This is my second study on Romans 6.23. It is less technical and more fluid than the first one, and emphasizes the end that man is coming to as his ‘future,’ a future that will have no end, and that, once entered upon, will be as unalterable as it was inevitable. This study is not a vain repetition of the first one on the same verse, though its deductions and conclusions, because tethered to theology, are indistinguishable.
“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23.)
What is the future of man? With the Bible for our Seer, it is possible to foresee the future. In few words, I will attempt to answer this question from the Bible. Where discoveries and inventions are concerned, what man will accomplish on earth is hard to tell. Hundreds of years ago it would have seemed like magic to produce an image of a man suspended in time (photos), to fly above oceans and mountains in tubes (jets), to hear voices in real time from a thousand miles away (phones), to see a man move around on a screen (television), to see the same in real time (live streaming), to send messages across the world that are immediately received (emails), to carry whole libraries in our pockets (thumb drives), to have surgery done on an infant in the womb, to have power enough to exterminate the human race (the atomic bomb), or to see a man walk on the face of the moon. But no matter what man will make his future on earth to be, he cannot remain on earth for long to experience it, for each man must soon die. That sentence is irrevocable. Cryogenics will not reverse it, and reincarnation will not supply a new body for our soul. Eastern religion and Western science must both fail on account of their ignorance and the power of God’s curse for sin. Neither East nor West can, or will, put man on a path that will subvert what ‘the Judge of all the earth’ (Genesis 18.25) has decreed. Man has been dying since the time of Adam; he will continue to die until the end of time; and his body will stay dead until the resurrection. No matter how much a man hates and fears to die, he dies anyway. His spirit cannot resist his appointed hour. When a man dies, his spirit leaves his body. This event begins the everlasting future of man, whether he likes it or not and whether he is ready for it or not. His spirit, which is the essence of his life, cannot be willed to perpetually dwell inside his body. God will not suffer that to happen. When the spirit is called back by God, life leaves the body, and physical death occurs. What happens then?
What is man’s future? What happens after death? What then? There is a negative future that each person, even from the womb, begins to irresistibly move toward; and there is only one alternative to it. These two futures are summed up for us in one brief verse: “For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 6.23.) This is perhaps the most compacted statement of vital information in the whole corpus of literature. A more serious ‘diverb,’ furthermore (a proverb in which a contrast is set forth), will not be found in any book anywhere. No verse, even in the Bible itself, contains more compression of saving truth than we find written here. The assertion is that death happens because of sin and that eternal life can happen by the gift of God through Jesus Christ. This gift does not preclude man from dying physically, as we all know. It is offered to save us from a more ominous death—what the Bible calls ‘the second death’ (Revelation 21.8.) The second death is an everlasting death in a lake of fire; the second death is an always-dying but never-ending death. The future of man is this death. The alternative future is eternal life, which may be received as God’s gift ‘through Jesus Christ our Lord.’
There may be several levels in this verse, because of the comprehensive meaning of the word ‘death’: spiritual, physical, and eternal. I fix on death as eternal, because: (1) The last words of Romans 6.22, ‘the end everlasting life,’ introduce verse 23 to us; and verse 23 is given to preach the end that is the opposite of that. Therefore the ‘death’ that is mentioned in 6.23 must be as everlasting as the ‘life’ that is mentioned in 6.22. (2) In Romans 6.23 the two possible ends of man are contrasted. ‘The wages of sin is death.’ Because of a divine curse, this is man’s future; this is his future by default. ‘But the gift of God is eternal life.’ This is the exception; this is the future that a sinner may obtain by ‘the gift of God.’ Because ‘death’ is presented in parallel with ‘eternal life,’ we are meant to be mindful of the eternal duration of each. There is a life to everlasting; and there is its contrary: ‘everlasting destruction’ (2 Thessalonians. 1.9.) There are two sequences in our verse: sin and death; gift and life. Then there is the Mediator, Jesus Christ, through whom the good future is received in exchange for the miserable one, life in exchange for death.
Only the grace of God can cause a condemned man to receive eternal life in place of the appalling future that he is speedily and heedlessly on his way to experiencing. But the grace of God operates through knowledge. More perfect knowledge of man’s future may be used by the Holy Spirit to induce a sinner to turn to God for eternal life through faith in Christ. Romans 6.23 may be divided into five parts. What better use of time can there be than to briefly consider these five parts one by one?
