Romans 6:23

Romans 6:23

The Choice of Life.

I. St. Paul is setting before us in a figure the choice of two lives the life of a Christian, life in Christ, and the life of one who is not a Christian, who has not the Christian's aim nor the Christian's hope. He is setting this before us in a figure; and it is, on the whole, the figure which is so familiar to us in our own baptismal service and catechism. Both, he tells us, involve service. In some of the expressions he is thinking of the service of a servant, in others (as in this word wages ὀψώνια the soldier's allowance) of military service. We can choose our master, our leader; but serve some one,do some one's work, fight in some one's cause, we must.We may serve God or we may serve sin. He has been striving in the last verses to bring out the contrasts of the two services. They differ in their objects, their aim, their methods, their issue. The text is the last word in the comparison. It contrasts their rewards. But in doing so St. Paul breaks away, as it were, from the similitude; says, as he so often does, "Remember that it is a figure, not the whole truth; no figure can comprehend that." Life is a service; all fight in some ranks. The figure holds in many points, but not in all, not absolutely in one particular point. Service supposes wages, some return for the service, earned and to be paid. And the service of sin has its wages, something that answers to that figure in at least one regard. They are wages earned, the pay of a soldier's toilsome and dangerous service, though they are not the wages looked for, nor such as make up the campaign. "The wages of sin, the hard-earned wages, is death." It would have followed, it might seem, to say, "The wages, the earned reward, of righteousness is life"; but St. Paul does not say so. There the figure fails. The true soldier and servant of goodness and God knows only too well that he earns no reward; the enemy whom he is to fight is not without him only, but within, in his own half-traitorous heart. No; it is not the wages of goodness, but "the giftof God" given to the unworthy through Jesus Christ our Lord.

II. The wages of sin is death. That will be the end of living for pleasure, living for self, living only for this world. The end of living for pleasure is death. You must sacrifice to it things infinitely more precious, and then the pleasures die. They last but a moment; and presently the faculty of pleasure dies. At first we fail to see that this is happening, because there is a change and succession of pleasures. Life has some small variety of pleasures, and they are so disposed that to our inexperienced eye they look endless; but we soon exhaust them. They become but repetitions, and then they cease to please. And so is all self-seeking. We cannot live for self without starving the more generous instincts and forfeiting the higher blessings of life. And self cannot satisfy. All purely selfish success turns to vanity and vexation of spirit. And this world itself passes. The things that are seen are temporal. "The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" life ever deepening, widening; self-conquest, freedom, the conscience growing more sensitive and more completely mistress of the life, all instincts and perceptions of moral beauty growing keener, all lofty and generous emotions strengthening the sense of God's nearness, the trust in His goodness, the sympathy with His purposes, for ever increasing, brightening to the perfect day.

E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons,p. 125.

References: Romans 6:23. E. Cooper, Practical Sermons,vol. i., p. 15; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1459; C. G. Finney, Sermons on Gospel Themes,p. 37; J. Vaughan, Sermons,6th series, p. 29; Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xxxi., No. 1868; G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 186; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. iv., p. 84; Ibid.,vol. vii., p. 22; Church of England Pulpit,vol. v., p. 125; J. Burbidge, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xi., p. 33; J. Vaughan, Sermons,6th series, p. 29; C. G. Finney, Gospel Themes,p. 37. Romans 6:23. E. Cooper, Practical Sermons,vol. i., p. 15.