“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the classic approaches to sharing the Gospel from the last century was to take unbelievers along the Romans Road. This was a series of verses in this incredible letter that spell out the basic Gospel message, leading the listener to the point of making a decision to follow Jesus. This verse is one of the major stops on that road. Paul here spells out the result of sin. Let’s take a look at this and talk through just what it means.

Paul has been hinting in this direction for a while now, but here he lands decisively on the point. Sin has a consequence, and that consequence isn’t good. Before we unpack that, though, let’s take a step back and reestablish our context.

Foundational to what Paul is saying here is the belief that God created the world and everything in it. If you stop short of that belief, nothing else that Paul says here will make sense or be acceptable to you. You may argue against it or criticize it, but in rejecting the foundation, criticizing any of the structures built on top of it doesn’t make any sense. That is illegitimate criticism. You need to go back to the beginning and start there.

Assuming, then, that God created the world and everything in it, He is also the owner of the world and everything in it. He made it; it belongs to Him. He is sovereign over His creation. Every part of it. He sets the rules and standards for how it operates. His character outlines what is morally acceptable and what is not.

God also sustains His creation. It continues to exist because He holds it all together. He set what we know as the laws of physics in place in the beginning, and He has kept them operating consistently ever since.

He is the source of all life in the world. There is no life apart from Him. If something is alive, that is because He is actively sustaining its life. Where a death has occurred, He has allowed it for one reason or another. We don’t always understand or like this aspect of God’s sovereignty, but we can trust that the God who created the world and everything in it in the first place and who is the source of all wisdom knows what He is doing.

In light of all of this, sin is any action or thought that deviates from God’s character and the broad moral boundaries that sets for human behavior. And I specify human behavior there because we are the only creatures made specifically in God’s image and who exist as free (but not totally autonomous) moral agents. The idea of holding an animal morally culpable for its actions is silly because they are not moral agents. Humans, however are. And when we make choices that deviate from God’s character and expectations, we have sinned.

Paul has already established that everyone has sinned. That brokenness was introduced to us in the Fall and has been with us ever since. Here Paul spells out the consequence of sin. Sin’s consequence is death. Or, to put that as Paul does, the wages of sin is death. To put that yet another way, when we sin, the thing we receive for our efforts is death.

Why such a harsh consequences? I mean, doesn’t it seem a little…okay, a lot…unfair of God to demand our lives just because we do a thing or two (thousand) that He doesn’t like? What gives? Why is He such a jerk about this? Didn’t He make us to be free moral agents? Why can’t He just let us figure it out and get things right on our own? We do a pretty good job most of the time. Can’t He give us a little break for the few times we don’t quite hit the mark? Isn’t He supposed to be a God of grace and mercy and all that?

We could keep going, but that covers a pretty good stretch of the kinds of objections we make to this idea. Our powers of self-justification are nothing if not thorough. But again, why is it exactly that death is the thing sin earns?

Because as we have already said, God is the God of life. He is the source of life. He is the only source of life in this world. If you unplug a digital clock from the wall, you don’t expect it to tell you what time it is any longer. Now, maybe it has a battery backup system. In this case, once you unplug it, it continues to work. But it won’t work forever. Eventually, unless it is charged back up, it is going to quit working.

The same thing goes with our lives. When we by our sin disconnect from God who is the only source of life, what else do we expect to get? We don’t produce our life on our own. And that’s not for a lack of trying. Life eludes us. We simply experience it. We receive it. We live it. But we don’t create it. That’s God’s purview. And when we leave Him behind in order to go out on our own, as if we were somehow totally independent, autonomous creatures who were capable of providing for ourselves everything we need, we are not going to find life. We’ll find troubles and hardships and heartaches.

Of course, in almost every case this isn’t something that happens instantly. That’s because God is good and gracious and kind. He is patient and humble. He bears with our rejection with a humility that no other god demonstrates, and works to woo us back to the path of life. But it nonetheless remains true that absent a connection to the God of life, the death of sin gradually begins to permeate every area of our lives. The speed of this poison’s spread will be impacted by how closely we stick to the standards of God’s character without acknowledging Him as their source. It will depend on how thoroughly the culture around us supports and practices those. But like a flower cut from its plant begins to die, so also will we. We can slow that process by putting it in an environment that provides many of the things it would normally need for staying alive, but absent that connection to its roots, death is going to be its end eventually.

God doesn’t want any of this. But He’s not going to force life on us if we choose to reject it. If we set ourselves on a path of death and stick with it over and against all of His efforts to call us from it, then when the time comes that our journey through this life reaches its conclusion, He will give us the thing we have insisted throughout our life that we want: separation from Him. And again, because He is the only source of life and goodness, that now permanent separation is not going to be pleasant.

But this doesn’t have to be. As Paul says in the second half of the verse here, “the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” There is a way that leads to life. This way goes through Jesus. It doesn’t travel any other road. When we are willing to accept Him for who He is, we will receive this life. When we allow Jesus to keep us connected to the God of life, life is what we get. If you aren’t living with this life, receiving it is a truly simple thing. As Paul says in a few chapters and we’ll talk about in a few months, all you have to do is confess that Jesus is Lord and commit yourself fully to the historical reality of His resurrection, and life will be yours. You will be saved. Given the alternative, I hope that you will.