“Bible promises: the wages of sin is death”
Romans 6:23
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus.
It was early in July of 1741, in a town called Enfield, Connecticut, when Pastor Jonathan Edwards stepped into the pulpit to preach.
He wasn’t supposed to preach that day. He was simply filling in for someone else. His text came from the book of Deuteronomy chapter 32: “Vengeance is Mine; I will repay. Their foot shall slide in due time” (Deuteronomy 32:35), and his title was, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.
Now to be fair, he had already preached that sermon at his home church in Northampton, Massachusetts, and nothing strange happened there. But something strange did happen at Enfield. For just as soon as he began to preach, a hush fell over the crowd.
This is what he said: “The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked. His wrath towards you burns like fire; He looks upon you as worthy of nothing else but to be cast into the fire. He is of purer eyes than to bear you in His sight; you are ten thousand times as abominable in His eyes as the most hateful, venomous serpent is in ours…O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in! It is a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit, full of the fire of wrath that you are held over in the hand of that God whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you as against all those in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of Divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it and burn it asunder.”
Later, one who was there wrote, “There was a great moaning and crying out throughout the whole house.” And he said that the shrieking and crying became so loud, Pastor Edwards couldn’t even finish his sermon.
The apostle Paul had something to say about sin. In fact, he had quite a lot to say about sin. He said, “No one is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one” (Romans 3:10-12). He said, “For by works of the law no human being will be justified in His sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). And he said, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:24).
It’s been said that Paul’s letter to the Romans is his magnum opus, his greatest work. Others have called it “the constitution of Christianity” and “the cathedral of the Christian faith.” Some have even called it “the most profound book in existence.”
And it’s easy to understand why, for it’s here that we find words like these: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:18), and “In all these things we are more than conquerors--we overwhelmingly conquer--through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37), and “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).
No wonder Luther wrote, “This epistle is the chief part of the New Testament and the very gospel…It can never be read or pondered too much, and the more it is dealt with, the more precious it becomes.”
So it is in the words of Romans chapter 6: “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6:23).
Back in the late 1980s, an American psychiatrist named Karl Menninger wrote a book called Whatever Became of Sin? And in that book, he tells of a stern-faced, plainly dressed man who stood on the corner of a busy, downtown Chicago street. And as pedestrians hurried by on their way to lunch or the office, he solemnly lifted his right arm, and shouted a single word, “GUILTY!”
Meninger said, “The effect of this strange, accusatory pantomime on the passing strangers was extraordinary, almost eerie. They would stare at him, hesitate, look away, look at each other, and then at him again, then hurriedly continue on their ways.”
He said, “The word ‘sin,’ which seems to have disappeared, was once a strong word, an ominous and serious word. It described a central point in every civilized human being’s life plan and lifestyle. But the word went away. It’s almost disappeared--the word, along with the notion.” And he said, “Why? Doesn’t anyone sin anymore? Doesn’t anyone believe in sin?”
But think, on the other hand, of what the Bible says. Isaiah wrote, “All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags; we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind, our sin sweeps us away” (Isaiah 64:6). John wrote, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us…If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (I John 1:8, 10). And Paul wrote to the Galatians: “The acts of the flesh are obvious…I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:19, 21).
And what’s the penalty for sin? What are its wages? Not a slap on the hand, not community service, and not a couple of days behind bars. Paul wrote, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
No mercy, no rest, no beauty, no peace, no family, no friends, and no hope of salvation, separated from the only One who could have ever saved your soul. Forever.
Imagine for a moment that a friend invites you over after church for a Sunday brunch. You stop at their house, and knock on their door. And as they let you in, they invite you into their kitchen to help prepare the meal.
On the counter you see several mounds of chopped onions, green peppers, ham, and sliced mushrooms. Nearby is a bowl of grated cheese. Then they reach into the refrigerator for the eggs.
But to their surprise, they discover that there are only six eggs, and one of them is rotten. And since there isn’t enough time to go out and pick up some fresh eggs, they say to themselves, “I’ll just mix in the rotten one with the good ones and hope he can’t tell the difference.”
A few minutes later, when your friend serves the omelets, you start sniffing the air. You ask, “What’s that funny smell?”
“Don’t worry about it,” they say. “I just mixed in one rotten egg with all the rest.”
Would you eat the omelet? Probably not! And neither will God accept your life when you mix in your sin with your good works.
Or suppose that American Express offered a $1 million prize to anyone who could swim nonstop from California all the way to Hawaii. And on the appointed day, six carefully-screened swimmers line up on the beach at San Diego. At the crack of a gun, the six contestants plunge into the surf, heading for the sunny beaches of Honolulu. Before long, all six are out of sight.
Six hours later, the first contestant quits because of cramps in his side. Four more hours, and a second swimmer stops because of sheer exhaustion. The other four plow on ahead.
Twelve hours pass, then fifteen, then eighteen. At the twenty hour mark, three others finally give up.
Meanwhile, one determined swimmer swims on. But eventually, he too has to quit, but only after an amazing forty-eight hours in the water.
Will he win the million dollars? No, he won’t, because he didn’t swim to Hawaii. The prize wasn’t offered to the one who swam the furthest or the fastest, but only to the one who made it all the way. Even though all six swimmers swam the very best they could, better than anyone else ever could, all of them failed, so no one won the prize.
It’s the same way when it comes to keeping the Law of God. While some might do it better than others, all ultimately fail because no one ever keeps it perfectly. And since God demands nothing less than perfection, no one can be saved by keeping the law.
Some six hundred years ago, back in the fourteenth century, two brothers were fighting for the right to rule over a dukedom in what is now called Belgium. The elder brother’s name was Raynald and the younger brother’s name was Edward.
Now as you can imagine, since both brothers wanted to rule over the same territory, they didn’t get along. In fact, the younger brother, Edward, even led a successful revolt against his elder brother, and assumed the title of Duke over his lands.
But instead of killing him, he devised a rather strange form of punishment. He built a room in his castle with only one door. And though the door wasn’t locked and the windows weren’t barred, Edward promised Raynald that he could have his land and his title any time that he wanted to. All he had to do was to walk out of the room.
The only problem was the obstacle to his freedom wasn’t in the doors or the windows, but with Raynald himself. You see, he was grossly overweight, so much so that he couldn’t fit through the door. And since his younger brother kept sending him huge platters of delicious food, his desire to be free never won over his desire to eat.
And when some accused Duke Edward of being unusually cruel to his older brother, he simply replied, “My brother is not a prisoner. He is free to go anytime he wants.”
And you know, sin is just that way. Man calls it an accident; God calls it an abomination. Man calls it a blunder; God calls it blindness. Man calls it an error; God calls it an enmity. Man calls it a fascination; God calls it a fatality. Man calls it a luxury; God calls it a leprosy. Man calls it a mistake; God calls it madness. Man calls it a trifle; God calls it a tragedy.
“The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23), wrote Paul.
But you know, the story doesn’t end there. If it did, we would have no hope at all. Instead, what comes next isn’t a period, but a comma. “The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
“Free gift,” Paul wrote. Not earned. Not deserved. It’s the free gift of eternal life.
And what’s eternal life? It’s standing in the presence and the perfection of our God where everything will be just as it was supposed to be--no more grief, no more tears, no more sin, no more sickness, and no more sadness--just glory, absolute glory, forever and ever and ever.
In the words of pastor and poet Robert Robinson: “O to grace how great a debtor daily I’m constrained to be! Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it, prone to leave the God I love; here’s my heart; O take and seal it; seal it for Thy courts above.”
And that’s a promise!
Though Your righteous law condemns us, dear Father, Your life-giving and life-saving gospel makes us right again. Help us to rest in Your truth and promises, for Jesus’ sake. Amen