For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Romans 6:23
How do you hear these words of Paul? Is he describing two things we might receive from God, death for our sins or eternal life because we believe in Christ? If this what we hear, then we need to amend Paul’s words to say “for the wages of God for sin is death . . .” which is obviously not what Paul says. Death is not what God gives us, not for sin or anything else. God, who is life, only gives life. I am not merely asserting a semantic distinction with barely any real difference. Realizing that God is not the source of death, physical or spiritual, is crucial to truly understanding the good news.
In this passage Paul personifies sin as a cruel tyranny who pays us with death. If we serve sin, then we receive death from sin as the reward for being imprisoned in his miserable servitude. Paul is contrasting what God gives with what sin gives, not two things which come from God.
Opponents must be gently instructed, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will. 2 Timothy 2:25-26
Paul has a full and robust understanding of the forces of evil, which sometimes is diminished in modern Christianity as if such belief would imply a weakness on God’s part. As Paul sees it, we are taken captive by Satan so that his will becomes ours. We are prisoners bound to die. This problem stretches back to the dawn of humanity.
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned. Romans 5:12
Death is not what God created or willed, even as darkness was not created by God, but rather pierced by the coming of Life-Light (John 1:4-5). Death is not God’s punishment for sin, but sin’s punishment for sin about which God warns us. In fact, death is clearly identified as the devil’s power, not God’s.
Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil— and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. Hebrews 2:14-15
The devil holds and uses the power of death against us. He lures us into sin and then He claims us as his, and death is the end for us. The author of Hebrews is pointing to the incarnation, that God became one of us to break the power of Satan. Because Jesus defeated Satan and the power of sin and death, we are now free from death and the fear of it.
I hear too often, and myself once thought, that God would give me either life or death. If I would believe in Jesus, God would forgive my sins. But if I did not, God would give me death. I mistook as the work of God that which is the power of the devil and from sin itself. Thinking that God exercises the power of the devil can obviously mess you up theologically, and too many of us are. It is hard for the news to be good if God is saving me from his punishment, rather than from sin’s wages and the devil’s slavery.
When the story is told well, through sin we became slaves of Satan, the one who holds the power of death. Satan demands that I die for my sin because he owns me. He is not about to be merciful and let me go. The death of Jesus on the cross breaks the power of the devil and sets me free. This is the good news of the cross, that God himself has defeated sin and death, as only God could.
For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. Romans 6:9
In Christ, death has no power over us either. We can joyfully ask with Paul, “O Death where is your victory? O Death where is your sting?” (1 Corinthians 15:55).These are no more because God has triumphed and set us free. The devil’s wages is death, but God’s free gift is life eternal!
Leave a Reply