Sunday, September 26, 2010

The wages of sin

JD WALTERS SAID:

“The asymmetry you propose is not self-evident.”

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 6:23).

“In a memorable formulation that concludes the pericope, Paul sets off the antithesis between the realms of sin and grace. He uses the slang term opsonion, which…was popularized by military usage to refer to wages or rations given as remuneration for services performed.”

“The most striking feature of this sentence, however, is the contrast between opsonion and the charisma tou theou (‘free gift of God’). Whereas the remuneration is paid in return for services rendered, the charisma is a sheer gift provided to those who have performed no service at all, to those in fact who have made themselves God’s enemies.”

“They [early Christians] perceived the death and resurrection of Christ as granting shamefully undeserving people the gift of salvation as well as specific gifts of God’s mercy and calling into his gratifying service. In Paul’s view, these gifts were granted without regard to whether or not one has fulfilled the requirements of the law. In Rom 4:4, this was connected to the matter of wages in a manner that provides the premise for 6:23: ‘to one who works, his sages are not reckoned as a gift but as his due.’ In contrast to earning death as a result of enslavement to sin, therefore, Paul counterposes the ‘free gift of God,’ which is ‘life eternal.’ In his view there is nothing whatsoever that anyone can do to deserve such a gift: life eternal is the very opposite of the death the children of Adam have earned. This antithesis strikes at the heart of much of the religious motivation in Paul’s time,” R. Jewett, Romans: A Commentary (Fortress 2007), 425-26.

5 comments:

  1. Still waiting for you to actually read my post. Nobody deserves eternal life, but nobody deserves eternal destruction either. If you judge people by their works, they would end up somewhere along a continuum, with a garden variety sinner who raised a family in the suburbs and loved them and obeyed the law being closer to happiness than Hitler, for example. Jesus' warnings about the final judgment and the dichotomy between the two states simply do not allow for gradations of punishment or felicity that a consistent just deserts approach would require. That is why in my post I suggested that something much more serious is going on at the last judgment to lead to only two final destinies.

    By the way, Paul is not taking about the final judgment in Romans 6:23, or in Romans 1:18 for that matter. He is talking about the consequences of sin in the here and now. The death he speaks of, when he says that the wages of sin is death, is not the 'eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels', it is the spiritual death which even biologically living people are victims of (as Paul says elsewhere when he describes his converts as formerly 'dead in sin'). To be sure, if a person dies in a state of spiritual death without believing in Christ's atoning work, that will lead to eternal destruction at the last judgment, but not because of the sin that lead to spiritual death, but because the person did not believe in the one sent by God (John 3:18).

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  2. JD WALTERS SAID:

    “Nobody deserves eternal life, but nobody deserves eternal destruction either. If you judge people by their works, they would end up somewhere along a continuum, with a garden variety sinner who raised a family in the suburbs and loved them and obeyed the law being closer to happiness than Hitler, for example. Jesus' warnings about the final judgment and the dichotomy between the two states simply do not allow for gradations of punishment or felicity that a consistent just deserts approach would require.”

    According to your made-up standards.

    “By the way, Paul is not taking about the final judgment in Romans 6:23.”

    “Eternal life” is an eschatological category. By parity of reason, so is the opposing category.

    “To be sure, if a person dies in a state of spiritual death without believing in Christ's atoning work, that will lead to eternal destruction at the last judgment, but not because of the sin that lead to spiritual death, but because the person did not believe in the one sent by God (John 3:18).”

    Jesus came to the “lost.” Salvation is not theirs to lose by rejecting Jesus. Rather, Jesus comes to save the lost. That’s their default condition.

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  3. "According to your made-up standards."

    By my 'made-up standards', my eight year old brother, who is a little hard to deal with sometimes but overall has nothing but love and affection for those he interacts with, works hard at school and is generous with his time to help out around the house, would not deserve to burn in hell forever if he died tomorrow without having heard of Jesus. He does not deserve eternal life with God, I agree, but neither does he deserve punishment in hell forever. I'd like to hear your argument otherwise.

    "“Eternal life” is an eschatological category. By parity of reason, so is the opposing category."

    But the death Paul refers to is not the opposing category. That is clear from Romans 6:21, where Paul almost gently asks what benefit the Romans received from "those things that you are now ashamed of? The end of those things is death." Not eternal fire, more like futility and ruin of earthly life. The 'eternal punishment' that Jesus speaks of in his parable is the opposing category.

    "Jesus came to the “lost.” Salvation is not theirs to lose by rejecting Jesus."

    Um, I beg to differ, and so would the apostle John. Jesus came to the world to save it, and atoned for the sins of the whole world, so now the only condemnation is to reject Jesus and cling to one's sin. When Jesus ascended to his throne in heaven, the rules for how one's eternal destiny are decided were decisively changed. Cf. Paul in Acts 17:30-21: "Therefore, although God has overlooked such times of ignorance, he now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day on which he is going to judge the world in righteousness..."

    How one answers the call to repentance is the sole determinant of one's eternal destiny. God would not command all people to repent if he intended for some (or many) to not be able to choose that route of salvation (the only route).

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  4. P.S. A quote from John MacArthur about John 16:8-11:

    "The singular [sin] indicates that a specific sin is in view; i.e., that of not believing in Jesus as Messiah and Son of God. This is the only sin, ultimately, that damns people to hell. . . . Though all men are depraved, cursed by their violation of God's law and sinful by nature, what ultimately damns them to hell is their unwillingness to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior (cf. 8:24)." (MacArthur Study Bible, 1583)

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  5. Steve wrote:

    "Jesus came to the “lost.”


    This is true, he did. (But is your understanding of "the lost" Biblical?) [Matt 15:24]

    The Redeemer [Isa 49:7] sent his disciples to the same [Matt 10:6].

    Of course, God's New Covenant promise was also specifically given and very exclusive [Jer 31:31] (and practically true forever [Jer 31:35-36]).

    Anyone who studies the election Biblically [1 Chron 16:13][Isa 41:8][Isa 44:1] knows this though [Psa 135:4][Isa 45:4].

    Right?

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