeded to his touching the corpse of a dead lion to harvest honey, and then went ever downhill from there.

What Paul is saying in verse 21 is that the fruit of sin — that’s the word that’s translated as “benefit” here — is death.

For Samson, the fruit of his sin was estrangement from God. He wanted to be free of God’s authority over him, but he became a slave to his sin. And what he lost was the fellowship with God for which he’d been marked as a Nazarite from birth.

The fruit of Samson’s impurity grew fruit of its own — lawlessness. And by the end of his life, his spiritual blindness to God was mirrored by his physical blindness.

As Paul said back in verse 19, presenting ourselves as slaves to impurity and lawlessness just results in further lawlessness. Sin will take you deeper than you want to go.

But presenting ourselves as slaves to righteousness results in sanctification. When we as followers of Jesus give up the false promise of freedom offered to us by sin, we gain true freedom, the freedom FROM sin’s control over us.

As slaves to righteousness — slaves to God in Christ Jesus — we become TRULY free. We are freed from the outcome of sin, both eternal death and, to whatever extent we keep ourselves free from sin, the loss of fellowship with God.

As we submit ourselves to God as weapons of righteousness, we experience the fruit, the benefit, of His righteousness. We become more like Jesus. And the outcome of THAT is eternal life.

As one commentator puts it, “The reward of eternal life, then, is promised to those who do not regard their good works as an end in themselves, but see them as marks … of hope in God. Their trust is not in their good works, but in God, the only source of glory, honour, and incorruption.” [Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 116, quoting Barrett.]

Eternal life — life lived in its fullness in fellowship with God, the way it was always intended to be — isn’t the reward for RIGHTEOUSNESS. It’s God’s gracious reward for FAITH.

Righteousness is simply the appropriate response by those who’ve been saved by God’s grace, through faith in Jesus.

Contrast that with what Paul says in verse 23 about SIN. “The WAGES of sin is death.”

The word translated as “wages” here referred to the rations or provisions or pay for those who served in the military.

This should remind us of what Paul said back in verse 13, when he wrote that followers of Jesus shouldn’t go on presenting the members of their bodies as instruments or weapons of unrighteousness.

What he’s saying here is that when we serve in the army of Satan, giving ourselves to him to use as weapons of sin, we earn what we’re paid. We earn the wages we’ve been promised for that service.

In the case of non-believers, the wages are final — the second death we saw in the Book of Revelation, eternal separation from the God who CREATED us for fellowship with Him.

Followers of Jesus, on the other hand, never have to fear that second death. When we turn to Jesus in faith, we’re given the gift of eternal life.

Our bodies will eventually die, unless Jesus returns first. But our eternal souls will be reunited with our resurrected and glorified bodies when He returns for his Bride, the Church. And we will live in perfect and eternal fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

But the Bible’s references to eternal life always suggest that this experience isn’t something we have to wait for as believers. It’s an experience we’re intended to have from the moment we place our faith in Jesus.

We have the Holy Spirit living within us, and we have access to the Father through the Son. So, if you’ve turned to Jesus in faith, you already HAVE eternal life. You already have ACCESS to perfect fellowship with God. It’s not something you have to wait for.

Still, though, even believers can and do sin. And sin separates us from God. Sin damages our fellowship with Him. It drives a wedge between us and God.

And so, there’s a sense in which the sin in a believer’s life results in death, too. Certainly, it results in physical death. We know there is still sin in the world, because there is still death in the world.

But we can also see a sort of death in the temporary and partial separation from God that we experience when our sins drive a wedge between us and Him.

This is the negative experience of having the fullness of our PRESENT fellowship with God broken and damaged by our sins.

For the believer, “death here is the negation or absence of a life that is truly life. Sin robs life of its meaning, purpose, fulfillment.” [Leon Morris, The Epistle to the Romans, The Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, MI; Leicester, England: W.B. Eerdmans; Inter-Varsity Press, 1988), 267, quoting Smart.]

So, when we sin, we get what we’ve earned — shame and alienation from God.

And in this chapter of contrasts, we might expect Paul to follow that information with a statement about what we get when we act righteously.

But that’s not the contrast he draws here. Look at the second part of this verse: “The free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Now the words, “free gift” are the translation of the Greek word “charisma,” which itself is derived from the Greek word charizomai. Charizomai means “to do something pleasant or agreeable to someone, to show oneself as gracious or kind, to give graciously, or to forgive.”

In the language of Paul’s time, charisma, the noun form of this concept, was something done ONLY by God. In other words, this free gift is God’s alone to give and can only be received FROM God.

So, the contrast in what Paul’s saying in this verse is important. We receive the wages we’ve earned from whatever sin we commit. But we receive this free gift from God alone.

And don’t lose sight of the fact that Paul’s contrast here in verse 23 ISN’T between sin and righteousness. It’s a contrast between sin and GRACE.

Sin pays the wages of death. But GRACE gives the gift of true life in all the fullness that was always intended for us.

And this life is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

As I was preparing this sermon, it struck me as exactly right that the last word on sin for this series would be JESUS.

After all, HE is the sinless one who took upon Himself at the cross our sins and their just punishment so that all who’d follow Him in faith could be saved. He IS the last word on sin.

But I want to draw your attention to something that’s hidden by this translation.

The word that’s translated as Lord is kurios, which means master. And in the Greek construction, this phrase would read, “life eternal in Christ Jesus, this Lord (this Master) of us.”

So, we have life eternal — true life, real life in the presence of and in fellowship with Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. We have LIFE eternally in Christ Jesus, this master of ours. He is the one who redeemed us from our slavery to sin. HE is the one who gave us new life. And HE is our new master.

But this is a relationship entirely different from the one we had when we served sin. In THAT relationship, we EARNED the wages of death for our service to sin.

But when we turn to Jesus in faith, God GIVES us what we could NEVER earn — real life, abundant life, the fullness of life in fellowship with a master to whose image we’re continually being conformed.

And that, my friends, should change everything about how we relate to sin as His followers.

Why WOULD we go on sinning — why would we go on having a lifestyle characterized by sin — in light of this great gift we’ve been given?

Why WOULD we sin — why would we think God’s grace and forgiveness give us a free pass for the occasional bout of unrighteousness — in light of the damage it does to our fellowship with Him and the way it defiles Christ’s image in us?

We ARE not saved BY our righteousness. But we are SURELY saved FOR our righteousness.

So, this week, let me encourage you if you’re a follower of Jesus to BE holy as HE is holy. Let your righteousness be a sign of your gratitude for this wonderful free gift of God.

Don’t WAIT for eternal life. Take hold of that experience TODAY as slaves to Christ and HIS righteousness.

Don’t fall for the lies that once kept you shackled by sin. Instead, LIVE in the freedom you now have in Christ Jesus. You are free men and women. So, act like it!