CRITICAL NOTES
Romans 6:23.—Eternal life is not like wages due for service to God, as death is wages due for service to sin. Eternal life is a donative or free gift of God.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Romans 6:22-23
Four stages in the Christian’s life.—The essentials of the Christian’s course are marked out for us in this short passage. We here get, as it were, a bird’s-eye view of all that is needful from the time of conversion to the period of entrance upon the blessing of everlasting life. We begin with the great deliverance, we pass on to the great change, we see the Christian growing in meetness for the inheritance of the saints in light, and then when the earthly trials and conflicts are over we see him passing a disciplined soul across the narrow stream of death into the unfading beauties of that life which is everlasting. The soul that passes through the experiences here laid down has nothing to fear, and is blessed indeed. Let us seek to understand its teaching. Four points claim our attention: the gracious deliverance, the glorious change, the blessed result, the happy termination.
I. The gracious deliverance.—It was a gracious deliverance when Noah and his sons were saved by means of the ark. Lot was rescued from the burning cities; the children of Israel were brought forth from the land of Egyptian bondage; the man-slayer found asylum in the city of refuge from the avenger of blood; David escaped the javelin thrown by the frenzied Saul; Daniel came forth from the lions’ den uninjured; and the three Hebrew children marched in triumph from the furnace without having upon them so much as the smell of fire. But still more gracious is that deliverance when the soul is made free from sin. It is a deliverance from the accusation of sin. When we sin we depart knowingly from the rule of duty, and that departure becomes a voice of reproof and of accusation. Every sin which a man commits becomes to that man an accuser, unless he has become hardened, and then hereafter those stifled voices of his sins will speak in trumpet tones to the unutterable dismay of his spirit. Terrible is it for the man with a tender conscience and a sensitive nature to hear within the accusing voice of his past sins. And great rejoicing is heard in every house and in every street of the town of Mansoul when the man is set free from sin. It is a deliverance from the penalty of sin. “The wages of sin is death.” “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” Death physical, intellectual, and moral is the penalty of sin. Sin has a killing power. It touches, withers, and destroys the nobler parts of man’s nature, so that the man by sin is dead while he lives. Gracious deliverance it is to be set free from sin’s penalty, to be raised from death to life. It is a deliverance from the tyranny of sin. Sin is a tyrant that grips and holds his victims with an iron hand, and keeps them grinding with remorseless cruelty at the wheel of oppression. Many of sin’s victims see the tyranny and long to be set free. They see the awful ruin to which they are being led, but cannot escape. They cannot escape except by the power of divine grace. It is thus alone that they can be set free from sin. It is a gracious deliverance, for it had a gracious origin. “By grace are ye saved.” For it is by a gracious Author,—the gracious method of the gospel plan of salvation. It is by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. “Neither is there salvation in any other; for there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.” Oh that men would believe in Jesus Christ!
II. A glorious change.—It was a glorious change when Joseph passed from the prison cell to be the second ruler in Egypt. David passed from the sheepcote to the splendour of Israel’s throne; Mordecai was taken to the king’s gate, and placed on the king’s horse, and clothed in royal apparel, and the proclamation was heard, “Thus shall it be done unto the man whom the king delighteth to honour.” But not so glorious as when the slaves of sin become the servants of God. It is a noble service. By what rules shall we measure the nobility of a service? Shall we speak of the greatness of the being who is served, the extent of his dominions, and the number and exalted character of his servants? Thus this service transcends, eclipses, any other form of service. We cannot grasp the greatness of this Being, and must content ourselves with the proceeding of the French preacher who, when called upon to preach on the occasion of the monarch’s death, exclaimed amid breathless silence, “God alone is great.” Vast are the numbers of His servants. The winds and the waves obey His will. The wild beasts of the forest, the cattle on the thousand hills, the myriad songsters of earth’s groves, the birds of beautiful plumage, are His servants. But higher still, for men and angels are His servants; and men the noblest and sublimest earth can boast. Men of giant intellect, of heroic natures, of wondrous spirituality, are God’s servants. We see them passing the great highway of time, and as the goodly procession passes along our souls are thrilled with conflicting emotions of gladness and of intense admiration, and we ask, Is it possible that we are to be permitted to follow in this glorious train? We may here claim all men and all women as the servants of God; but remember that He has three kinds of servants—some are slaves, and serve on the principle of fear; others are hirelings, and serve for the sake of the wages; but the best are sons, and serve under the influence of love. It is the loving service that is the noblest, that is the most satisfactory, and that is the most abiding. What is the service you render? The service of love is the only one which God will graciously accept. May God baptise with the spirit of love!
III. The blessed result.—“Ye have your fruit unto holiness”; or, “Ye have your fruit unto sanctification.” God places trees in His garden not for mere ornament but for use. God does not despise the ornamental; but God’s ornamental things are useful things as well. God is a painter the wondrous combination of whose colours no human painter has ever faintly shadowed forth, an architect whose mighty structures dwarf the proudest temples and palaces of earth, a musician whose lofty strains make the loftiest of human harmonies seem poor and feeble. If we desire to see beauty, let us go, not to the art galleries of men, but to the art galleries of God—not art galleries, but nature galleries, for God’s rich nature is transcendent in beauty. A Christian should be an ornamental tree and a fruit-bearing tree. Are not the most fruitful trees the most beautiful? What can equal the delicate tinting and the rich colouring of the spring blossoming of the fruitful tree? What beauty is there in the Christian who bears fruit unto sanctification! We take it that a truly sanctified man is both a beautiful man and a useful man. The children of this world may scoff at the saint; but there is, after all, a deep inward respect for those who live godly, righteous, and sober lives The sanctified ones are the salt of the earth. The sanctified ones are the truly useful and the truly ornamental ones of the world. A Church all of whose members bring forth fruit unto sanctification is a Church which will attract by its loveliness. A kingdom the greater part of whose subjects bring forth fruit unto sanctification is a kingdom whose foundations are strong and whose perpetual glory is secured. Bring forth fruit unto sanctification; begin it in the way of duty, and by-and-by duty will become a pleasure. Learning to read is unpleasant to the child; but in after-time the reading of good books becomes not only the necessity but the pleasure of intellectual existence. In the beginning of the divine life we are but as children learning to read; but in after-time we find the greatest delight in keeping the commandments of God. Bring forth fruit unto your own sanctification, for your own good as well as for the glory of God.
IV. The happy termination.—“The end everlasting life.” We are permitted and enjoined by the example of the word of God to keep the end in view. And what an end! It is an end without an end, paradoxical as the statement appears. This end is the beginning of everlasting life, the beginning of the noblest life without termination. Perfect life is the adaptation of the being to its surroundings, and the adaptation of those surroundings to the being; and such is everlasting life. We shall be fitted for celestial surroundings, and those surroundings we shall find prepared to conduce to our highest felicity. Life here is imperfect, inadequate, and incomplete; life yonder will be perfect, adequate, and complete. Let us take the term “everlasting” not merely as referring to the perpetuity of our future existence, but to the completeness of that existence in all its aspects. No life here is everlasting, because it is incomplete and imperfect. But life beyond is everlasting in the broadest sense of that word. Let us keep the end in view, in order to inspire with hope and patience in the present. Let us persevere in the noble pathway of bringing forth “fruit unto sanctification.”
Romans 6:22. Tenses of Christian life.—That twenty-second verse is the conclusion—the real conclusion—of this chapter. The twenty-third verse is merely explanatory. The twenty-second verse brings visibly before us the conclusion of that struggle that Paul has been tracing more or less throughout this sixth chapter: the two services—the old service and the new—the transition from the old to the new, the outcome of that change of masters, and the outlook that we now have. These are all embodied in this twenty-second verse—an exchange in the past, present experience, and a blessed outlook. You have here the three tenses of a Christian man’s life—the past, the present, and the future: something he looks back to is past and gone, something that he now has as present experience, and something he looks forward to as final result.
I. The exchange of masters.—We have, then, in this past tense a blessed change, an exchange of masters, a transition from one service to another. But when I speak of the old service as a service, I feel that I do not express it strongly enough; for that old service was a bondage. And yet I am almost afraid to describe the new service by that term, because we connect with the word “bondage” sentiments that are not at all agreeable. Yet the words used in this chapter of that old service and of the new one are precisely the same. We were the slaves of sin; and we are—the same word is applied—the slaves of God. There is a freedom that is slavery. My text makes it perfectly plain that every Christian man whose experience is here described has passed from a bondage, “being made free from sin.” We must have passed from bondage into freedom—passed from the bondage of sin into the freedom that grace gives. The first thing in our freedom, then, was deliverance from our sin and guilt; but that would not have been enough for you and me. When God speaks of freedom, He does it completely. He removes the guilt, but He breaks also its power; He takes away the love of sin, and He gives you the grace to enable you to struggle with the sin—not merely to struggle with it, but to overcome it.
II. The new service.—But, then, by that very freedom He has bound you. He has led you into what I should call, perhaps, a new “bondage”; only, as I said before, that word has an evil association; and yet it is true. By His grace and deliverance He has made me eternally His bondsman. He has set me free from the power of sin, restored my freedom, that I might serve Him. Having been made free from sin, I entered God’s service; I gave up my own supremacy, and yielded to the supremacy of God.
III. Fruit, a test of character.—“Ye have your fruit unto holiness.” Having had this deliverance from sin, having entered into this new service, what is the present outcome of it? It is fruit, and it is fruit that you have, and it is a fruit that looks forward to a particular result. Great many of us are tempted to look upon the Christian life as made up of negations. It is a positive life—something you can actually lay your hand upon and say, Now here is that which I have got through my connection with Christ, through what He has done for me, through my service rendered to Him. Here I can see what I have as a definite, clear, distinct result something that can be shown. A Christian man’s life must result in a real, positive character. “Ye have your fruit unto holiness.” It does not say that you are holy; it does not say you have already attained, or that you are already perfect. It does not say that the fruit is complete, that it is ripe, that it is ready to be plucked. No; but it is fruit growing and growing—to what? Unto sanctification, unto holiness. The present tense of the Christian life, then, is a consecrated life—a life of devotion to Christ, of determination to be His and His only.
IV. Eternal growth and development.—And now for the future tense: “the end everlasting life.” It is something that is far away, something that is to come by-and-by; but for the present we may contemplate it, and make it a power to guide us in our journey. I think of it as bringing deliverance from all that hinders. I sometimes think of it positively. Here we have but a limited amount of physical strength, but that other world will introduce us to a life where there are no checks or limitations or hindrances, but a perpetual growth of power to serve God, of faculty to be used for Him. Eternal life, everlasting life,—not a life of luxurious ease, not a life of mere enjoyment or pleasure or psalm-singing; but a life of active, devoted service—service which God is teaching us to render here, and which I believe He will teach us in yet fuller measure to render on the other side.—Prof. Robertson, D.D.
Romans 6:23. A high conception of manhood.—The nature of the gift which a man confers on his fellow may be taken as the estimate which the former entertains of the recipient’s character. In a gift there should be fitness. The gift should be suitable both to the circumstances of the giver and to the character and position of the recipient. Who would think of discoursing sweet music to the deaf? Should we give a choice painting to the blind? Would it be suitable to present a work on philosophy to one who can only read with difficulty? Here is a gift which transcends all others. Next in importance and in value to the unspeakable gift is the grant of eternal life. How vast the boon our contracted minds cannot fully comprehend. The value, preciousness, and vastness of the gift of eternal life will require an eternal life to unfold and completely to understand. Most feel the value of life, and are ready to subscribe to the truth of the old remark, “Skin for skin; yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.” Some value intellectual life. What a boon if the balance of reason could be restored to the insane! What a gift if the mental power of a Plato or a Paul could be conferred on the man who yearns to tread the high pathway of genius! Above all gifts, if we could only rightly appreciate it, is the blessing of eternal life, which begins in the present state and is being developed in the illimitable future. The greatness and preciousness of this gift speak to us of the greatness and benevolence of the Giver. Surely the gift speaks to us likewise of the greatness of man. In one sense man is little and insignificant, but in another sense he is made only a little lower than the angels. Surely the creature is not to be belittled and despised on whom the Eternal bestows the blessing of eternal life. The possible inheritor of so great a blessing is noble and kingly. Yes, the Bible ennobles manhood. It is the one book, the one vital agency, for the elevation of the race. Man is made, not for the fleeting hour, but for the coming eternity. Man is great because God regards him as capable of the gift of eternal life.
I. Man is great, for this gift implies a moral nature.—As we read of the gift of eternal life we are lifted out of the marshy and sterile plain of materialism. We cannot understand the philosophers of the materialistic school. Why should a man pretend to be a lover of wisdom, to dwell in the realm of refined ideas, who is only a perishable mass of materialism? Man is little if he is only an animal, though he may be an animal that thinks—a philosopher. Man is great if he is a creature endowed with a nature that yearns after the Infinite, that soars upward to the Eternal, that loves and worships. The gift of eternal life would be both useless and impossible to a creature who is only one step raised above the beast that never thinks and never loves. The gift of eternal life can only be profitable and delightful to the creature whose nature is lightened up and glorified by a spark of divine fire. A moral nature is needful where a spiritual boon is to be received and appreciated.
II. Man is great, for this gift implies an enduring nature.—Men have felt the preciousness of the blessing of spiritual life even as a gift for the present phase of existence. If there were to be no hereafter, many men and women would still ask for the sustaining and cheering influences of the gift of eternal life. But if in this life we only have hope, then our God-given blessing is stripped of its transcendent charm. Yes, we look to the future. We have the confident expectation of infinite blessedness in the bright and beautiful beyond. We rise above our sorrows, we laugh at our calamities, we even sing in prison, and have transports of joy when bound to the stake, because we feed on the outcoming joys of a completed eternal life. Certainly the phantasm of some felicity which a man is to inherit hereafter as the reward of his services here can give no rest and comfort to a man toiling and suffering. A phantasm cannot sustain, but a certainty can support. We look forward in hope, in confident expectation. We are paid on the way. We have joys in the earth pilgrimage; but oh what joys await when the pilgrim’s journey is over and he passes inside the pearly gates!
III. Man is great, for this gift implies an abiding personality.—Individualism is the doctrine of the Bible. Can the gift of eternal life be conferred on a community? It is said that corporations have no souls. In this sense a community has no soul. A mob cannot receive the blessing of eternal life. It is a spiritual blessing, and in its reception the individual soul must be engaged. The moral personality must receive the blessing—must enjoy it, and develop it, and put it to wise and holy uses in the present sphere. In the future the blessing must be perpetuated and enjoyed by the individual recipient of the boon. So that the personality of the man is an abiding and a permanent quality. He aspires after rest, but it is a personal and an abiding repose in the presence of the infinite light and goodness. Here, then, we have not the creed of the Nirvana. While we long for the sweet composure of the being which may be realised in a brighter and calmer sphere, we shrink from the Buddhist doctrine of the absorption of the individual in the unity of being. Love will delight in the diffusion of happiness, in the wide expansion of blessings; but will the destruction of personalities, the concretion of souls into one great whole, contribute to greater happiness? Each soul glowing with the love light will contribute to the general splendour. The redeemed will be a glorious unity, but a glorious plurality. There will be many harpers. Each will rejoice in his own instrument, but he will rejoice to contribute to the general harmony. The music of heaven would not be rendered more perfect by all the harpers being absorbed in the unity of one harper, however skilful the performer.
IV. Man is great, for this gift implies incompleteness.—Man is great by reason of what he wants as well as by reason of what he possesses. What does man want? The poet sings:—
“Man wants but little here below,
Nor wants that little long.”
But the poet may only sing of material wants; for man wants that which alone can render his nature complete. How great is man who cannot rest until he finds repose in the arms of infinite love! How great is man whose lower life is not adequate, and who can only find satisfaction in the blessing of eternal life! Men crave for rest, and this divine yearning declares man’s vastness. Man longs and yearns; ofttimes he cannot interpret these dark soul movings. Deep calleth unto the deep in the dark and wondrous ocean of his moral nature, and he cannot translate the sound nor give speech to the confused utterance. He wants, he needs, eternal life. The loving Eternal sees man’s need, and graciously offers the boon in a proffered Christ.
V. Man is great, for this gift supposes a large nature.—A cargo must be proportioned to the size of the vessel. A teacher should deal with his scholar according to the scholar’s capacity. A gift must be suitable to the receiver. How wondrously constituted is that being who can receive and enjoy the blessing of eternal life! In some high moments of spirit rapture the soul experiences a great strain, which is not felt on account of the greatness of the joy. When the vision has passed, when the trance has gone, the soul is exhausted. But the soul will be ever expanding; and the more of heavenly delight it receives, the more it will be capable of receiving. Wondrous thought! that man can receive a divine Guest, can walk divine heights of blessedness, delight in the presence of the eternal Light, and finally taste the bliss of the glorified. But shall we speak of the greatness of man and have no word to exalt the greatness of the divine benevolence? “The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Almost every word proclaims the greatness of the divine benevolence. This is seen by:
1. The fact of a gift. The hardness and depravity of human nature are evidenced by the circumstance that divine blessings are received as things taken for granted. We soon complain if anything is wanted. We are slow to raise the song of praise when blessings are bestowed. Here is a gift undeserved and unsought, a gift originating in the divine love; and yet how small is our appreciation of the divine benevolence!
2. The nature of the gift. Alas! we are so materialistic that we cannot receive with any great degree of rapture the moral; we are so earthly and so earthbound that we do not heartily welcome the heavenly; and yet, if we only knew it, the gift of eternal life is every way adapted to our natures. The gift of eternal life in its full realisation means the gift of abiding peace, of ever-flowing and uninterrupted joy—of sweet fellowship in the infinite goodness, of high converse with the noblest and purest spirits. This in a measure on our wilderness pilgrimage. This without measure and in indescribable fulness and delight when we have laid aside the pilgrim’s staff, have washed our earth-stained and weary feet, are clothed in the clean raiment of the glorified, and sit down at the banqueting table of infinite Love.
3. The originating possibility of the gift. “Through Jesus Christ our Lord.” He originated the possibility of this gift in harmony with the purposes and laws of God’s moral government. “The wages of sin is death.” The penalty had been incurred. God’s benevolence purposed a gift. But how was that purpose to be accomplished? How was the design to be rendered a possibility? Jesus Christ originated the possibility. God the Father had a mental, an emotional origination of the plan of human salvation. Jesus Christ had a practical origination. He was the self-sacrificing originator of the possibility of the great gift of eternal life to the human race. And shall we say that God’s love was less than Christ’s love? Is the emotional of less account than the practical? Do we not undervalue the emotional in the Saviour’s earthly life? Were not His sufferings greater from the emotional than from the physical side of His nature? God’s love was great; and while we speak let us remember that the emotional gave rise to the practical. The love of God gave His only begotten Son. Let us then adore the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Let us magnify the divine benevolence. Let us try to understand what God does when He makes the glorious offer of the gift of eternal life to the criminals over whom hangs the sentence of death. He shows the gift shining with many lights, and they reveal vaster glories beyond. He proffers the gift; and while He proffers there gleams upon the soul the pure light of the gems of heaven. He invites to accept; and while the loving voice woos and entreats the white-robed harpers raise a chorus of welcome. Can we refuse? Is it possible that we do not appreciate the gift? Angels look down in vast astonishment; their hearts are moved with infinite pity as they behold criminals passing away from offered pardon to the place of execution. Death and eternal life. Which is it to be? What is the resolve of the noble creature man? But how ignoble by the Fall! Great in divine intention, great in possibility; but little, low, and mean by degeneracy. Let us accept the gift and realise the greatness of which we are capable.
God’s great gift.—The tendency of the gospel is to exalt God and to humble man. It points to everlasting misery as the prison-house to which man’s depravity and sin would lead him. And it is only by the grace of our heavenly Father that we can reach the celestial world. “The wages”—the due recompense—“of sin is death,” but eternal life is the gift of God through our Lord Jesus Christ. In speaking of this gift, notice:—
I. Its nature.—
1. It will afford immunity from all the sufferings and dangers of the present life. Suffering belongs to every station here. Uninterrupted prosperity and enjoyment would be inconsistent with a state of trial. But sufferings can have no place in the life of the redeemed in heaven. All tears shall be wiped away.
2. It will afford pre-eminent intellectual enjoyment. Here we know in part; then we shall know in full. Knowledge will there be unmixed with error.
3. It will afford entire social enjoyment. Here society is often a source of annoyance, disagreements, and pain. In heaven it will possess unmixed knowledge, be full of benevolence, will be holy and wise, and there will be no separation.
4. It will afford unspotted holiness. All who possess it will be holy before they are allowed to enter heaven. But there they will attain to the glory of holiness of which man can form no conception. All will be light—the image of God will be reflected from every human spirit; the Lord Jesus Christ will reign over the minds and hearts of all His people.
5. It will afford incessant activity and endless improvement. Although heaven is represented as a place of rest, it is likewise a state of unceasing activity. The angels are active.
II. Its freeness.—“The gift of God.”
1. It was not wrung from Him by importunity. It is a life which cannot be purchased.
2. It is not the reward of merit. Though sometimes called a reward, it is the reward of grace, not of merit. Man may merit hell, but he cannot merit heaven. Everything leading to this eternal life is also the gift of God: the promises of the Bible; the great change by which he has become entitled to it and qualified for its enjoyment; the Lord Jesus, by whose merit eternal life was purchased,—all these are the gifts of God.
III. Its medium.—“Through Jesus Christ.” To Him we are indebted for the hopes that animate, for the enjoyments we experience. For this end the Redeemer was given—to put men in possession of eternal life; for this purpose He laboured; and for this He suffered.
1. By His death Christ made atonement, and procured pardon—i.e., salvation from spiritual death.
2. Through Him men are delivered from moral death, and receive the principle of spiritual life.
3. Through Him we are adopted into the family of His Father.
4. Through Him, through His resurrection, we conquer material death, and obtain material bodily life.—Homilist.
Romans 6:23. Eternal life a priceless gift.—The gift of God is eternal life “in Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is the better gift which contains that wherein all others are defective,—the gift of a well of water, not lying outside of the man, at which he may slake his thirst now and then, but springing up in him; the gift, not of a refreshing influence, but of a Person from whom the influence comes, and in whom he may find that perpetually which only visits him occasionally; the gift of One who delivers the spirit from its own proper burden, who speaks to those that are heavy laden with their own selfishness, and bids them rest in Him the meek and lowly; the gift of One who does not exact joy and sympathy and love, but kindles them and bestows them. Here is the eternal life—the only eternal life of which St. Paul knows anything. The phantasm of some felicity which a man is to inherit hereafter as the reward of his services here could give no rest or comfort to a man toiling and suffering as he was. He wanted One upon whom he could cast his sorrows, fears, sins, every hour; One from whom he could always draw a strength and nourishment to sustain him against the continual sentence and pressure of death. If there was such a One with him then, he could believe that He would be with him always—that neither height nor depth, nor life nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, would separate him from His love. His life must be eternal life: it could not be a changeable, inconstant treasure, here to-day and gone to-morrow; but it must be a gift fresh every day—not a property which he could claim as having been made over once for all to him. It must be a gift of God, which he would enjoy while he trusted in God, which he lost whenever he fancied that he had earned it. It must be a gift, therefore, for all as well as for himself—one of which he could preach to all, one of which he could say to them, You have it, however little you may know that you have it. As surely as you carry sin within you, so surely is He within you who is the enemy of sin; as surely as you have death with you, so surely have you life with you; as surely as you may possess the one for wages, so surely may you accept the other for the gift of God.—Maurice.
Romans 6:23. Death and life.—By a striking ceremonial on Gerizim and Ebal (see Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8:30-35) Joshua set before the Israelites life and death, the blessing and the curse. Similar contrast in text. Composed of two antithetical clauses: three words in the one contrasted with three in the other—sin and God, death and life, wages and gift.
I. Sin and God.—Both are masters engaging servants. The two occupy the whole domain of moral action. Only two masters and two kinds of service.
1. Sin as a master. One of the smallest words in the English language, but what it names is not little. Sin often regarded as a theological term, an abstraction, dark as a thunder-cloud, but as far away. Here not an ideal abstraction, but an actual master. Sinners are servants of sin, though not certain of making any engagement. Every born Briton bound to serve his country as long as in it. So every one who continues in sin tacitly engages to serve sin (see Romans 6:16). Though not a person, it has the power of a master. Proof of this: they believe in it, take pleasure in it, labour for it. Though they fancy themselves their own masters, they are being drawn or driven, sometimes against their better wishes, in a course opposite to God.
2. God the other master. His service a perfect contrast to the other. On the one hand all that is noble and pure, on the other all that is base and defiling: here a little tribulation, a little self-denial, and then everlasting felicity; there present pleasure and future misery, short-lived delight and everlasting sorrow: here eternal life; there eternal death.
II. Death and life.—Cause of death separation from God—sentence on first parents. As branch broken from the tree dies, so they cut off from the God of life died.
1. Spiritually. Proof from Scripture (Romans 8:6; 1 Timothy 5:6).
2. Death of the body another part of the death (Romans 5:12).
3. Here death contrasted with eternal life. Hence infer that eternal death especially meant: elsewhere described as “the second death” and “everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord.” Eternal life, in contrast with eternal death, like half of sky clear while the other half filled with thunder-clouds. True life animated by high purpose, ennobled by true goodness, brimful of joy—a life that lifts clean away from the power of vexations and cares. Such life in fellowship with Christ: “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (see Revelation 3:20). Such life not touched by death (John 11:25; John 14:19; Colossians 3:3-4).
III. Contrast: wages and gift.—
1. Death the wages of sin: due reward of deeds—not imposed by an arbitrary appointment of God: the law of the universe. Just that sinner be paid for his work, whether wages please him or not.
2. Eternal life a gift. The word means the free gift of God. Given to all in offer (John 4:10; 1 John 5:11); given not for service rendered, but before one has begun to serve. No need to wait for; no need to prepare. Only condition is willingness to receive. But since it is life, it means a new beginning; since it is eternal life, it must overmaster all other lives; since it is life to be enjoyed in the service of God, we must quit the service of sin (Romans 6:13).—G. Wallace, D.D.
ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER 6
Romans 6:22. Frederick the Great and Count Schmettau.—During the Seven Years’ War Frederick the Great accompanied his soldiers on a mountain march. Count Schmettau was his lieutenant, and a very religious man. The king, impatient over the tedious route of the artillery on foot up the narrow mountain pass, indulged in jesting to drive away ennui—he liked a little to tease Schmettau. He knew of a confessor in Berlin whom the count would visit, and allowed a stream of jokes and derision to flow freely. “Your majesty is more witty and much more learned than I,” answered Schmettau, at last finding utterance. “More than this, you are my king. The spiritual contest is in every respect unequal; nevertheless, you cannot take away from me my faith, and as it now goes you would certainly injure me immeasurably, at the same time not make yourself insignificant.” The king remained standing in front of Schmettau; a flash of indignation came from his majesty’s eye. “What does that mean, monsieur? I injure you by taking your faith! What does that mean?” With immovable tranquillity answered the general, “Your majesty believes that in me you have a good officer, and I hope you are not mistaken. But could you take from me my faith, you would have in me a pitiful thing—a reed in the wind, not of the least account in council or in war.” The king was silent for a time, and after reflection, called out in a friendly manner, “Schmettau, what is your belief?” “I believe,” said Schmettau, “in a divine Providence, that the hairs of my head are all numbered, in a salvation from all my sins, and everlasting life after death.” “This you truly believe?” said the king; “this you believe is right with full assurance?” “Yes, truly, your majesty.” The king, moved, seized his hand, pressed it strongly, and said, “You are a happy man.” And never from that hour did he deride Schmettau’s religious opinions.
Romans 6:23. The wages of sin.—Mr. Marshall, author of the Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, having been for several years under distress of mind, consulted Dr. Goodwin, an eminent divine, giving him an account of the state of his soul, and particularising his sins, which lay heavy on his conscience. In reply he told him he had forgot to mention the greatest sin of all, the sin of unbelief, in not believing on the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of his sins and sanctifying his nature. On this he set himself to the studying and preaching of Christ, and attained to eminent holiness, great peace of conscience, and joy in the Holy Ghost. Mr. Marshall’s dying words were these: “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”