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"For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life" Rom. 6:23

As a Christian, the above-quoted verse must have been one of the few verses you knew offhand growing up. Especially the “For the wages of sin is death” part. Why so? Of course we must know that committing sins got repercussions. And what repercussion could be worse than death? So basically, this verse is used
"For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus” Rom. 6:23 to warn us about the danger of sinning.

What is mysterious however is how much emphasis is given to the part that deals with death that most don’t even see the assurance of eternal life right within the same verse. “And the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus”. And just imagine, this one is even freely given. Unlike the wage “we have to work for”. So much sin consciousness? Well, sin is like that iron rod placed inside a fiery hot furnace and when red hot is placed in our mouth. It burns that much! Nah, I can’t be the only one who was taught that in Sunday school…

Anyway, back to the post. Let me say here that it will amount to an abuse of the Scriptures to pick a verse out of context and interpret it as a major subject. Say for example I say to a group of boys “I will give a thousand naira to each and every one of you who answers my question correctly.” Won’t it then be injustice to me for someone to claim what I said to the boys was “I will give a thousand naira to each and every one of you.” And thus ask me to fulfil my promise by giving each of the boys a thousand naira?

So you see that to get an accurate interpretation of that which is written/said, we have to go back and check it contextually, and interpret it in context of what was being said when the utterance was made. That being said. Let’s take a cursory look at the sixth chapter of Romans down to v23 which is the subject matter here.

v1-v4
"What shall we say then? Shall we continue to sin, that grace may abound? God forbid”. Now we won’t stop here this time around like we always do. We go further. “How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
So Paul is saying here that we are dead to sin. How them do we still receive death as the wages of something we are supposedly dead to?

v15-v18
15. “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. 16. Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? 17. But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you. 18. Being then made free from sin, ye became the servants of righteousness.”
So if we yield our bodies to sin it is unto death, but if we yield it to obedience, it is unto righteousness (v16). Obedience of what? “but ye have OBEYED from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered to you. v17b” What doctrine? The gospel of the Lord Jesus. And when they believed, what happened? They were no more servants of sin v17a. And what more? Being made FREE from sin, ye became servants of righteousness v18. So if we have been made free from sin because we obeyed the doctrine delivered, how then do we receive the death wage of what we have been set free from?

V20-23
20. “For when ye were servants of sin, ye were free from righteousness. 21. What fruit had ye in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. 22. But now being made free from sin, and become servants to God, ye have fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life. 23. For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
Before I go further to explain this, did you notice how that everywhere sin was used all through the chapter, it was in the singular form and not the plural (sins)? So the intent of the writer was not fornication, covetousness and the likes. But rather the nature of sin itself. The wages is not for fornication, adultery, stealing and all those sins, (we would have had to wonder how many times some folks would die) but rather for the sin-nature. Now let’s go back to v20-v23. Keypoints: When we WERE servants of sin (past tense), then we WERE free from righteousness (past tense, we could not do the works of righteousness). But NOW (the present), BEING MADE free from sin (that which is done) and BECOME servants to GOD (who we are now), we HAVE fruit unto holiness, and THE END everlasting life (present, assured future). FOR (this connotes a further explanation on what had been said previously) the wages of sin is death… So actually, v23 is a further explanation on v22, showing us what we had when we were under sin and what we have now that we have been made free from sin. It is not a standalone. You have to see it in light of what was said before it. The death referred to is the death we had in the past, before we became believers. Now that we have believed, there is no death in us. The wages of sin (the nature) is death, agreed. But as seen in v22, we have been made free from sin (Rom. 8:2). And when we are now free from that which leads to death, what do we have left as ours? “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus”. Or don't you know? You can't have the Spirit of God in you who is the Spirit of LIFE and still house death.

I hope you understand this.
Nothing in this post defends sinning. It is only a pointer to why scriptures have to be interpreted rightly and not just lifted out of context.

God bless you.

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Please does anyone have an idea where I can get to buy a thermopile detector?
Thanks.

Please, do you have thermopile detector?