What does it mean that the wages of sin is death?

The last verse of our chapter, so well known, gives us a concise summary of the matter. We cannot serve sin without receiving its wages, which is death. Death is a word of large meaning. In one sense death came in upon man when by sin he was utterly separated from God. The death of the body occurs when it is separated from the spiritual part of man. The second death is when lost men are finally separated from God. The full wages of sin includes death in all three senses.

"For the wages of sin [is] death; but the free gift of God life eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord." This is a summary of the general truth; it is the result on man's side and on God's. He does not limit it to transgression, though of course its wages are no less; he takes man, the Gentile sinner, as well as the Jewish transgressor. Both were sinners; and the wages of sin is death. But the blessing is quite as rich and free: eternal life is the need of the Jew no less than of the Gentile: it is God's free gift, and thus equally open to either or both. Let it be carefully noted that the Holy Spirit, by the structure of the phrase, carefully avoids intimating that the wages of sin are limited to death; for in truth judgment remains, and is appointed to man no less than death. Together they are the full wages of sin. Nor would it be safe to affirm that even eternal life exhausts the free gift of God; for, as we shall find in Romans 8, no less than in many scriptures more, He gives the Holy Ghost to be the portion of the believer, not to speak of the relation of son and the accompanying inheritance. Boundless indeed is His grace to us in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“The wages of sin is death,” which solemn sentence Adam and myriads of men have proved in their own bodies. Death is the wages of sin, not the debt of nature. God did not make man in order to die, but by sin man forfeited his life, and now hath “death passed upon all men for all that have sinned,” and he who dies in his sins will be eternally banished from the presence of the holy God.

As already said, the solemnity of death lies in this, that it is the removal of man as failed out of the scene of his failure — the solemn sentence upon him as unfitted for the place for which he was created. The lower creatures, indeed, have never sinned, — are incapable of it, — yet they die; and men plead, therefore, that death is natural. But they cannot persuade themselves, whose whole nature cries out against it. The scriptural account is, "The wages of sin is death;" and thus, "man, being in honor, abideth not; he is like the beasts that perish" (Ps. 49:12).

155 This is an immense privilege, this growing up into the knowledge of God and intimacy with Him, acquaintance with God. Will never can do this. But in our right place with God we grow in His knowledge, we live more in those things that are found with Him - that He takes pleasure in; and that is holiness. Obedience is not holiness, a heart given up to obey God; but it is the path in which holy affections, springing from Him, and free before Him, are found. The end is everlasting life, received in its full result in glory, as it is in the purpose of God. But that is the gift of God. The path to it is the path of obedience and holiness, but itself is the gift of God. Death we have earned - it is the wages of sin; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is not merely that eternal life is the gift of God, but the gift of God is nothing less than eternal life. Death is purposely looked at in its simple character of death. No doubt it is judgment on sin here in this world, and implies, unless redemption comes in, the judgment which comes after. It is the present effect of judgment on sin, and the divine officer and witness of sin, to conduct us to judgment, according to wrath revealed from heaven. But here it is the end of life which fruitless sin worked. It does lead to judgment - judgment of works done while living. God gives eternal life.

The End. — The end, then, must not be forgotten. Clearly is it here put before all. The end of the things of which they were ashamed is death. The end of fruitfulness for God is everlasting life. As a king gives pay to his soldiers, so sin, like a ruler, gives what is due to those who serve it (16) — the wages (a military term, as it is in the original, used of the pay of an army) deserved by those whose members have been yielded as instruments, or weapons (another military term) of unrighteousness (13). On the other hand God gives, not what is due, for that would be everlasting punishment, but everlasting life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Death and everlasting life, these are the ends spoken of. Death here, it should be remarked, is temporal death. Were we to view it as the second death, the lake of fire, as has been but too often done, we should necessarily limit the gift of God to everlasting life, which would be a mistake. God gives other blessings besides that. Results are stated but not all results on either side. On the one hand it is death. That does not, however, exhaust all the wages of sin, seeing that after death for the impenitent there is the judgment of the great white throne (Heb. 9:27; Rev. 20:12). On the other hand it is everlasting life, connected with which are other blessings whose enumeration did not lie within the scope of the apostle's argument. We now pass on to a consideration of the law, and to the doctrine of freedom from it, in order to bring forth fruit to God, having learnt above that Christians are not under law, but under grace (6:14).

(V. 12). The passage opens by tracing all the sorrows that have come into this world to one man — Adam. Through Adam's act of disobedience sin came into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all Adam's race. The outcome of "sin" must be sins, but it is of "sin" that the Apostle more especially speaks in this portion of the Epistle. In chapters 1, to 5:11, the word sin occurs but twice; in this division. 5:12 to 8, it occurs thirty-four times. "Sin" is the evil principle of "lawlessness", or the creature doing his own will. This evil principle entered the world. through Adam's one act of disobedience. Death followed as the penalty of sin. Sins can be forgiven; but "sin", the evil principle which leads to sins, can only be met by death that brings to an end the life governed by sin. Therefore the penalty of sin is death. Thus the death penalty passed upon all Adam's race. That all have come under the evil principle of sin is proved by the fact that all have sinned. The bad fruit shows the character of the tree. So the Apostle says, "Death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned".

It is written concerning man, "The wages of sin is death." We know from Scripture that on man* death has two parts: there is, 1st, the death of the body, when the mortal life ceases to animate it; and there is, 2ndly, hereafter, the second death. Moral death (as men speak) is sin indwelling. To touch a certain tree in Eden was the expression of man's independence toward God. I can think with awe and dread of the touching it, without sin or moral death; but when the will to touch it was once formed, there was sin; and when Eve had touched it, there was moral death. The judgment of this sin was death of the body, and after that the judgment and second death, of the whole race who might descend from Adam and Eve.

The word death is used in three ways. It expresses: First, Separation morally from God through sin. Second, Separation of the body from the soul and spirit. Third, Eternal separation from God. In no case does it mean annihilation.

First by understanding what death is. It is not extinction of being. No reconciliation would be possible if that were the case. Death is separation: primarily from God Himself the source of all life and happiness; secondarily the dissolution of man's composite estate, the separation of spirit and soul from the body.