The End of Man: Death
Sin and Death
“For the wages of sin is death.” The ‘wages’ of sin implies that we work for sin. Sin is the work that earns its wages, which wages amount to death. In verse 17, it is pointed out that those in Rome ‘called saints’ (his name for them in 1.7) were formally ‘servants of sin.’ Death is earned by serving sin. Sinners are workers for sin and servants of sin.
One of the Old Testament definitions of ‘sin’ is to ‘miss.’ To sin is many things. To sin is at least this: to miss the mark, to fall short of God’s standard, to come shy of perfection, the corollary of which is to not be granted eternal life. Fallen man is like an archer aiming for the center of a target. The center of the target represents God’s standard of perfection. The prize offered for hitting the bull’s eye is eternal life. The penalty for not hitting it is death. “See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand” (Deuteronomy 32.39.) And so, “Sinners are the very mark that God will shoot at; they are his standing mark, and he never misses the mark” (Thomas Watson, Sermons of the Great Ejection, p. 156.) The sinner fails to hit the bull’s eye because he is imperfect; born in sin, he has an inherent inability to hit the mark. Maybe the best way of stating this inability is the way it is put in verse 23 of Romans 3: “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” It is difficult to glean much from what the concordance tells us the word ‘glory’ means in the New Testament. But in the Old Testament the word usually means ‘splendor’ or ‘magnificence.’ And we know that the meekest saint on earth in the time of Moses—Moses himself—could not approach the glory of God (Exodus 33.) The characteristic of ‘glory’ as far as sinners are concerned, is that it is unapproachable; and it is unapproachable because sinners are reproachable; they are scoundrels through and through. Nothing that sinners do is without taint of sin. The head of Moses shone because of a sideways glance at the ‘back parts’ of God’s ‘goodness,’ merely one attribute of God’s manifold glory. Moses had been blinded or worse had more of God been seen. Saul of Tarsus was blinded by ‘the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ (Acts 9; 2 Corinthians 4.6.) The Lord was then ‘dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto’ (1 Timothy 6.16.) The holy Moses could not look at one attribute of God directly; the unconverted Saul could not look at the glorified Lord without injury. Sinners, whether saved or not, cannot approach the divine glory on their own initiative; neither can they do so with impunity. Their very approach is a sin. All sin involves transgression against divine majesty. “Sin is an injury to God. It violates his laws. Here is crimen laesae majestatis (grievous high treason)” (Thomas Watson, The Doctrine of Repentance, p. 107.) No one comes to God without sin because no one can come to God without being a sinner. This is why God must be approached through the Sin-Bearer, the Lord Jesus Christ, who cloaks repenting souls with the protection of his very own righteousness. Though Jesus dwells in unapproachable light, he is approachable through trust in his person and sacrifice, his life and death. The Creator must be got to through the Son; then the Creator becomes our Father.
When it becomes known to us that sin is sin only because of who our Creator is in comparison with it, our sins are rightly perceived as being against divine holiness. So when David confessed to committing adultery and murdering the husband of the woman that he had lain with, he exclaimed, “Against thee [God], thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight” (Psalm 51.4.) Sin, regardless of who commits it and to whom it is directed, is primarily against God. Immediately following this verse we learn that man is more than a sinner. David continues, “Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Man the sinner is sinful from the start. Man begins his life in sin. Sin is inherited. Relating men to Adam, their earliest ancestor, Paul says that ‘by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners’ (Romans 5.19.) The inheritance of sin, along with its guilt, stretches all the way back to the first man.
Whatever is contrary to the law of God is sin. This includes the moral law as revealed in the Bible (Romans 7.7) and the law which God has written in our hearts (Romans 2.15), which is there called ‘the work of the law.’ Ignorance of the law is no excuse because this ignorance does not wholly exist. Each sinner has been convicted of wrongs that he has done. This conviction has been the work of God’s law on his conscience. It is a hazardous thing to suppress this conviction because a violated conscience may result in a seared conscience that will no longer respond to conviction, which conviction a sinner needs to lead him to repentance and life. Sin is against the law; it is a work that earns its wages; and these wages are death.
Sin is both internal and external. It dwells inside of us and it manifests in motion. The Bible speaks of ‘sin that dwelleth in me’ (Romans 7.17) and ‘the motions of sins’ that work in our members ‘to bring forth fruit unto death’ (Romans 7.5.) In this verse the sinner is identified as being ‘in the flesh.’ The works of the flesh are sinful. These works are those that are summarized in Galatians 5.19-21, including such popular sins as envy, strife, carnal behavior, murders, drunkenness, and witchcraft (which comprehends drug use.) Some things are sins and we do not even realize it. Unbelief is a sin (John 16.9.) So to not believe in the Son, whose sacrifice may cleanse our sin, is itself a sin. Neglecting to do the good that we know that we ought to do is a sin as well (James 4.17.) And we sin by thought, word, and deed; we are infected in every part of our person. “Now the law of God requires a complete conformity to its precepts in our acts and in the whole frame and state of our minds, and where this is not found, condemns us as sinners. Experience, as well as the word of God, teaches that man’s mind in its unrenewed condition, instead of being illumined with the rays of truth, is replete with horrible darkness; that his will is turned in aversion from God and indulges enmity towards him; that the affections are perverse; and that in all the powers there is a horrible ataxia (disorder) and depravation so far as relates to spiritual things” (Princeton Versus the New Divinity, p. 97.)
Sin is imperfection; it is inherited; it runs through us like a virus; it involves us in guilt; it is done by commission and omission; it is done through words, deeds, and thoughts; it is done primarily against God; it is against his law; it includes numerous works of the flesh that are offensive to God; not believing on Jesus is a sin; apathy is a sin; neutrality is a sin; sin dwells in us and goes out from us; sin is the evil that men do; innate sinfulness is what causes man to miss the mark of God’s holiness. ‘The wages of sin is death.’
It is highly probable that each sin can be classified under one of three categories: ‘the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life’ (1 John. 2.16.) Sins through the flesh, the eyes, and pride may each be noticed in the sin of Eve in the Garden of Eden, recorded in Genesis 3.6. Eve saw that the tree was ‘good for food’: the flesh; she saw that it was ‘pleasant’: the eyes; she ‘desired’ it to be the mean of making her ‘wise’: pride. She was not envious, earthy, and proud before she sinned, of course; but she opened the gate to all three by eating what she had been forbidden to eat.
Man, made in the image of God, has been affected by sin in every aspect of his person. Man is a rebel. Rebels do rebellious things. For this reason the world is a risky and dreadful place in which to live. Man acts wickedly because of sin; and though the world has become a fearful place to dwell in through his sin, he continues to work for sin’s wages. He sins because it is his corrupt nature to do so. And he does not like to be reminded of being a sinner who sins. Therefore he tends to not cultivate this true knowledge of himself as a sinner in rebellion against his Maker. Man today has less knowledge and conviction of sin than he used to have. The distinction between good and evil is largely in the past now. For instance, I once witnessed a man walk through a supermarket in his long underwear. Nobody but myself and the woman I was with seemed to notice. And I recently remarked to one of my relatives, “Are you wearing nothing but underwear in public?” He answered in the affirmative and was bewildered when I told him that it was wrong to do so. The proverbial dream in which a person realizes with horror that he is naked in a public place is now only shameful in the subconscious; that is to say, men shamelessly do in public what they are ashamed of in dreams. This is where man is at. He has been trivializing sin for so long that his conscience is hardly pricked.
To sell his goods, the merchant uses sin as a gloss in his advertisements. To boost his ‘bad boy’ image, the young man screws a plate on his truck that reads, ‘Evil, Wicked, Mean, and Nasty.’ The schoolgirl has sexual relations because she is afraid of being teased for being a virgin. The boy exaggerates his own sexual exploits because a boy is not respected among his peers unless he is perceived as a deviant who uses girls to satisfy his urges. Sin is viewed as a virtue in societies veering toward hell.
Man underestimates sin or denies that he does it. God emphasizes sin and he particularizes it. The word ‘sin’ occurs about three times more often in the Old Testament than does the word ‘love’; and it is not far surpassed by the word ‘love’ in the New Testament. The word ‘sin’ occurs over 100 times in the New Testament, over 40 times in Romans alone, and in 16 of the 23 verses of chapter 6. Yes, it is easy to find another word for love, such as ‘charity’; but it is just as easy to find another word for sin, such as ‘iniquity.’ The word ‘charity’ occurs in about 30 verses in the Bible, while ‘iniquity’ occurs over 250 times. Compare also, how many times the words ‘sinful’—‘sinned’—sinneth’—‘sinner’—‘sinners’—and ‘sins’ occur in the Bible against the words ‘loved’—‘lovest’—‘loveth’—‘loving’—‘lovingkindness’ and ‘lovingkindnesses.’ The ‘sin’ words make a longer list by far than the ‘love’ words. Moreover, the ‘love’ words often have to do with the love of God, not of man; while the ‘sin’ words are laid to man’s account every single time except when laid to the account of fallen angels, which is only occasionally done. When sins are said to be laid on Jesus Christ, it goes without saying that they are not his own. Anyone who has read the Bible will have noticed that evil deeds predominate over charitable ones and that a sinful disposition is noticeable even among the holiest of saints—even Noah and Moses. Sin is a major theme throughout the Bible because sin is against God; and God, through his infallible word, would remind us of that. Sin is the reason that man needs a Saviour. Death exists because of sin, as does the act of sacrifice. Sin is the work of man that earns its wages, wages that merit death. And Jesus Christ ‘died unto sin’ to save man from this horrible end. Every man has earned the wages of sin. Every man has earned death by sin. It is self-evident that we all have gone astray—that we all have missed the mark. And the Scriptures teach it.
We have yet to meet a man who has not sinned. But there are proud persons among us who deny the doctrine. Any man who claims that he is not created by a higher being will deny the doctrine of sin because sin should be reckoned sin only if God exists. If God did not create man, man is not accountable to any law that is higher than the one that he frames himself. If man is a mere animal, the bad things that he does, even the bad things committed against his own law, are not sins, only acts emerging from the animal instinct that he has yet to evolve from. Animals do not sin. If they do, cats need be scolded for teasing mice; coyotes for scaring rabbits; and wolves for coveting sheep. Man is the only creature on earth who sins against his Creator.
The apostle Paul has something to say to persons who deny creation, and who thereby deny that they have sinned. The Scriptures affirm that creation is a visible reality that does not need to be proven. “For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1.20.) The earth as being the creation of God is assumed because God’s wisdom, goodness, and power are manifest in it. Persons who deny creation deny their Creator, and God calls them such names as ‘fools’ and ‘unrighteous men’ who suppress the truth. Anyone who has denied the plain truth of creation has sinned against God by denying the visible evidence of his existence.
The teaching of Evolution, because of its presentation of man as nothing but an evolving animal, is deluding people into assuming that the doctrine of sin is a myth dreamed up by man. For instance, during a conversation on the subject of sin, a woman to whom I was speaking asked the man with whom she was living the following question, “I don’t sin, do I?” That was quite a rhetorical denial from a woman who, while married to one man, was living in fornication with another. People do not want to believe that sin is real or wrong. But when they are free from the distractions of the world, their own conscience convicts them of sin, and they find it difficult to suppress the sense that they are accountable to a higher power. This is particularly evident when they find themselves in the throes of calamity. When calamity disturbs their tranquility, sinners tilt their heads upward, and cry, “Why me?! Why me?!” They don’t ask that question when eating delicious apples from the tree that God grew in their garden. They ask it, though, when God blows their garden away in a tornado.
In chapter 2 of Romans, the apostle broadens his identification of those who have sinned, thereby including every single person. He says, “For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law” (Romans 2.12.) Reference is here made to the Jew and Gentile of verse 9, which categories encapsulate everyone. Notice that the Jew can be judged by the law (as revealed in the Old Testament) and the non-Jew can be judged without it. How can this be? The non-Jew who is without the law can be judged by another law, the light of nature; and this law convicts the sinner through the conscience that God has placed inside each man (verse 15.) So the lawbreakers are those who have the written law of God and those who do not have it. The lawbreakers are the religious and the non-religious: every theist, polytheist, pantheist, and atheist; every aristocrat and every barbarian; every person from every class and caste around the world. No one is exempt. If a man has sinned against the Old Testament, he has sinned; if he has sinned against his conscience, he is guilty as well. That is the apostle’s teaching.
Man does not have it in him to not commit sin. Because of the marred nature inherited from Adam, man is doomed to stray from the moment of conception (Psalm 51.5) and therefore is born in sin. Each man yields to his carnal nature; and through this weakness he breaks the law. We know this, for it is written, “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3.23.) The context indicates that the subjects involved are the Jews and Gentiles of verse 9, of chapter 3 this time. Therefore, all Jews and non-Jews have sinned. This does not leave much room for a belief that there are persons who have not sinned. It does not say, “For all have sinned, except Abraham and Moses; or except Peter, Paul, and John; or except Billy Graham and Mother Theresa; or even except Mary the Mother of God.” It simply says, “All have sinned.”
Man can point to no one and say that that man is not a sinner. Man can point to no one who has not earned the wages of sin, which is death. When a man dies and stays dead, it is because of sin: because he has earned it. Only Jesus Christ could overcome death because he did not die for his own sins; and, being God in the flesh, he had power over death. He did not earn the wages of sin. He was able to overcome death, in part, because he did not earn it. Every man except him has sinned and earned sin’s wages, which is death.
“For the wages of sin is death.” Death is the wages we earn by working for sin. Romans 5.12 gives a historical summary of death: “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Sin and death, it seems, are never far from one another in the Scriptures. It is because death is the consequence of disobedience. The association between sin and death is summarized in three words in the verse above: ‘death by sin.’
Death is associated with sin from the first warning to the last judgment. Death is first mentioned in Genesis as a warning of the consequence of disobeying God. Death is mentioned for the last time in Revelation to identify the end that unbelieving, impenitent souls must come to: ‘the second death.’ The second death is the death that we may be delivered from through faith in Jesus Christ. It is the second death that is contrasted with eternal life in Romans 6.23. The Bible has much to say about the end of man, which is a future encounter with death.
Death is a cardinal subject in the Bible. The words ‘dead’ and ‘death’ occur more often in the Book of Romans than they do in the book of Revelation even, where the wrath of God is copiously poured out. Death, in one form or another, occurs in 15 out of 23 verses of Romans 6. There are two stages of death on earth: (1) Man, because of sin, is spiritually dead (1 John 3.14); (2) then man dies physically. Corresponding to the stages, there are two separations involved: (1) Because of sin, man is separated from God; that is, fellowship with God is broken; (2) when man dies physically, his spirit separates from his body (Ecclesiastes 3.20, 21.) Man must be made spiritually alive so that when he dies his spirit will go to heaven instead of hell; in other words, he must be born again. He who is born twice dies once; he who is born once dies twice. He suffers ‘the second death,’ about which, more below.
The spiritual deadness of man is an unbridgeable canyon separating man from God. This lifeless condition is inherited from Adam. It is because of this deadness—this paralyzing apathy and alienation—that man thinks evil thoughts without dread and then puts these evil thoughts into practice. When Adam and Eve sinned against God, the wages of sin became death by the word of God. Adam and Eve died spiritually and became separated from God. Then, before they had an opportunity to take and eat fruit from the tree of life and render their disunity with God a certainty forever, God ejected Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Subsequent to that, physical death occurred: the separation of body from spirit. And so we read in Genesis, “And all the days that Adam lived were nine hundred and thirty years: and he died” (Genesis 5.5.)
We hear much about the impact of death upon loved ones. But what impact has death upon God? The assertion that God is impacted, in some way, by death, is not cancelled out by the fact that God does not change, and is, because of his immutability, never less than perfectly serene no matter what his creatures do against his holy name. God’s character is imperfectly comprehensible and incompletely revealed. God does not change; but there is no reason why an inscrutable God cannot be changelessly serene but also changeably intense, for intensity is simply the expression of character. Regardless, theology that admits no paradox is cold where the Scriptures are warm. When the LORD was ‘grieved at his heart’ because of man’s ‘great wickedness’ (Genesis 6), he was perfectly serene and sincerely grieved at the same time, even though time itself, compared with God’s eternality, must be, to us, a square peg to a round hole. The LORD was grieved in that instance and in numerous others; the Holy Spirit is often grieved and quenched; and the Bible tells us that ‘Jesus wept.’ It is better for us to be impressed by these revelations than to have them nullified by the parries of philosophical theology. So what impact does death have upon God? Each time a person dies, God is reminded of the magnitude of man’s disobedience. He is reminded of it each time a body separates from a soul. The body that God knit together was created to be animated by a soul, which soul, because of sin and sentence, separates from its body. This is why, at the resurrection of the just and the unjust, each soul will be reunited with the body it once dwelled in. And what impact has the spiritual death of man upon God? God is reminded of broken fellowship each time some part of his law is broken. Is there even one day in a man’s life when he does not break one of the Ten Commandments? Do we not bear false witness, for example, each and every day to some degree? How long can we listen to the evening news before this sin is committed by the one telling the news? Bearing false witness is bad news; and no one is guiltier of that sin than the reporter of news. God bears with all this false witnessing, though, and gives space to repent. Each time a woman conceives, he is reminded that a baby will be born in sin, and that this babe will grow up to break his commandments continually. But God has allowed this rebellion to take place billions of times. The longsuffering of God is one of the most unsung of his attributes. But man must, in the end, die. He must, because he is a sinner. Just as the moth cannot but fly crookedly, the sinner cannot but sin recklessly; and like a moth to an electric zapper, the sinner flies naturally toward death and hell. The impact upon two Persons of the Trinity while the Third was nailed to a cross is an awesome gorge, no doubt, that no creature can ever see the bottom of. This unfathomable impact was the cost of dealing the death blow to death and to channeling a river of life around hell and into heaven. There is almost nothing more beneficial to meditate on than Death. If we do it often enough, in the proper frame of mind, and with the right Word, it will lead us to Life.
We push the subject of death aside; but then we obsess over it. We suppress thoughts of our own demise, but curiously look on at the demise of others. We make a valiant effort to ward off the cessation of vital functions even while we are aware that physical death is an appointment that we are powerless to postpone. The days of each man are settled, no matter if one man thinks that juicing will give him some more, no matter if another man thinks to extend them by walking after each meal. “Seeing his days are determined” (Job 14.5.)
Physical death and alienation from God would not matter as much if man were made only of dust and were therefore destined for annihilation. But man will live forever in the spirit that God breathed into him. We might be able to ignore our imminent demise if we were not conscious of our immaterial essence, which immateriality is everlasting. The fact that we are prompted to wonder what happens after death is a convincing argument for something beyond.
What happens when spiritually dead man dies physically? He suffers two more stages of death: (1) his spirit rises from his dead body and it goes to hell (Luke 16.26); (2) at the appointed time, his body is resurrected, reunited with his spirit, and he goes before God to be finally judged and put away (Revelation 20.13.) Corresponding to the stages, there are two separations involved: (1) the reprobate spirit is temporarily set apart (in hell) from redeemed spirits that are safe (in heaven) with the Lord (2); the spirit, with its body, after the judgment and because of it, is finally and eternally separated from all goodness. This is ‘the second death.’
Therefore, hell is only reservation for judgment. The end of man does not end with hell. This is one of the most shocking facts in the whole Bible. At the judgment before the great white throne, the wages that were earned on earth are fully paid; in other words: it’s payback time for what we have done and who we are. Here is a partial description of what takes place: “And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire” (Revelation 20. 13-15.) The end of sinful man is an everlasting dip in liquid fire.
Even hell, that place of doom and torment, is cast into a place more terrible than itself. Sinners who go with hell into the lake of fire will be in the same place as the devil, and will be tormented forever and ever (Revelation 20.10.) They will be tormented before the holy angels, the perfected saints, and the Lamb of God. They will receive no rest (Revelation 14.10, 11.) It is a place of ‘outer darkness’ and of ‘weeping and gnashing of teeth’ (Matthew 25.30.) The second death is a continual conscious torment. These are the wages of sin that accrue forever to a person’s account. This is the end of man: death. This is the end of man without God on his side.
An old proverb among the Dutch: “Look what the bell is without the clapper, such are good laws and judgments without due execution” (Samuel Ward, Sermons, p. 129.) This is much the case with us today. We have laws; and many of them are good. But our politicians and judges prefer lawlessness to enforcement. ‘Soft on crime’ is their lawless law; this is why the bells of legislation are often silent when they should be ringing. Almighty God will be harder on sin than we are soft on crime. The hard clapper of God’s law will make the bell of judgment clap. Laws are for restraining sin. But with ideological teeth our representatives grind good laws into powder. How many sins and crimes could be prevented, along with their everlasting punishments, if laws were enforced? Negligent representatives will be made to grind for sin before long. Teeth made to endure will be made to endlessly gnaw. “And they gnawed their tongues for pain” (Revelation 16.10.)
