Context No. 3526 of 4322 · Romans

Romans 6:19-23: in context

19I speak in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh; for as you presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to wickedness upon wickedness, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness for sanctification. 20For when you were servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. 21What fruit then did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life. 23For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Paul lays out a stark contrast between two masters and two outcomes. Once you were slaves of sin, he says, and what fruit did that bear? Things you are now ashamed of, and the end of them is death. But now, set free from sin and bound to God, the fruit is sanctification, and its end is eternal life.

And he sums it all up in one of Scripture's clearest sentences: the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Notice the careful difference in his words. Sin pays wages, what we earn and truly deserve, and those wages are death. But eternal life is not wages at all; it is a free gift, wholly unearned, given in Christ. We earn death by our sin; we receive life by God's grace. No one deserves eternal life; it is pure gift from beginning to end. And the question set before us is simply which master we will serve, and therefore which end we will come to.

Am I living as one set free to serve God and receive his free gift of eternal life, rather than earning the wages of sin, which is death?

Sources

Romans 6:23: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."
Romans 6:22: "But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification, and the result of eternal life."
Romans 6:21: "For the end of those things is death."