Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 04 Sept. 2011
By Captain Michael Ramsay
Some of you know that before I was an Officer in The Salvation Army, I was trained as an elementary school teacher and I was a private businessman predominantly working in the field of education. I had a number of contracts. I had jobs at the Ministry of Education and oversaw staff working in the Examinations and the Learning Resource Branches. I also was in charge of a crew at Defence Research. I owned/operated a couple tutoring companies, ran the Journal of International Education, founded an association of international colleges and was a director and/or programmer for a number of colleges. This was my life prior to entering into full-time ministry. Have I ever told you the story about how I got my first wages, my first real paycheque working with the international colleges?
In my early 20s, I volunteered to help a friend teach a class at a Japanese girls’ school in Victoria for the summer. I enjoyed the experience so I embarked on a strategy to secure myself a paid contract with the school the following year. This college only hired teachers for the spring and summer semesters; the rest of the year they just employed the administrators. What I would do is in the fall and winter, I would take time and make a point of visiting the chief administrator, the director of the college so as to get to know her and let her know that I would be interested in working with the college in the spring. I would visit her every week or two and ask the director about the college and tell her about the contracts that I was doing at the Ministry of Education with the goal in mind to get a paid contract with the school for the summer.
Well, I guess I wasn’t clear as to why I was visiting all the time because at one point I asked about the spring programme and she told me that she had already hired all the classroom teachers. She didn’t need anyone else. I was in shock. Why had I been investing all this time to visit throughout the year? She then asked me if I could teach basketball. Me, 5’7” or 5’8”, me, teach basketball… “No” I replied, still in shock. She then asked if I could teach badminton to which, still in shock, I, after turning down the basketball teacher’s job, reflexively and almost involuntarily replied “Yes” and then I promptly went by the local library to learn how to play badminton. I picked up every book on badminton that I could find and called up a friend of mine who actually knew the sport to teach me how to play so that I could live up to the job that I had already obtained. Now the position of Acting Principal opened up shortly afterwards and I took that on before becoming one of the directors of that college myself but I got my first wages in the colleges by agreeing to teach badminton in this way. (The badminton class went well by the way.)
Today the verse we are speaking about, Romans 6:23, is looking at wages from a different source. 6:23a records that, “the wages of sin is death.” Before we get into this too much, we should all know what sin is. Literally, the word here in Romans comes from an archery term meaning, ‘to miss the target’ or ‘to miss the mark’.[1] The word as it is applied in this context here refers to more of a status than a process.[2] Sin here is the already fired arrow having missed the mark. We have all sinned as we have missed the righteousness mark (Romans 6:16; cf. Romans 3:22-23). Righteousness for our purposes today we will simply define as being right with God.[3] Sin is having fallen short of this mark (this status).
We know also what wages are, right? Wages are what we are paid for what we do – often times in our culture this is represented by a paycheque. So then relating to our scripture today, what we earn by having missed the righteousness mark is death. The wages of sin is death. Doctrine 5 of The Salvation Army reads, ‘We believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by their disobedience [their sin] they lost their purity and happiness; and that in consequence of their fall all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.’ The wages of sin is death.
The Apostle Paul expresses this idea in a number of different ways (cf. Romans 6:1-14, Romans 6:15-23, Romans 7:1-6).[4] Pertaining to the wages, which we are looking at today, he says in this analogy (Romans 6:15-23) that being neutral is not an option. Like a CFL (professional football) game that is already underway, you are either in the uniform of the Blue Bombers or of the Roughriders. The game is underway; no other players are on the field. You can play for one team or you can play for the other. No player on the field in neutral.
Expressed another way: unemployment is not an option. There are two competing companies in town and we have to work for one or the other of them. We can be employees (slaves/servants) of the Sin Company of which Adam, as the first to sin, is the CEO (Romans 6:21); or we can be employees of the Obedience Company, of which Christ, as the first fruits of the Resurrection, is the CEO (Romans 6:22). We can be employees (slaves/servants) of the Sin Company and receive as our pay, death (Romans 6:21); or we can be employees of the Obedience Company and receive as our pay, sanctification (NRSV, NIV: holiness; Romans 6:22; cf. TSA doc. 10). We can either choose sin and death or we can choose obedience and sanctification.
Paul, in this pericope is addressing the oft-asked question, ‘Whose side are you on; are you on the Lord’s side?’ If God’s Obedience Company employs us then we should make sure that we actually work for His side. If we are on His team, we should play our position. We do the team no good, if we put on the jersey and then just sit in the stands. Paul asks in effect ‘what good is it to wear the team jersey if we never take the field. In Chapter Six Verse One he asks, now that we are on God’s Obedience team “shall we just go on sinning so that grace may increase?” Paul then answers this right away before he even gets to the passage and the analogy that we are looking at today. He says here, as he has said elsewhere, Romans 6:2, “By no means! We died to sin; how can you live in it anymore.” You can’t (cf. 1 Peter 1:15; Leviticus 11:44-45, 19:2, 20:7; Psalm 89:35; 2 Corinthians 13; Colossians 1:28; Hebrews 11-12).
In Chapter 7, Paul will point out - what was generally accepted by his readers/listeners at the time and place of this letter- that when you enter into a marriage covenant with someone that is the one person you promise God you will be faithful to, forsaking all others, until one of you dies.[5] It is only when one’s first spouse dies that one is free to marry a subsequent spouse – otherwise we are committing adultery (Romans 7:2; cf. 1 Corinthians 7:10-11; cf. also 1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6). Paul says this is representative of our covenant with God. Only when we die to sin are we are released from our bondage to it (cf. Romans 6:5-10). When we are raised in Christ, we are a part of a new creation; we are free to be the holy bride of Christ (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:27, Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 5:22-32, Revelation 21-22). Returning to sin is like returning to be with our diseased first spouse (Romans 7:1-6; Romans 6:1-14). That doesn’t make any sense.
The truth is that, Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And Romans 6:1-2: “Shall we just go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can you live in it anymore.” We are saved from sin; we are not saved to sin (Matthew 5:17-21, 1 Peter 1:16, Galatians 3-5 cf. Leviticus 19:22; Psalm 89:35, 2 Corinthians 13, Colossians 1:28, Hebrews 11-12). You have been traded to a new team, don’t play for the old one; you are no longer employed by the Sin Company, so stop doing its work! This is important and it is something that historically even high-profile people have either ignorantly misunderstood or defiantly misinterpreted. One such person was the notorious Russian Monk, Rasputin. We know who Rasputin was? Maybe we remember that Boney M 1978 Disco song ‘Ra Ra Rasputin’. That song claims that the monk was a lover of the Russian queen. There is no evidence for this but he was an advisor to the Russian Royal family prior to the 1917 Revolution and Scholar F.F. Bruce points out that Rasputin promoted the heresy that we can continue to intentionally sin and still be saved. FF Bruce says,
…Russian Monk Gregory Rasputin, [was] the evil genius of the Romanov family in its last years of power. Rasputin taught and exemplified the doctrine of salvation through repeated experiences of sin and repentance. He held that, as those who sin require the MOST forgiveness, a sinner who CONTINUES to sin with abandon enjoys, each time he repents, MORE of God’s forgiving grace than any ordinary sinner. [6]
Thus, Rasputin reasoned, if you sin more, you receive more grace. This is not true. The Salvation Army Doctrine 9 states that “continuance in a state of salvation depends upon CONTINUED obedient faith in Christ.” Doctrine 10 of The Salvation Army states, “that it is the PRIVILLEGE of ALL believers to be wholly sanctified, and that their whole spirit and soul and body may be preserved BLAMELESS unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The Apostle Paul says, Romans 6:1-2: “Shall we just go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can you live in it anymore.” You have been traded from the Sin team to the Obedience team; how can you keep playing for the Sin team; you are now employed by God and the Obedience Company so don’t do the work of the Sin Company. Romans 6:23: “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
There is another important element to this: You have no doubt heard in other sermons/ homilies/ speaks on this verse the difference between wages and a gift. Wages are something that we deserve. We go into work, we put in our hours and we get our paycheque. When you are a slave to sin, when you are an employee of the Sin Company, you earn your wages and your wages are death. This is true. When you work in Sin you earn your death. Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death...”
In contrast the eternal life that we receive and our obedience to the Lord, is a gift. We do nothing to merit that gift but like any gift it is only any good to us if we accept it and if we open it. Christ died on the cross and rose from the grave so that whosoever will, may be saved and so that that none of us need to perish (John 3:16-17). He offers us all that free gift of eternal life in God if we just accept this gift of righteousness and open this gift of obedience. Each and every one of us has already been offered a job in the righteousness department of the Obedience Company of our Lord and Saviour. Jesus Christ -between the cross and the empty tomb- made this job offer to everyone (cf. TSA doc. 6). All we need to do is go to work for the Lord and we will collect our free gift at the end of the day. Romans 6:23: “…the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
We should remember what company we work for, what team we play for and act accordingly. As was pointed out earlier, Rasputin rolled his ball of biblical interpretation of sin and salvation so far from holiness that it rolled right off the table onto the floor of heresy. Others conversely, having rolled their hermeneutical balls too far in the other direction, have brought this passage so far from grace that they have also fallen upon heresy. We spoke last week about Galatians 3:19-25 and how people can be trapped by legalism, rules and regulations, as if somehow by our own merit we can obtain salvation.[7] We can do nothing to offer ourselves eternal life. Eternal life is a gift of God.
And once we have accepted this free gift of eternal life, the righteous, we will live by faith. And this faith is both, as James D.G. Dunn declares, “the initial act of receiving the gospel and the continuing process toward salvation.”[8] Faith is a result of righteousness (Romans 3:22; 4:5, 9,11,13; 9:30; 10:6) and righteousness is from God (Romans 3:22, 24; 10:3, 17; cf. 5:19; Psalm 72:11; Isaiah 46:13; 61:10; Joel 2:23) for it is God who is righteous (Romans 3:5; cf. Psalm 35:24; 48:10; 50:6; 51:14; 65:5; 71:19; Isaiah 5:16) and it is His righteousness that enables us to be righteous, just as it is Christ’s faithfulness that enables us to live by faith.
Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” As we said at the top of this homily, this passage is addressing our position in Christ rather than our individual actions. We have come back to Paul’s analogy a few times that we can either be in the position of a slave (employee/servant) of Sin (Romans 6:21) or we can be in the position of a slave (employee/servant) of Obedience (Romans 6:22). We can either choose sin and death or we can choose obedience and sanctification. We can choose one or the other but we cannot choose both.
Now this does not mean that if we are working for the Sin Company and sometimes accidentally or otherwise commit actions of obedience that we are contracted out to the Obedience Company and receive the gift of eternal life. The devil does not give up on us that easily! Likewise and very importantly as we are each now working for the Obedience Company, this passage does not mean that if we accidentally or otherwise sin that we will immediately be terminated and lose eternal life; it does not work that way.
This is important. Romans 6:23, “The wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This verse is not speaking of our every action; we do not lose our salvation every time we utter a curse word. This pericope is speaking about our relationship with Christ. For those who choose to continue outside of a relationship with Christ, for those who choose to reject His job offer of obedience and righteousness, as they make that choice they will receive the consequence of death regardless of whether they have done a bunch of seemingly ‘good’ things in their lives or not (cf. TSA doc. 11). But here is the good news: For those of us who have committed to following Jesus. He has already declared us righteous. He has already declared us holy. He has made us positionally perfect when we accepted his job offer of obedience unto righteousness (cf. Psalm 89:35, 2 Corinthians 13, Colossians 1:28, Hebrews 11-12).
If we are playing for the Obedience Team, the Salvation Team, He is not going to kick us off the team when we throw an incomplete pass, when we miss the mark, when we sin. He, like the good coach, is going to give us the opportunity on the very next play to repent, to change. As long as we are willing to play for His team, He is going to continue to send us right back out there and give us every opportunity to complete the pass. As we remain on Christ’s team, no matter how many times we mess up; as we remain on His team, He has already won the victory; as we remain on His team, Christ guarantees that, even though the wages of sin are death; as we remain on his team, we are guaranteed eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Let us pray.
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[1] Cf. John Phillips, Exploring Romans (Chicago, Ill.: Moody Press, 1969), 67 and The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible. ‘264: hamartanÅ’ (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishing, 1995), p.5.
[2] N.T. Wright, The Letter to the Romans (NIB 10: Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1995), 544
[3] Cf. John Reumann, “Righteousness (NT),” in The Anchor Bible Dictionary, Volume 6. Ed. David Noel Freedman, 1st ed. (New York, New York: Doubleday, 1992), 764-765.
[4] Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans. Interpretation: (Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1985), 108.
[5] Paul J. Achtemeier, Romans. Interpretation: (Atlanta, Georgia: John Knox Press, 1985), 108.
[6] F.F. Bruce, The Letter of Paul to the Romans. Tyndale NTC (Leicester, UK: IV Press, 1985) 127.
[7] Captain Michael Ramsay, Don’t Be A McChicken. Presented to the Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army (28 August 2011). Available online: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2011/08/galatians-319-25-dont-be-mcchicken.html
[8] James D.G. Dunn, Romans 1-8. (WBC 38A: Word Books: Dallas, Texas, 1988), 49.
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