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The Word of God abounds with striking contrasts, which picture the opposite character and portion of the two great classes into which all mankind are divided before God. Poverty and riches, slavery and freedom, darkness and light; but no contrast is so forcible as that between death and life.

I. DEATH.

1. Its origin. It is the wages of sin. The apostle sets before us what fallen man loves, what he dreads, and the union between the two. Fallen man loves sin and dreads death. Yet the death he dreads is the inevitable consequence of the sin he loves. Sin is discovered under two distinct aspects. It is —

(1) Whatever is not in accordance with the character of God. All deviations from truth and holiness.

(2) Whatever is not in accordance with the law of God. All that goes beyond, and all that falls short of this Divine standard, is sin.

(3) Now death is not, therefore, what men sometimes call it, the debt of nature. It is the righteous recompense by which God shows His displeasure against sin. He has set such a mark upon it as compels every individual to feel and show in his own person the guiltiness of this accursed thing.

2. Its nature. Death is separation. We call it dissolution.

(1) Bodily death is the separation of the soul from the body.

(2) Spiritual death is the separation of the soul from God, in whose favour is life.

(3) Eternal death is the perpetual separation of both body and soul from God's presence and favour. This is called in Scripture "the second death" (Revelation 20:14).

II. LIFE.

1. How is it procured?

(1) At the first, life was the gift of God. It was solely of His goodness, and for His glory. And, as at the first creation, so in the new. Life is not the wages of our obedience. It was forfeited by sin; it can never be recovered on the ground of our own merit. Death is rendered to us in justice. Life can only be restored to us in grace. The very God whose honour we have outraged by sin, comes forward to "seek and save the lost."(2) It is a free gift so far as we are concerned, but not so far as Christ was concerned. Before He could obtain life for us, He must taste death for every man (Hebrews 2:9).

(3) Christ is also the fountain that contains this life. It is treasured up in Him for all who will come to Him for it (1 John 5:12; John 10:14).

2. In what does it consist? It is in all respects the opposite to the death. It is the antidote to spiritual death, for it brings us into union with God. It is the destruction of bodily death; for it secures to the glorified body and soul an everlasting home in God's presence, where is fulness of joy and pleasure for evermore. "

(W. Conway, M. A.)

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KJV: For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

WEB: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.