The Wages of Sin Is Death, but the Gift of God Is Eternal Life (Romans 6:22–7:2)

Rom. 6:22. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, you have your fruit to holiness, and the end everlasting life.

“But now” – having come out of that disastrous sinful state, having rejected sin and hated it, having loved righteousness and God, the source of righteousness, and having surrendered yourselves wholly to this new manner of life, as slaves surrender themselves to masters: “now you have your fruit to holiness”. Sin brought shame, debased, and perverted your nature, but righteousness, or rather God who has brought you to righteousness and keeps you in it, sanctifies your nature, brings it to a holy, pure, and unharmed state. You have set foot on the path to this bright state, and if you remain faithful to the decision you have made – to hate sin always and in all things and to love only righteousness, or in other words, if you continually enslave all the members of soul and body to righteousness as you formerly enslaved them to sin, you will surely attain it. If you preserve yourselves in this saving disposition until the end of life, you will pass into the other life holy and pure and begin to enjoy there unending bliss. The end of a holy life in Christ Jesus is eternal life, all-blessed. Judge that this shall be so by what you have already obtained: you have holiness. It is a pledge and foretaste of eternal blessedness. Having this in mind, can you grow weak in hatred of sin and in love of righteousness?

Holy Chrysostom says: “The fruit of the former state is shame; but the fruit of the present state is holiness. But where there is holiness, there is much hope. The end of the former state is death, but the end of the present is eternal life. Do you notice that the Apostle indicates one thing as given and another as awaited? But by what is given we are assured of what is awaited; by holiness we are assured of life (eternal-blessed). And lest you could say that everything is merely awaited, the Apostle proves that you have already reaped fruits here as well. First, you have been freed from vice and from those evil works which the very remembrance of fills you with shame; second, you have enslaved yourselves to righteousness; third, you have obtained holiness; fourth, you have gained life – and not temporal but eternal life. Yet despite all this, says the Apostle, serve God in at least the same measure as you served sin. Despite the fact that the new Master is more excellent and there is a great difference both in the very service and in the rewards for which you serve, I demand nothing more of you.”

Above the Apostle said: “being made free from sin, you became servants of righteousness”; but here he says: “being made free from sin, and become servants to God” – thereby showing that slavery to righteousness is slavery to God, as he taught above when he said that you must give your members “as instruments of righteousness to God” (6:13). Thus the Apostle teaches us that we must not stop at righteousness alone, but through it extend ourselves to God as the ultimate end. There are philosophers who think they can build good morality without God and faith in him. Follow conscience – and that is all. It is true that we ought to follow conscience, but why? Because it reveals God’s will to us. God has placed conscience in creation itself so that it might stand for his holy will. Therefore we see that as soon as conscience realizes that something or other is the law of God’s righteousness, it gives man no peace until it compels him to act according to this law. Such is the constitution of conscience. But even in its action it always depends on what kind of relation a man has toward God. He who remembers God and has fear of God has a strong conscience; but he who forgets God and loses fear of God has a weak conscience. So in our nature conscience is so united with God that without God it is itself little good for the purpose for which it exists in us. How then can good morality be founded on it alone?

There are other philosophers who sum up all their teaching on morals in the following brief proposition: believe in God and follow conscience. Fear of God together with conscience are mighty producers of good morality. And this is absolute truth; otherwise good morality cannot come into being. But how to awaken fear of God, how to raise conscience to a clear and full understanding of God’s will, and how, having understood this, to clothe the will with the power to steadfastly fulfill the promptings of conscience? These philosophers do not define and by themselves cannot define. All this is shown us by Christian revelation, and not only shown but brings us into a state of fear of God, knowledge of his holy will, and possession of the power to follow it. The first evangelical calling reveals itself in awakening fear of God and enlivening of conscience, which give birth to hatred of sin and love of righteousness, leading to the resolve to turn away from the one and cleave to the other. When this resolve is then sealed in baptism and receives the grace of God, the person coming forth from the font is already a mighty zealot of good works, ready rather to die than to violate in any way the holy will of God. This is the slavery to “God” of which the holy Paul speaks here, whose fruit is holiness. In saying “to God,” he means the reception of the whole ordering of our salvation by God in Jesus Christ, as he expresses shortly after, speaking of God’s giving in return for righteousness, that it will be in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Rom. 6:23. For the wages of sin is death: but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

“The wages of sin” – the same as above: “the fruit of sin,” – or its end and recompense for it. The Apostle employed such language because earlier he had portrayed sin in the form of a king. Sinners are therefore like the army of sin-king. As soldiers live on the royal allowance or pay, which is called wages, so sin-king also has his wages for his soldiers. What is it? Death. Blessed Theodoret writes: “Since sin formerly reigned and the Apostle named the poorly governed members as its instruments, it was appropriate to call the reward for sin ‘wages.’ And it is customary to call thus what is given to a soldier for his livelihood. For also in the Epistle to the Corinthians he says: ‘Who goes a warfare any time at his own charges?’ (1 Cor. 9:7).” In calling to himself the soldiers-sinners, he does not announce: come to me, serve under my banner and receive from me for this death. But with various seductive names and phantoms he covers both himself and the consequences of following him, so that he who rushes to him thinks he will be immersed in a sea of bliss. And this deception of sin is so great that, even seeing after each sin that such hope is false, sinners do not cease to hope that they will obtain this bliss. Only he who has managed to escape from this abyss of sin perceives that the wages of sin is death – soul death and bodily death and eternal death.

“But the gift of God is eternal life”. The king opposed to sin is righteousness, or the God of righteousness. He has his own soldiers – the workers of righteousness. One might expect the Apostle to say: the wages of righteousness, or the wages of God for righteousness; but he said: “the gift of God.” Why so? Because although eternal life will be the portion of those who served under the banner of righteousness and labored in its works, yet the recompense for it will not be in proportion to our righteousness but in proportion to the boundless goodness of God. Therefore it is more fitting to call it a gift rather than a reward for righteousness, although it will be given on the condition of righteousness. Moreover, the very ordering of eternal-blessed life, as well as the means to attain it, are gifts of God’s goodness. Here all is a gift of God. Blessed Theodoret writes: “Here, he said, not reward but gift, because eternal life is God’s gift. If anyone had attained the highest righteousness, eternal blessings would not be balanced by temporal labors.” Holy Chrysostom says: “Having said that death is the reward for sin, the Apostle did not preserve the same order when he began to speak of eternal life, and did not say: it is a reward for your merits – but: a gift of God – thereby giving to understand that we freed ourselves not by ourselves and received not a debt, not a reward, not recompense for labors, but rather all this is the work of goodness. And from this appears the excellence of grace; not only did it free us and improve our lot, but it did all this without our efforts and labors. It not only freed us but gave far more – it gave through the Son.”

“Through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Eternal life is the crown of the ordering of our salvation in the Lord Christ. But the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the Son of God made incarnate, is to us a gift of the goodness and love of God the all-good, who so loved the world that he even gave his only-begotten Son for us. Therefore eternal life is also God’s gift to us through him who was given before. The path to eternal life was closed, the door to it was locked. The first to pass this way and open the entrance was the Lord Jesus Christ, who passed by a new and living way and entered “within the veil.” After him now come there all who have believed in him and remained faithful to the laws of faith, as he himself promised that where he is, there also will his servant be.

d) Not to mix in Judaism (Rom. 7:1–6)

Having expounded all that has been said, the Apostle seems to hear the speech of a Jew addressed to him: “now, now – you are on our side. After all, the Law too demands only righteousness and holiness. Why then should we fall behind it?” Holy Paul responds: abandon the Law, brothers; it has already died for you, and you are free from it, just as a woman is free from obligations to a dead husband; and direct all your care to remaining faithful to the New Covenant, as a woman who has entered a new marriage after the death of the first husband ought to be faithful to the new husband. Explaining this, the Apostle both turns them away from the Law and does not weaken the obligations of believers toward holiness.

Rom. 7:1. Know you not, brethren, (for I speak to them that know the law,) that the law has dominion over a man as long as he lives?

The expression: “know you not” – indicates a direct connection of what follows with what precedes. Previously it was argued that believers ought no longer yield to sin but live holy and blameless, sustaining their resolve by consciousness of the harmful consequences of sin and the great benefits of holiness and righteousness. Therefore we must suppose that the subsequent discourse (Rom. 7:1–6) from the holy Apostle is directed to this purpose. Although he then begins to speak of the cessation of the Law and the termination of obligations to it, he does so in order to show that, having freed ourselves from the Law, we have not obtained freedom to be lawless; but we have entered into new obligations, have bound ourselves to live a new life according to the commandments of the Gospel, “that we should serve in newness of the spirit” (7:6). The Apostle’s aim is not to prove the cessation of the Law: he takes this truth as already proved – and only makes from it the necessary conclusion. He does this by comparing the obligation to the Law with the obligations of a wife to her husband. As long as the husband lives, the wife is bound to live with him; but when the husband dies, she is free to marry another and live with him; yet, having married another, she becomes bound by obligations equal to those before to the new husband. The same now applies to believers. They have died to the Law, and the Law has died to them: all obligations between them are ended. But, freed from the Law, they surrender themselves to another, to the Lord Jesus Christ risen from the dead. Therefore they are obliged to live for him alone, in his Spirit and in his will. This is the same truth as in the preceding chapter – on the obligations of faith: “reckon you also yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (6:11). That the Law stands here in place of sin is because to live under the Law, for the Apostle, is to live in the flesh with consciousness of the Law’s demands but without the power to fulfill them – that is, the same as living in sin. But he immediately transitions to this in this chapter.

The words: “brethren” – and: “(for I speak to them that know the law)” – are pleasing words to those he is addressing, in which, however, beyond courtesy is concealed an allusion to the fact that they cannot fail to agree with the conclusion which the Apostle is about to propose to them. For one addressed as knowing a certain proposition and accepting this designation will be ashamed not to agree with the direct conclusion from it.

“‘The law has dominion’ – rules, has authority, has binding force; ‘over a man,’ – “he did not say: over a husband or wife, but: over a man; for this name belongs to both” (holy Chrysostom). ‘As long as he lives’ – who? Man or Law? From these words it is not clear; but in what follows both the thought that the Law dies and the thought that man dies to the Law are expressed. Consequently, both can be understood here: whether the Law lives or man lives. There is reason to suppose that the Apostle intended to draw a twofold parallel with a twofold conclusion: whether the Law dies or man dies, the mutual obligations between them are ended. But he focuses on one side because from this the necessary conclusion follows more directly and quickly: ‘that she be married to another.’ Holy Chrysostom says: “Although he appears to speak of one thing, nevertheless he brings two arguments in support of what he says. The first argument is that a woman, by the death of her husband, is not subject to the law of marriage and is free to become the wife of another. The second argument is that in the present case not only the husband but also the wife dies, and therefore she enjoys a twofold freedom. For if she was freed by the death of the husband from his power, she became incomparably more free when she herself became dead. If one circumstance frees her from his power, much more is she free when both circumstances come together.” To make clear the words of holy Chrysostom, we must remember that the husband here means the Law, and the wife means the believers. The Husband – the Law – died because with the coming of Christ the Lord it ceased to be what it was. The Wife – the believers – died when they were buried with the Lord in baptism to death. And she became doubly free from the Law: on the one hand, because the husband ceased to be; on the other, because she herself died, yet in that death found new life, different from the former, in consequence of which, freed from the former obligations, she freely entered into new ones – ‘that she be married to another.’”

Rom. 7:2–3. For the woman which has an husband is bound by the law to her husband so long as he lives; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband. So then if, while her husband lives, she be married to another man, she shall be called an adulteress: but if her husband be dead, she is free from that law; so that she is no adulteress, though she be married to another man.

This provision of the law concerning a wife’s relation to her husband is clear in itself and requires no special remarks. But what should it signify in its application? Since the husband represents the Law here, and the wife represents those bound by the Law, the Apostle’s parabolic expression will convey: while the Law lives – that is, stands in force – so long are people subject to the Law obliged to obey it and live by its prescriptions; but when the Law dies – that is, ceases and loses its force – then those subject to it become free from its obligations, from obedience to it and following its prescriptions. Therefore, if those subject to the Law depart from it and submit to other rules while the Law is alive and has force, they are guilty before the Law and must be subject to its penalties, like a woman who gives herself to another while her husband lives. But if they surrender themselves to other rules after the Law has died, ceased, and lost its force, then they cannot be considered guilty before the Law or subject to its penalties: after the cessation of the Law they are free to submit to whatever they will, without becoming like an adulteress. Applying this to believers who have abandoned the Law and surrendered themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ through belief in him and submission to the new rules of life in his Spirit, it should have been said: so also you, brethren, ought to have obeyed the Law while it stood and had force. When it ceased and lost force, you became free from it and no obligation of it binds you. If you had departed from it while it was in force, you would have appeared as transgressors against it and would justly have been subject to punishment. But since you did this after the Law ceased and lost force, in departing from it you committed no transgression; for you were free to submit to the faith which you substituted for the Law. This is what should have been said. But the Apostle speaks otherwise and presents not the husband – not the Law – as dead, but the wife – that is, the believers (holy Chrysostom).