Hi everyone,
I am on vacation this week (“stay-cation”) but I still want to encourage you in your faith. So today I want to share with you an excerpt from a commentary on the book of Romans that I have been working my way through. The actual commentary is called, “Romans, verse by verse” by William R. Newell. I highly recommend it if you are looking to go deeper into Romans. Anyway, here is the excerpt. It is not very cheery in the beginning but stay with it, there is wonderful news at the end!
“23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in[a] Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23
“Death as we read it in verse 23, is “the wages of sin.” Men speak of it lightly. But it is indeed “the king of terrors” for the natural man (Job 18:14). A well know writer says: “Man finds in death and end to every hope, to every project, to all his thoughts and plans. This busy scene in which his whole life has been, knows him no more. His nature has given way, powerless to resist the master (death) to which it belongs, and who now asserts his dreadful rights. But this is far from being all. Man indeed, as man alive in this world, sinks down into nothing. But why? Sin has come in; with sin, conscience; with sin, Satan’s power; still more with sin, God’s judgement. Death is the expression and witness of all this. It is the wages of sin, terror of the conscience, Satan’s power over us, for he has the power of death. Can God help here? Alas, it is His own judgement on sin. Death seems but as the proof that sin does not go unnoticed, and is the terror and plague of the conscience, as witness to God’s judgement, the officer of justice to the criminal, and proof of his guilt in the presence of the coming judgement. How can it be but terrible? It is the seal upon the fall and ruin and condemnation of the first Adam. And he has nothing but this old nature.
“But Christ has come in. He has come into death – O wonderous truth, The Prince of Life! What is death now for the believer? “Death is ours,” says the apostle, as all things are. By the blessed Lord entering into it for me, death, and judgement too, is become by salvation. The sin, of which it was the wages, has been put away by death itself. The judgement has been borne for me there.”
Have a blessed weekend,
Rob