“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23). This verse is a concluding contrast of two ways of living laid out in the whole chapter. The verse contrasts wages and gift, earnings and grace. To live our lives in the pursuit of sin has a payoff of death. The opposite of death is eternal life for those in Christ. In the writings of Paul, in Christ is about living our lives in full solidarity with Christ. It is to trust our lives completely to Him. To follow Him in this kind of solidarity is to have the free gift of the life of the age to come that comes through the Son.
“The wages paid by sin, you see, are death; but God’s free gift is the life of the age to come in the Messiah, Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23 KNT).
