Okay, Romans chapter 6, and let's
look in verse 23, and let's just look at this one verse here for
a moment. Romans 6 verse 23. The wages of sin is death, but the
gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now this
text tells us about two very different things that are obtained. One is death and one is life. One is death and one is life.
And it tells us two very different ways these things are obtained.
Let's read it again. Verse 23, For the wages of sin
is death. The sinner who perishes in death.
spiritual death, physical death, eternal death. That sinner will
have earned, he will have worked for and he will have earned that
death as a wage that was owed to him. A wage that was owed
to him for his labor. But, look at the second part,
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord. The sinner who is saved will
have been given eternal life, given eternal life as the free
gift of God. Not by anything we've done in
ourselves, but through the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I've titled
this, The Divine Contrast. And this is a divine contrast
right here. I want you to notice a little
bit about it again. Notice the contrast in the way
that these two things are obtained. Death is obtained, it is the
wages. The wages. But eternal life is
the gift. It's the gift. You see how opposite
these two are? Look here at the next thing.
Look at the contrast here of where these two are obtained.
The wages of sin. It's the wages of sin. But the
gift is the gift of God. See that too? Death is the wages
of sin. Sin is a master, and that master
is going to pay you for serving Him. He's going to pay you what
He owes you, and that's death. But eternal life is a gift. of
God, from God, of God. Look at this next contrast through
who these two things are obtained. Sin is the work of the sinner. Sin is the work of the sinner.
And so the sinner himself gets all the glory for earning everything
he labored to earn under his master sin. Get all the glory
for dying and earning death and nobody else to blame for that.
But look at the contrast. It says, but God's gift of eternal
life is through the Lord Jesus Christ. It's through the Lord
Jesus Christ, so that Christ gets all the glory. God gets
all the glory for this. Now, I want to just divide this
statement into two halves here. We're going to look at the first
part, and then we'll look at the second part. Let's look at
this first half. The wages of sin is death. Now, sin is being described here
as a master. Sin is being described as a master,
and the sinner as the servant of sin. Go back up to verse 16. Now what Paul is dealing with
here is men are saying, because we've been justified freely by
God's grace in Christ and risen together with Him, and Paul says
we're no longer under the law but under grace, men will say,
what then? Shall we sin because we're not
under the law but under grace? Does that mean we just sin? And
Paul is showing you, no, the believer won't do that. No, a
believer won't do that. Watch. Now he says, verse 16,
Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey,
his servants ye are to whom ye obey? That's just a simple rule.
Whoever you yielding yourself to, as a servant to obey, that's
whose servants you are. That's whose servants you are,
whether of sin unto death, if your master is sin. If that master's
sin has to rule over you and you're yielding unto him, then
that's your master. Sin is your master. He says,
or of obedience unto righteousness. Look down at verse 19. I speak
after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh."
Paul has said, I'm giving you this simple illustration here
because these things are hard to understand because of our
flesh. We're still in that flesh. And he says, he's speaking to
believers here, as you have yielded your members, servants, to uncleanness. You see, this was our master.
Sin, uncleanness. We yielded our members, servants,
to that master and to iniquity. That was our master, iniquity.
And it produced iniquity. We were servants to uncleanness
and to iniquity, unto iniquity. Sinners without the Spirit of
God, without the Spirit of God dwelling in their hearts. This
is the fact. Listen very carefully. Everybody
listen to me. The sinner sitting here in this
room without Christ dwelling in their heart is a servant to
sin. Sin is a master over you. He has you in bondage. He's a
servant, that sinner's a servant to uncleanness. He's a servant
to iniquity. Everything that's unequal, everything
that has no equalness to it. That's what he's a servant to.
He's a servant to iniquity. Everything that's not equitable.
And that master, Mr. Sin, he's a tyrant. I mean a
tyrant. He keeps a binding chain upon
all those over whom he rules and over whom he reigns. And
while he rules and reigns over you, you're a slave to it. You
think you're free? And the sad thing is when we're
a servant to sin, we enjoy being His servant. We think it's fun
being his servant. We think it's freedom being the
servant of sin. We think that's great liberty
and freedom. Nobody's telling me what to do.
Nobody's yoking me. I can do what I want to, when
I want to, how I want to, and nobody can say anything to me.
And you're a slave under his bondage. We call it the pleasure
of sin. The pleasure of sin. Well, the
sinner who's under that rule of that master, that master that
we call sin, that one that's under his rule is not a servant
of God. Now look at verse 20. For when
you were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness.
We were under that master called sin. And when we were under him,
we were the servants of sin. But while we were under that
master, sin, we were not the servants of God. Not at all. Not the servants of righteousness.
Now you have to remember, Paul from the beginning has been talking
about serving according to the law. The whole point Paul's been
making throughout this book is we're not justified by works,
we're justified by grace. And we're not sanctified by works,
we're sanctified by grace. And so, when he comes to this
point, when he talks about the believer not being under the
law, but being under grace, he answers the question that's going
to come up, well then, shall I just sin and be lewd and be
immoral in all I do because I'm not under the law but under grace? But the point of the matter is,
in all of that morality and all of that obedience under the law,
thinking you're going to be justified by your works of the law or sanctified
by your works of the law, Paul is saying, when you were in that,
you were the servants of sin. You were the servants of sin.
Paul said, as touching the law, I was blameless. I was a Pharisee
of the strictest sect. I was just like those that you
looked at and thought, you won't catch any kind of sin in them,
outwardly. But he said, while I was doing
that, I was the servant of sin. So this thing includes both that
outward, immoral, lewd behavior, and it includes that behavior
that appears to be absolutely lawful, and absolutely serving
God in the flesh, because the problem is in here, the problem's
in the heart, the problem's inside. Sinners only have one master,
and that master's sin. And believers only have one master,
and that master's Christ. He said, when you were the servants
of sin, you were free from righteousness. When we were the servants of
sin, we were not the servants of Christ. When you're the servants
of Christ, you're no longer the servants of sin. No man can serve
two masters, the Lord said, and we don't. Either sin has the
rule of our hearts or Christ has the dominion. It's not both. One or the other. Some here are
under the dominion, the tyranny of sin. Sin rules you. Sin rules your thoughts. When
you're thinking about something that is good or something that's
evil, sin's ruling you. Sin's ruling you. And some here
are under the rule of Christ. Some here's under, He has dominion
of your heart. But no one here, absolutely nobody
here, is under the rule of both. That's just not so. That's not
so. Those under the rule of sin hate
the thought of having Christ as their master. They hate the
thought because the carnal mind is enmity against God. Hates
God. Don't want to have anything to
do with Him. And that hatred sometimes appears so innocent.
Just sits there and smiles and sits there and acts like he's
really enjoying it. but not in the heart, not in
the heart. But those that have been born
of the Spirit of God, Christ dwells in us as our master, and
we no longer love sin anymore. We don't like it. We cry out
with Paul, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death? There's a difference. But those
in whom Christ dwell, what do you really enjoy? That's a good
question. What do you really enjoy? What
do we really enjoy? What is it, where is it that
we would really rather be? Think about that. Who's really
your master? Who's really your Lord? If sin
is the master over us, our delight is to do evil. Our delight, what
we would rather be doing is something, anything, anywhere but hearing
the gospel of Christ. We'd like to be anywhere else
doing anything else but hearing of Him because we don't like
Him. We don't want to have anything
to do with the God we're going to face in about a minute. We
don't have anything to do with Him by nature. If we walk in
darkness, joy, the company of evil companions and just are
self-righteous people or false religion and will workers and
all that, then Christ is not our master. He's not our master. The wage that this master pays,
sin, that wage that he pays is death. He pays that wage. Verse
21, what fruit had you then in those things whereof you are
now ashamed? The believers are ashamed of
those things now. We're ashamed of those things now. For the
end of those things is death. We know now we didn't have any
fruit. We weren't bringing forth any fruit. Whether it was in
works of righteousness we thought we had done, we weren't really
bringing forth any fruit. Or whether it was that lewd behavior
or thoughts or whatever, we weren't bringing any fruit then either.
We might have thought we had. Mr. Sin's in the iniquity business. He's not in the business of producing
righteousness. He's in the business of growing
sinners and growing iniquity and sin and death. That's what
he's in the business of doing. And everybody that works for
him is working as hard as they can to produce what he's in the
business of producing. They're trying to produce iniquity.
Sometimes it looks like it's righteous works, but it's still
iniquity. That's what his business is.
For the wages of sin is death. That's what he pays. When you've
worked that long, hard day called life, and it's all done, the
wages, you go up to the counter, and it's time to get you wages,
what you owe. And that master gives you exactly
what you've earned, and you've earned death, death. The wages
of sin is spiritual death. Now there's no sinner that can
earn spiritual life. God has got to give spiritual
life. But I want you to hear this now, and this would be good
for you to listen to very carefully. When God gives the sinner the
light of the gospel, when he brings the gospel across your
path, and that's what God has done for everybody sitting here
listening to this right now. God has crossed your path with
the truth. And when he does that, when that
sinner goes on laboring in sin, goes on working and working and
working to put God out of his mind, laboring for his master's
sin, that labor will earn you the wages of more spiritual death. More spiritual death. Look at
Romans 1 verse 21. Don't you see what I mean? Romans 1 verse 21. Because that, when they knew
God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful, but
became vain in their imaginations. Now that takes some labor. That
takes some work. And that earns some wages for
whoever does that. And here's what the wages are.
And their foolish heart was darkened. Look down at verse 25. Who changed
the truth of God into a lie and worshiped and served the creature
more than the Creator who's blessed forever. Now that's what's going
on in religion in this world today. Everybody that's telling
you, you can come to God by your free will and you can, God's
demanding you to do certain, certain work so you can get a
better reward in heaven than somebody else. God's not, He's not paying you
a commission. He's not paying us a commission.
It's the gift of eternal life. But that takes labor to do that,
to change the truth of God into a lie, and to worship the creature
more than the creator. That takes labor, and it earns
a wage. And here it is, verse 26, for this cause, God gave
them up unto vile affections. Now you want to read all about
religion? You read out the rest of Romans chapter one. You'll
think it's a description of this ungodly world, and it is, but
it's a description of ungodly religion. Well, verse 28 says,
and even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge,
that takes some labor. Man, you got to have a CD of
some music ready as soon as you get out of the service and put
that in and start listening to it and get that knowledge of
God out of that head. Get him out of there. Or you
got to go out and have some sporting event so you can go right to
it and get busy with it. And so you can get that knowledge
of God drowned out fast. Get it out of there. That takes
work. You got to work at it to do it. But it earns this wage
right here. God gave them over to a reprobate
mind to do those things which are not convenient. You see what
I'm saying? That's all the wages of sin earns
is just more death and more death and more death. And then wages
of sin is physical death. When you labor in sin, it's going
to earn the wage for our bodies to be wrecked with sickness and
sorrow and pain, and eventually they'll end in physical death.
We're gonna all die. Sin's what, even the believers
still sin in this flesh, and we're gonna die physically, because
that's what we're doing. But going after sin and living
in this world to just sin and sin and sin, you get diseases,
you get all kinds of sicknesses and addictions and everything
else to where it just speeds up the process. That's what I'm
saying, that's the fruit that it produces. It's just more death.
And then it ends with eternal death. You labor all your days,
all your days for that master's sin. And in the end, having never
obeyed the gospel, having never listened to God, having put him
out of your mind, then in the end, you will have earned eternal
separation from God in the torments of hell as a wage which we rightfully
earn for all our labors. And you know what's sad? The
sin, that master's sin is such a tyrant. He will make a young
person say, well, That's all right, I'll go for that. I'll
go for what I can get right now in this life. I don't worry about
that other. I remember some time back, you
know who Bob Dylan is. I watched an interview with one
of the men from 60 Minutes interviewing Bob Dylan. And this was not too
long ago when Dylan was up, he's up in years. I believe it was
Morley Schaefer, he asked him, he said, he said, do you think
now that sort of all the glamors off of stardom and all that in
your later years and, you know, looking towards eternity, he
said, do you think about those things? And I can't remember
the exact quote, but I'm paraphrasing. He said, nah, he said, a deal's
a deal. And he said, I got what I wanted. And he said, so no need sorrowing
over it now. You want to live like that? You
want to have that to look forward to one day to know, well, I got
my good things. I sold my soul for this stuff.
Now facing eternity. There's no good fruit, no good
end in continuing with sin as your master. If you earn the
wages of death, you won't have anybody to blame but yourself.
But now look, now listen carefully. Let's see this divine contrast.
But the gift of God, verse 23, but the gift of God is eternal
life through Jesus Christ our Lord. God gives this gift of
eternal life. He gives this. Look at verse
17. But God be thanked. that you were the servants of
sin, but you've obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which
was delivered to you. He says, but God be thanked.
This is the free gift of God. Who do we thank? We thank God. God be thanked. He's the only
one we have to thank. What do you do when somebody
gives you a gift? When they give you a gift for your birthday
or a special occasion or something, they give you a gift, you don't
go around thanking other people. You thank the one who gave you
the gift. They're the only one to thank. They bought it. They
gave it to you. It's yours. You thank them. Thank
you for the gift. God be thanked. Verse 17, you
were the servants of sin. There wasn't anybody but God.
Nobody but the Spirit of God that could break those shackles.
Nobody but the Spirit of God come in and deliver us from that
tyrant, from that master sin. And how did He do it? What was
the means by which He did it? Look at verse 17 again. but you
have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered
you. God delivered the doctrine of
Christ in him crucified to you. God be thanked, he brought the
doctrine of Christ in him crucified to you. The form of doctrine
which was delivered you. It was delivered to you. God
said, I've got a gift for that one. Deliver my gospel to him. Go to him right now and tell
him all about the gift I've given him. And somebody came along
and started telling you about the gift God had purchased with
the blood of His own Son, by giving His own Son. And when
He did that, the Spirit of God gave you something else. He gave
you a new heart. He entered in and gave you life
where there was no life, gave you a new spirit. Except a man
be born of water and of the Spirit, he can't see the Kingdom of God.
That which is flesh is flesh, and that which is spirit is spirit.
He revealed to you your vileness, and He stripped you, and then
He robed you in the righteousness of God, in the righteousness
of His Son. He showed you this. Look back
up there at verse 6. Knowing this, that our old man
is crucified with Christ, that the body of sin might be destroyed,
that henceforth we should not serve sin. When Christ laid down
His life on Calvary's tree, being made our body of sin for us on
that tree, He bore in that body everything sin caused and everything
sin required before justice. And He bore it away. And when
He gave up the ghost and He died and He went into the grave, that
whole body of death that this sinner right here is, was destroyed. It went into the grave and was
destroyed. For he that is dead, verse 7,
is freed from sin. Completely freed from sin. You
see, I'm dead. I've already died. I already
died in Christ. And I'm freed from that curse
and that condemnation. Now, if we be dead with Christ,
we believe that we shall also live with Him. Knowing this,
that Christ being raised from the dead, He doesn't die anymore.
Death has no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he
died unto sin once. But in that he liveth, he liveth
unto God. Likewise, reckon ye also yourselves
to be dead indeed unto sin. How dead? As dead as Christ is
to it. He died unto sin once. He lives
to God now. But alive unto God through Jesus
Christ our Lord. How alive? As alive as Christ
is to God the Father. That's what Paul tells us over
and over and over. You're seated with Him in glory. Your life
is in Him in glory at the right hand of the Father. Well, that's
what He did for us. And then He gave you the gift
of repentance. gave us the gift of faith. All
this is a gift of God. Everything that we have, He gave
us freely as a gift. And you obeyed from the heart.
Here we go. See, there's a new man. There's
a new nature. We obeyed from the heart. From
the heart. From the heart, you obeyed from
the heart that form of doctrine, that good news of Christ and
Him crucified, what Christ has accomplished. You obeyed from
the heart. Look at verse 18, being then made free from sin,
you became the servants of righteousness. Now verse 7 that I just read
to you, where it says, he that is dead is freed from sin, that
word means justified. It means freed from the guilt,
from the penalty, and from the condemnation. This word here
in verse 18 where it says, being then made free from sin, It's
talking about what God's done in us through His Spirit when
Christ is formed in you. And it means you've been liberated.
You're no longer the slave under that old master called sin anymore. You're freed from the control
and the servitude of sin. It's holdovers is broken. His holdovers is broken. a new
master, a good master, a loving master. Christ Jesus has taken
control in that new spirit that he's created and you've become
the servants of righteousness, the servants of God, the servants
of Christ. What a divine contrast, isn't
it? Not a wage earned, it's a gift given. Not of sin, but of God. Not death, but eternal life.
Not of us, but through the Lord Jesus Christ. The gift of God
is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So he that glories,
you know who we glory in? Just as that sinner's gonna have
nobody else to glory in, nobody else to blame but himself for
having earned death. That sinner whom God saves has
no one else to glory in it, no one else to blame but God, Christ
Jesus our Lord who saved us. Do you see that? Now, you and
I aren't wholly free from sin, brethren. You that believe the
Lord, we're not wholly free from sin. We carry about a body of
sin, a body of death, and in our thoughts and our words and
our actions, everything we do, we're constantly thinking, Lord,
deliver me from this. You know, you go through the
day and you come to the end of the day, and do you find yourself
more and more asking God to forgive you. Just forgive me, Lord. Forgive
me. Forgive me. Make me a servant. Make me a true servant. Forgive
me. Forgive me. Forgive me. We're constantly
asking God for mercy. You know that? Constantly asking
Him for grace. That's how a sinner lives. Constantly
asking Him. But by virtue of this redemption
that Christ has accomplished, we've been made free from the
law, from the legal dominion of it. We're justified from it.
There's no condemnation now. And by His working in us, we've
been delivered into that glorious liberty of the sons of God. Not
given a spirit where we fear again, in bondage, but where
we cry, Abba, Father. That's where our help comes from.
Before we got scared and we turned to that law and we started trying
to shape up, turn over a new leaf and polish up, do something
good to help us because we were in bondage under sin, servants
under sin. Now, you know what we do? Father,
Father. Please help me. Please give me
a right spirit. Please create in me a right spirit.
Forgive me my sin. We cry Abba Father and the spirit
helps our infirmities even because we don't even know how to pray.
He helps our infirmities. I feel for the world around me.
I feel for the religious world because they do have a zeal.
There is no doubt about that. Men in religion have a zeal,
but it's not according to knowledge. Going about to establish their
own righteousness, they are not submitting themselves to the
righteousness of God. Christ is the end of the law
for righteousness to everyone that believes. And I've told
you this again and again, that word righteousness, brethren,
it includes sanctification. and righteousness. It includes
sanctification and justification. Were He not holy, nothing He
did for us would have been holy. But it's all in Him. It's all
by Him through the Gospel. Look at verse 19 again. Romans
6, 19. I speak after the manner of men
because of the infirmity of your flesh. For as you've yielded
your members' servants to uncleanness and to iniquity and to iniquity,
even so now, now, yield your members servants to righteousness
unto holiness. Who's that righteousness we're
yielded to? We're yielded to Christ. He's our righteousness.
He's all our righteousness and He's all our holiness. And we're
yielding ourselves to Him by virtue of union and communion
with Christ. The gift of God that we now have
is eternal life in Christ. And we have righteousness and
holiness by Him. And the end of this shall be
everlasting life in glory with Him when we pass from this world.
You've cheerfully yielded your minds, you've cheerfully yielded
your hearts, your tongues, your hands to do evil in the past
when sin was at master. Now cheerfully yield them to
God and holiness, to Christ. We didn't produce any fruit under
that old master of sin. We earned wages and yet nothing
was given but death. Look at verse 22. But now being
made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your
fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. You know what
it is not to be under the law but under grace? It's to have
the fruit of the Spirit. Look over at Galatians 5.22.
I want to just show you this real quick. Galatians 5.22. Verse
18. I'm sorry, verse 18. If you be led of the Spirit,
you're not under the law. You see that? I don't know how
more plain it can get. If you're led of the Spirit,
you're not under the law. Galatians 5.18. Now here's the works of
the flesh. their adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred,
variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,
envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like. Of
the witch I tell you before, as I've also told you in time
past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the
kingdom of God." Now that's who the law was made for. The law
was made, and the law is against all of those things right there,
against all of those things. But now listen to this. He said,
but if you're led of the Spirit, you're not under the law. Now
listen to this. But the fruit of the Spirit,
here's what it is to be under grace. The fruit of the Spirit.
He gives us something. The fruit of the Spirit is love,
and joy, and peace, and longsuffering, and gentleness, and goodness,
and faith, and meekness, and temperance. Against such, there
is no law. There's no law against it. The
law wasn't made for a righteous man. And God's people have been
made righteous. How so? Look at the next verse. They that are Christ have crucified
the flesh with the affections and lusts. We've been crucified
in Christ when He died. And that old man has been put
down when Christ entered in by His Spirit. And we've been crucified
with Him. But we still live. But how do
we live? We live in the Spirit. We live
by the Spirit of God. If we live in the Spirit, let
us also walk in the Spirit. You see that? You see that? It's
not even a possibility that God's children are going to continue
in sin. We're dead to sin. And we hate
sin now by what He's taught us in our heart. We don't want to
continue in sin. We don't want to continue in
sin. But one thing we don't continue in either is we don't continue
in that sin of thinking we're coming to God by our works of
righteousness. That sin has been put away too,
and we don't come to God in that sin. At all. Well, our sin didn't profit us
anything, but let me show you this. It didn't profit us anything. It never profited us anything.
At all. Ever. No profit whatsoever. Spiritual, physical, eternal
death. That's all we got from our sin. But look at this. But
now the gift of God is unto holiness. And that fruit of the Spirit
is useful and it's profitable to us and to others in so many
ways. You think about this. God's glorified
now in our members. He's glorified now. The doctrine
of Christ is adorned. He's honored. He's commended
before all. We speak of Him. We talk about
Him. We want to follow Him. Our spiritual life is bettered
by it. We didn't have any before, now
we have it. And it's bettered as we walk after Him. We see
Him more and more and more and more. And even our physical life
is bettered, if you think about that. Because your reputation,
my reputation now is a lot better than it was when I was under
the dominion of sin. The fruits of the Spirit have
caused peace in your heart. I didn't have any peace in my
heart before. where you got more peace towards others, put away
malice and wrath and envy and all those things. I didn't have
those things before. I'd go and try to work out a righteousness
by my obedience to God's law, to the letter of the law. And
I was just as envious and hateful towards those others that I thought
were doing a better job than me. And they were hateful and
envious toward me. But that's gone now. I see now
we're all just a bunch of worms. That's it. Friends and loved
ones, they're all bettered when a believer's called by grace
and sanctified out of darkness into light. Aren't
they? Your friends, they may hate you now, won't have anything
to do with you now, but those that are around you, they're
bettered for it. They're the beneficiaries of
God saving you by His grace. They get a benefit from it. You're
not nearly as the old poisonous snake you was because that man's
not raining anymore. In the end of it, spiritual life,
eternal life within forever. Now let me ask you something.
What sounds better to you? Work or rest? What sounds better,
death or life? What sounds better, a wage you
have to earn or a gift given? The Lord said, labor not for
the meat which perishes. Don't work for that. but for
that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son
of Man shall give unto you, for him hath God the Father sealed.
Go home, get your Bible, get some of these messages on your
computer, and ask God to have mercy on your soul. Ask God to
reveal true righteousness, true holiness to you. Ask God to make
his power known to you. Ask God to make Christ known
to you. And come to Him, bow down. Don't
come to Him as if God's got to prove to you and I anything.
Come to Him, bow down, like a child that needs to be taught because
we don't know anything. Come to Him that way and seek
unmerited mercy from Him. Labor now. You want to work?
There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. For he
that's entered into His rest, he also hath ceased from his
own works as God did from His. So let us labor, therefore, to
enter into that rest. You want to labor for something?
Labor for that meat that never perishes. Labor to enter into
this rest we're talking about. Look at the verse again, verse
23. For the wages of sin is death,
but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our
Lord. Amen.