Why the "Wages of Sin is Death"

"The soul who sins will die." - Ezekiel 18:4

"He who believes in the Son has eternal life, but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him." - John 3:36

"For the wages of sin is death." - Romans 6:23

"For if you live according to the flesh, you must die..." - Romans 8:13


The Bible is clear that sin leads to death, and for this reason many people have come to think of Christianity as a morbid, bloody religion. Why did God command that animals be slain to provide sacrifices for sin in the Old Testament? Why did He require the cruel death of His own Son as an offering for sins in the New Testament? Why does God appear to be obsessed with death and bloodshed? Is He just cruel? Does He take pleasure in inflicting death?

The Bible never directly answers this question, but it does give us the answer through a number of related passages; and I believe that these clues line up with what must be logically true concerning the nature of God as well.

Consider the following passages:

"Then God said, 'Let us man make in our image, according to our likeness'..." - Genesis 1:26 

"In the beginning was the Word, and Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men." - John 1:1-4 

"For just as the Father has life in Himself, even so He gave to the Son also to have life in Himself..." - John 5:26 

"For the bread of God is that which comes out of heaven and gives life to the world." - John 6:33 

"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, and the truth, and the life..." - John 14:6 

 "...even God who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist." - Romans 4:17

"For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life." - Romans 5:10 

"For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, is revealed, then you also will be revealed with Him in glory." - Colossians 3:4

"And He [Jesus] is the radiance of His [God the Father's] glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power." - Hebrews 1:3 

"And the testimony is this, that God has given us life, and this life is in His Son. He who has the Son has the life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life." - 1 John 11-12

God is the source of everything that exists. Nothing that exists can do so apart from him, for as Hebrews 1:3 states, he actually sustains everything that exists by his own power. Nor is this simply a biblical teaching; it is actually a logical necessity:

God is a self-existent being; the only self-existent being, in fact. He has no cause, no beginning in time. He is also what we could call a necessary being. By contrast, everything else that exists--all of which He created--is contingent, or dependent, upon him for both initial existence and continued existence. Nothing came into existence without him, and nothing that exists can continue to exist without him. He is thus the source of all life, and nothing that is alive can continue to live without him. Note that Jesus said in John 5:26 (quoted previously) that the Father "has life in Him" (is self-existent, dependent upon nothing) and has granted that Christ should give life to all who believe in him. Further, note from the above-quoted scriptures that Christ himself is the believer's life.

Contrary to the implications of popular teachings, eternal life is not a possession, not something that a believer carries around with him like a library card or a driver's license; the believer's life is in the person of Jesus Christ, because it is His righteousness alone that appeases the justice of God toward us. This truth of life in Christ is referenced elsewhere as well:

"Just as the living Father sent Me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on Me will live because of Me." - John 6:57 

"...because I live, you will live also." - John 14;19

Man is made in the image of God in that he is a self-aware, reasoning, emotional, willful, and moral being. In a limited sense, we are mirrors that reflect the being and character of God. Yet, because of the fall, man has marred the perfect image upon which he was based; he has "dirtied the mirror," so to speak, and tarnished the reflection of his creator, who is absolutely holy. God tolerates this for the time being because he has made a way of reconciliation and wants all to repent and come to him for life, but he will not continue to tolerate the situation forever. Eventually, those who have chosen rebellion, and who use their God-given abilities to do that which offends him and is contrary to his character, will face judgment, and the sentence will be death: eternal destruction in the Lake of Fire. He will no longer permit caricatures of his perfect, righteous image to go to and fro doing that which is completely contrary to him. This may be why David, following his adultery with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah, prayed, "Against you, and you only, have I sinned."

To get an idea of how our sinfulness has corrupted the image of God, and may appear in his eyes, imagine for a moment that you are standing in front of a mirror. Now imagine that your reflection begins to take on a life of its own. Imagine that it mocks and curses you in your own voice, and begins to engage in things that you consider hideous and would never do. It would be like watching an evil twin of yourself. Surely, you would want to smash that mirror, or at least wipe it clean.

In a narrow sense, this is what we do to God in our fallen state. Our minds are based upon his mind, yet we take what is essentially his ability to reason and weigh moral choices and do that which he would not do, using the physical forms he has provided us to carry out what we first conceive in our minds. This must be horribly offensive to him, even painful. In his love and mercy, however, he has created a way in which to bring the reflection of himself that is man back into order through the Holy Spirit's work to bring us into conformity to the character of Christ (and thus the character of the Father himself); but if we refuse to be reconciled, he will ultimately smash the mirror rather than allowing the mockery and corruption of his image to continue.

And the result? We die, first temporarily, and afterward, forever. In the time of the resurrection and final judgment, he will wipe his creation clean of the corruption of his image, at the same time bringing an end to the pain and degradation that evil brings to the creation and all who inhabit it.

"For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will also be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth until now." - Romans 8:19-22

Thus, the wages of sin--of corrupting the image of God--is death, deprivation of the life that comes from God, else God would end up sustaining the corruption of his own image and the tragedy and perversity that such corruption brings to everything and everyone in the whole of creation. We see this testified to a number of places in scripture, and in especially clear terms in Romans 8:

"Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did, sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, so that the requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit..If Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin,yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness." - Romans 8:1-4, 10

Jesus Christ came as a human being, made in the same mortal image of God that became corrupted through Adam's fall, and although he committed no sin himself, took humanity's death sentence upon himself and canceled it out, imparting righteousness to all who obey the gospel. Since man had to die, Christ came as a man and died as a man; but he was also raised as a man, yet as one made perfect in his flesh. Those who believe in him will be raised in like manner as he was. In this way, Christ has become a "second Adam," the forerunner for all who follow him and bear his image, not in sin but in righteousness:

"Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned...So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, evens so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men. For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous." - Romans 5:12-13, 18

"For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ will all be made alive...So also it is written, 'The first man, Adam, became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit." - 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, 45

The resurrection is crucial in all of this: had Christ simply died, there would have been no atonement for sin, because death is the penalty for sin, not the remedy. Sin and death are both defeated in resurrection, restoration to life:

"...if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain...if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins." 

"The last enemy that will be abolished is death." 

"...but when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, 'Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?' The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." - 1 Corinthians 15:14, 17, 26, 54-57

We see this referenced elsewhere as well, including, I believe, in Matthew 16:18, where Jesus says:"Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it." 

There are two Greek words that are translated "hell" in the New Testament: hades, which is the Greek equivalent of the OT Hebrew term sheol, meaning the grave (used in Matthew 16:18), and gehenna, which is the term Jesus used in his warnings about eternal judgment. Jesus' statement in Matthew 16 is often thought of as a declaration that Satan and his kingdom will not defeat Christ's church, but I believe it is more likely a statement that death will not overcome it due to the resurrection to eternal life. The power of death will not restrain those who believe in Christ, because it could not restrain him, and the "second death" will not touch believers at all:

"But God raised Him [Jesus] up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power...the patriarch David...was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay." - Acts 2:24, 30-31

"I was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades." - Revelation 1:18 

"He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death." - Revelation 2:11 

"Then death and Hades were thrown into the Lake of Fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire." - Revelation 20:14

Man finds eternal life only in Christ, in whom "all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). Through the Son's atonement, we are reconciled to the Father; the "image" is put right in that God imparts his own righteousness to us. It's especially interesting to consider here that Christ was physically maimed and abused rather than dying a quick, clean death. Isaiah 52:14 tells us that this was maiming was severe: "Just as many were astonished at you, my people, so His appearance was marred more than any man, and His form than the sons of men." Thus Christ bore the sin-tarnished image of God in the cruel abuse of His own flesh.

The Old Testament animal sacrifices were a type of foreshadowing of this ultimate, once-for-all sacrifice, and were employed not because God enjoys bloodshed, but as a reminder of the seriousness of sin and the costliness of its remedy (the animals were slain mercifully in comparison to how God chose to offer up his own Son). Burning the sacrifice appears to have been a picture of the ultimate destruction of the wicked in Gehenna; God lit the first sacrificial fire himself (Leviticus 9:24) and the fire was to be kept burning (Leviticus 6:9, 12-13), just as Gehenna is described as an "eternal fire" (Matthew 25:41; Jude 1:7) that is kindled by God himself and cannot be quenched by man but will burn until it has entirely consumed those who are cast into it.

On that last point, I should note that God's work to restore his corrupted image in man through Jesus Christ presents a strong challenge to the common teaching that those who are cast into Gehenna will be tormented for eternity rather than being utterly destroyed, as the Bible repeatedly states (see Matthew 10:28, Philippians 3:19, and James 4:12 among other passages). Those who uphold this teaching are so focused on conveying God's wrath against sin that they have, I believe, overlooked the fact that, for God to punish people endlessly, he would have to actively preserve the corruption of his image for all of eternity. Not only would he be preserving that corruption of his image, he would be forever pouring out his wrath against it, causing it to twist and writhe in his sight and hearing it curse him for endless ages.

This hardly sounds compatible with the glorious future described by the apostle Paul in which God will be "all in all."

For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death. For He has put all things in subjection under His feet...But when all things are subjected to Him, then the Son Himself also will be subjected to the One who subjected all things to Him, so that God may be all in all. -- I Corinthians 15:25-28

By their very nature, rebels refuse to be subject to authority. A universe in which "all things" are in subjection to God must therefore be a universe in which all rebellion has ceased. Now, one may punish a rebel, but does punishing him (even continually punishing him) eliminate his rebellion? If the rebel will not be reconciled, the only way to end his rebellion is to execute him. Thus, "the soul that sins" must die.

It is often argued that the "death" referred to in reference to the ultimate fate of the wicked in Gehenna is not true death, but rather, is metaphorically called "death" because it is a state that is so horrible that it lacks any quality of life; but note in the above-cited passage that Paul tells us that death itself is an "enemy" that will ultimately be "abolished." The eternal, conscious torment view has a problem here, for Paul tells us that death will ultimately be done away with. If then the fate of the wicked in Gehenna is, as we're often told, a state of 'living death,' that state must at some point come to an end and, therefore, cannot be truly eternal. If, on the other hand, "death" means the actual cessation of life, the text makes perfect sense in conjunction with other passages that tell us that the wicked will be punished with eternal destruction; for when the last of the wicked has perished, then death itself will be at an end. All rebellion will have been forever suppressed. The corrupted image of God will have been redeemed.

Conclusion

It's my prayer that the thoughts and scriptures shared here have helped to demonstrate why the "wages" of sin is naturally death, as apart from any cruelty in God's character. As the source and sustainer of all life, God cannot allow evil to exist indefinitely and still remain true to his own nature. Yet, while he had the right to do away with all of humanity, in his mercy God chose to offer reconciliation. Yes, "the wages of sin is death," but thanks be to God that the scripture does not stop there:

"...but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord."



* All scripture quotations cited here are from the King James Version, the English Standard Version, or the New American Standard Bible.
* Image credit: Brian Norcross/Stockvault.net