1868. Death And Life: The Wage And The Gift

No. 1868-31:601. A Sermon Delivered On Lord’s Day Morning, November 1, 1885, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.

For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. {Ro 6:23}

1. In the fifth chapter of this epistle, Paul had shown at considerable length our justification from sin through the righteousness of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Our apostle goes on to speak of our sanctification in Christ; that just as by the righteousness of Christ we have been delivered from the guilt and penalty of sin, so by the power and life of Christ in us we are delivered from the dominion of sin, so as not to live any longer in it. His object is to show that true servants of God cannot live in sin; that by reason of our newness of life in Christ, it is not possible that we should continue to yield our members as instruments to iniquity. We have passed out of the realm of death, we have come into the domain of life; and, therefore, we must act according to that life; and that life being in its essence pure, holy and heavenly, we must proceed from righteousness to holiness.

2. While he is making this argument, our apostle incidentally lets fall the text which may be regarded as a Christian proverb, a golden sentence, a divine statement of truth worthy to be written across the sky. Just as Jesus said of the woman who anointed him for his burial, “Wherever this gospel is preached in the whole world, what this woman has done will also be told as a memorial to her”; so I may say, “Wherever the gospel is preached, this golden sentence, which the apostle has let fall, shall be repeated as a proof of his clarity in the faith.” Here you have both the essence of the gospel, and a statement of that misery from which the gospel delivers all who believe. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

3. First, it will be my painful duty to dwell for a while upon death as the wages of sin; and then, more joyfully, we shall close our morning’s meditation by considering eternal life as the gift of God.

4. I. First, DEATH IS THE WAGES OF SIN.

5. The apostle has in his mind’s eye the situation of a soldier receiving his pay. Sin, the captain, pays his hired soldiers a dreadful wage. The original word means “rations,” or some translate it “stipend.” It means the payment which soldiers receive, put in the plural as wages, because pay can be given in different forms: soldiers might be paid in meat, or in flour, or in money, or in part by their clothing, or by lands promised when the time of service came to an end. Now what sin, the grim captain, pays to those who are under him, is comprehended in this terrible term “death.” It is a word as full as it is short. A legion of terrors are found around this “king of terrors.” Death is the rations which sin pays to those who enlist beneath its banner.

6. Now “sin is any lack of conformity to, or transgression of the law of God.” Sin is that evil power which is in the world in rebellion against the good and gracious power of righteousness which sits upon the throne of God. This evil power of unholiness, untruth, sin, hostility to the mind of God, holds the great majority of our fellow men beneath its sway at this hour. The rations with which it rewards the most desperate valour of its champions is death.

7. To illustrate this terrible fact, I shall make a few observations. First, death is the natural result of all sin. When man acts according to God’s order he lives; but when he breaks his Maker’s laws he wrecks himself, and does what causes death. The Lord warned Adam like this: “In the day that you eat it you shall surely die.” Dying does not mean ceasing to exist, for Adam did not cease to exist, nor do those who die. The term “death” conveys to me no such idea as that of ceasing to exist, or how could I understand that word in First John: “He who does not love his brother remains in death?” {1Jo 3:14} How could a man remain in annihilation? A grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies; but it does not cease to be; no, rather, it produces much fruit. That Adam died in the day when he ate that fruit is certain, or else the Lord did not speak the truth. His nature was wrecked and ruined by separation from God, and by a fall from that condition which constitutes the true life of man. When any man commits sin, he dies to holiness and purity. No transgression is pardonable, but every sin is mortal, and engenders death.

8. The further a man goes in lust and iniquity, the more dead he becomes to purity and holiness: he loses the power to appreciate the beauties of virtue, or to be disgusted with the abominations of vice. Our nature at the very outset has lost that delicacy of perception which results from a healthy life; and as men proceed in unchastity, or injustice, or unbelief, or sin of any kind, they enter deeper and deeper into that awful moral death which is the sure wage of sin. You can sin yourself into an utter deadness of conscience, and that is the first wage of your service of sin.

9. All desire after God, and all delight in him, die out where sin reigns. Death is the separation of the soul from God. Alas, this death has passed upon all men. Can two walk together unless they are agreed? Man may continue to believe in the existence of God, but for all practical purposes God to him is really non-existent. The fool has said in his heart, “No God” — he does not desire God; indeed, he wishes there were no God. As for seeking after God, and delighting himself in the Almighty, the sinner knows nothing about it; his sin has killed him towards all desire for God, or love for him, or delight in him. He is to God dead while he lives. “To be carnally minded is death.”

10. Just as there is through sin a death to God, so there is a death to all spiritual things. “The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness to him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.” The man does not perceive and discern spiritual things, for he is dead to them. Talk to him about the sorrows of the spiritual life, he has never felt them, and he despises them as base platitudes. Speak to him of the joys of the spiritual life, and you will soon discover that you are casting your pearls before swine: he has never sought such joys, he does not believe in them, and he thinks you are a fanatic for talking such nonsense. He is as dead to spiritual realities as a mole is blind to astronomy, or a stone is dead to music. To him it is as though there were neither angel, nor spirit, nor God, nor mercy seat, nor Christ, nor holiness, nor heaven, nor hell. Giving himself up to the dominion of sin, the sinner receives more and more the result of his sin; even as the apostle says, “Sin, when it is finished, produces death.” “He who sows to his flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption.”

11. Inasmuch as in holy and spiritual things dwells the highest happiness of our manhood, this man becomes an unhappy being; at first by deprivation of the joy which spiritual life brings with it, and afterwards by suffering the inevitable misery of spiritual death. God has justly appointed that if a man will not be conformed to God he shall not taste of happiness; and if a man will follow after what is evil, that evil shall by necessity bring with it sorrow and unrest. {Ro 2:9} Since sin as naturally brings spiritual death upon men as fire brings burning, death is spoken of as the wages of sin.

12. I would observe next, that the killing power of some sins is obvious to all observers; for it operates on the body and the mind as well as on the spirit. This spiritual death of which I speak may not strike some of you with fear: you may think it is a trivial matter, though to me I confess that hell, however painted, is never so terrible a thing as the death which fills it. Some sins are murderous to a degree which is clear to all. For example, if a man takes to drunkenness, or if he indulges in lasciviousness, it is obvious even to the unspiritual that the wages of sin is death. See how by many diseases and deliriums the drunkard destroys himself: he has only to drink hard enough, and his grave will be dug. The horrors which attend upon the filthy lusts of the flesh I will not dare to mention; but many a body rotting above ground shall be my silent witness. All know, or ought to know, the mischief which happens to men and women by the violation of that law which commands us to be pure. I spoke the other day to an aged brother who feels the result of natural decay, but is in all other respects sound and healthy, and I congratulated him upon retaining so much vigour at such an age. “Yes,” he replied, “I owe it to the grace of God that I never abused myself in my younger days, and hence I have a supply of strength in my old age.” How many, on the contrary, feel the sins of their youth in their bone, and in their flesh. We have all known that sins of the flesh kill the flesh; and therefore we may infer that sins of the mind kill the mind. Death in any part of our manhood spreads death to the whole. Death drags man down from the power, beauty, and joy of life to the wretched existence, the feebleness, the abominableness of death. The man is no more a man, but the wreck of a man; and his body is not the house of his soul, but a ruin, in which his poor spirit seeks in vain for comfort. A withered heart, a blinded mind, a blasted being; such is the death which comes from sin. The wage of sin is openly death when it assumes certain forms, and it is always really so, whatever form it takes.

13. Now this tendency is in every case the same, “the wages of sin is death” everywhere to everyone. It is so not only where you can see it operating upon the body, but also where you cannot see it. I may perhaps startle you when I say that the wages of sin is death even in the man who has eternal life. Sin has the same deadly character to one as to the other, only an antidote is found. You, my Christian brother, cannot fall into sin without its being poison to you, as well as to anyone else; in fact, to you it is more evidently poison than to those hardened to it. If you sin it destroys your joy, your power in prayer, your confidence towards God. If you have spent evenings in frivolity with worldlings, you have felt the deadening influence of their company. What about your prayers at night? You cannot draw near to God. The operation of sin upon your spirit is most injurious to your communion with God. You are like a man who has taken a noxious drug, whose fumes are stupefying the brain, and sending the heart into slumber. If you, being a child of God, fall into any of the sins which so easily beset you, I am sure you will never find that those sins quicken your grace or increase your faith; but on the contrary, they will work evil in you, only evil, and that continually. Sin is deadly to any man and every man, whoever he may be; and were it not for the mighty curative operation which the indwelling Spirit of God is always carrying on upon the believer’s nature, not one of us would survive the deadly effects of even those sins of infirmity and ignorance into which we fall. I do not wonder that Paul cried aloud, “Oh wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” If a man takes poison, if it does not absolutely kill him, it injures him, and so proves its killing tendency. In certain places the air is pestilential, and though a very healthy man may pass through them and seem none the worse, yet this does not disprove the general deadly tendency of the malarious district, nor does it even prove that the healthy person is not secretly but really injured by having been there. Evils caused by sin may be too deep to be at once visible, just as the most serious of diseases have their periods of incubation, during which the person affected has no idea of the ill which is hatching within him. Sin is in itself an unmitigated evil, root which bears wormwood. Sin is death. Do not wonder therefore that the apostle says, “the wages of sin is death.” As the sparks fly upward, and as the rain falls to the ground, so sin leads to death. As the river takes its leap in the thundering cataract, so must the stream of sin create the fall of death.

14. Moreover, when we read about anything being a wage, what does it mean? It means that it is a reward for labour. Death is sin’s due reward, and it must be paid. An employer hires a man, and it is due to that man that he should receive his wages. If his employer did not pay him his wages, it would be an act of gross injustice. Now, if sin did not bring death and misery on man, it would be an injustice. It is necessary for the very standing of the universe that sin should be punished. It must be so. Those who sow must reap. The sin which hires you must pay you. Wrong cannot produce right. Iniquity, transgression and sin must, in the nature of things, become darkness, sorrow, misery, death. Every transgression and disobedience must receive its just punishment. There is no use in attempting to alter it as long as God and justice reign: those who do sin’s work must receive sin’s wage, and “the wages of sin is death.”

15. Now, observe, that this death, this wage of sin, is in part received by men now as soldiers receive their rations, day by day. It is a terrible thing that they do receive it now. The Scripture says, “If you live according to the flesh, you shall die” — such a life is a continued dying. Again, it is written, “She who lives in pleasure is dead while she lives.” The wrath of God rests on him who does not believe in the Son of God; it is there already. I wish that men here who are not converted would remember where they now are — they are “dead in trespasses and sins.” Oh men, you are not merely sick, but you are “dead in your sins!” You are already dead to the highest spiritual enjoyments, and can never know them except by passing from death to life. You cannot rejoice in God, you cannot know spiritual truth, you cannot taste spiritual bliss, for your sin deadens you to these things every day that you live in it. To all that is worthy of a man, to all that is the true life of manhood, you are dead through sin.

16. But then a Roman soldier did not enlist merely for his rations; his chief pay often lay in the share of the plunder which he received at the end of the war. He expected to share in his captain’s triumph, and to be a partaker in the plunder. Death is the ultimate wage of sin. The death which is intended here is the eternal loss and wreckage of the soul, the destruction of all about it that is worth having, the drifting of the guilty being for ever upon the full tide of those evil tendencies which caused his sin, and were further increased by sin. When all comes to all, this is the place where sin will drive you: it will perpetuate itself, and so for ever kill the soul to God, and goodness, and joy and hope. You will enter upon a world in which the highest enjoyments which even God himself can provide for men will be revealed, but they will be hidden from your eyes because you will be utterly incapable of knowing, appreciating, and enjoying them. Being under the ever-growing power of sin, it will become more and more a hopeless thing that you should escape from the death which settles down on you like this. All the agencies which could have recovered you from the clutch of death have failed to bless you in the life which has come to an end; and now in eternity neither the death of Christ, nor the Holy Spirit, nor the ministry of the word, will ever again operate upon you. Until your last moments you chose sin, and through eternity you will still choose it; for this death is the reward of your sin. Our Lord himself said, “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.” Then you shall come to know to the full what that awful word “death” really means as God intends it. Meanwhile, if you wish to escape this dreadful doom, read your Bible and see how the result of sin is expounded. As our Saviour taught, that future death includes within itself the fire which never shall be quenched, the worm that never dies, the outer darkness, the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and the departure into everlasting fire which begins with a curse from the lip of love. Alienation from God is death, and can never be otherwise. The Holy Spirit, speaking of the ungodly, says, “In flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power.” This will be the ultimatum of sin. As surely as rivers run into the sea, so surely must sin run into death; there is no help for it. This hard and impenitent heart heaps up for itself wrath against the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God. Sin inevitably pays to all who are its servants the death by which bondage to its power is sealed for ever. Oh my God, grant us grace to see what a wretched service this is which pays such terrible rations now, and gives such a terrible dividing of the plunder in the end.

17. I shall no longer dwell upon it, the subject is so distressing to me; except that I must add a few solemn words. The misery of the misery of sin is that it is earned. Every pang that shall fall upon the ungodly either in this life or in the life to come will have this for its sting, — that it was duly earned. The sinner may well say, “I worked for this; I exerted myself to earn this; I now feel the misery of what I wilfully did.” Death is the result of being out of gear with God. But the sinner puts himself into that condition. If men in the world to come could say, “This misery of ours has come upon us by an arbitrary arrangement on the part of God, quite apart from its just results,” then they would derive from that fact some kind of comfort for their conscience, some abatement of their biting remorse. But when they will be obliged to admit that all their woe was their own choice in choosing sin, and is still their own choice in remaining in sin, this will scourge them indeed. Their sin is their hell. The worm which gnaws at the heart of the lost soul is its own wilful hatred of God, and love for evil. Oh lover of sin, you are under the power of this death — this worse than death! You are dead to God, and dead to holiness, and dead to love, and dead to true happiness; and you have brought this death upon yourself, every part and particle of it. You have chosen what has made you a wreck and a ruin, and that in the teeth of many warnings and admonitions. It must be so, that “the wages of sin is death,” and the terror of that death is that it comes as a wage. Why will you die? Why will you earn death? Why will you choose your own delusions? Have you wickedly determined to prove what outer darkness means? Have you turned your back on God just to see how a man must fare who wars with his Maker? Have not enough people dashed themselves to pieces on the rock of sin? Why will you do the same? If you will do so, this shall be the misery of your misery: that you brought it on yourselves, and that you rejected the one remedy provided by the Lord in the person of his Son Jesus Christ.

18. Notice next — and I speak with the truest compassion — that it will be the folly of follies to go on working for such a wage. So far those who have worked for sin have found no profit in it. What fruit have you had, any of you, in the things of which you have reason to be ashamed? Has sin ever brought you any real benefit? Come, now, and let us reason together: — up until now has doing wrong ever worked for your health, or your happiness? Are you the better for hate, or greed, or lust, or drink? Has sin ever developed your inner self into anything worth calling life? You know it has not. It has rather destroyed you than improved you, and you know it. Why, then, will you go further in sin? Have you not learned enough already about the deadly nature of evil? Why will you press further into this barren region, which will become more and more a howling wilderness to you as you advance into it? Why will you go where it will be more and more difficult to return? Oh, may God’s infinite mercy prevent our being such madmen as to labour in the very fire to earn nothing else but death! May God forbid that we should plunge from sin to sin by an inventiveness of rebellion, only to discover more and more what it is to be dead for ever to God, and heaven, and hope, and everything that is to be desired.

19. Let me add, it ought to be the grief of griefs for each of us that we have sinned. Oh, misery, to have laboured so long in a service which brings such terrible wages! Though I have known the Lord now these thirty-six years, I still regret most deeply every sin that I have ever committed against the perfect law of the Lord. I take it that repentance is not the temporary act of a certain period of time, but it is the spirit of the whole life after conversion. When we know we are forgiven, we repent all the more that we ever loved that sin which is so abominable to God, and so evil in every way. Evil seems most evil when we have the clearest sense of divine goodness. Its constant wage is death, and only death; and our lamentation is that we harboured this assassin, yes, even became its slave. Let us humble ourselves before God, because we have played the fool greatly by sinning against him; we have wounded, injured, and destroyed ourselves, and all for nothing — our only wage being a still deeper destruction.

20. Oh you who have never repented, but still remain in this spiritual death, how I long that the voice of Jesus may echo in that sepulchre of sin in which you now lie asleep: may it arouse you, and make you dread the death that never dies! Oh that you may turn over, as it were, in your grave, and begin to moan, “Oh God, deliver me!” If there is such a thought as that in your soul, I shall hope that the Spirit of God has begun to bring life into your spirit. But what an awful thing it is to have spent all these days — and some of you are getting grey — in only doing what is your undoing, in giving life to what is your death! The sole wage that some of you have earned is only death. Is this not a poor reward for all the risk, labour, and perseverance with which you have served sin? May God help you to see your folly, and repent of it.

21. One more thought before I leave this point, and that is, it must certainly be a miracle of miracles if any sinner here does not remain for ever beneath the power of sin. Sin has this mischief about it, that it strikes a man with spiritual paralysis; and how can such a palsied one ward off a further blow? It makes the man dead; and to what purpose do we appeal to him who is dead? I have tried to describe what a dreadful thing it is to be dead to God, and purity, and happiness; but the dead man does not know or care for these things. Our preaching may well be called foolishness, since it is addressed to ears that cannot, or, rather, will not, hear. What a miracle of miracles happens when the divine life comes streaming down into the heart that sin has chilled into death! What a blessedness happens when God intervenes and finds a way by which the wage most justly due shall not be paid! It is a necessity, that every transgression should have its punishment; but in the person of the Lord Jesus such an expiation is made, that sin pays its wage of death to him who did not earn it, while those who did earn it go free. Oh sinner, no one can save you except the God who made you! You, as dead in sin, are in such a state that you will rot into corruption, and go on for ever rotting into an even more foul and filthier corruption throughout the ages; and no one can prevent it except Almighty God himself. Only one power is capable of affording you the help you need; and that power works through the Lord Jesus, who is at this moment mighty to save. Oh! that the miracle of miracles might be performed on you: for if not, there it stands, “The wages of sin is death.” Alas! I fear that sin will pervert even the ministry of the word, and make it a savour of death to death. This is the first teaching of the text, and I pray the Holy Spirit to impress it on every conscience!

22. II. And now I am glad to pass into liberty and joy while I speak on the second subject: ETERNAL LIFE IS THE GIFT OF GOD.

23. Notice well the change: death is a wage, but life is a gift. Sin brings its natural consequences with it; but eternal life is not the purchase of human merit, but the free gift of the love of God. The abounding goodness of the Most High alone grants life to those who are dead by sin. It is with clear intent to teach us the doctrine of the grace of God that the apostle altered the word here from wages to gift. Naturally he would have said, “The wages of sin is death, but the wages of righteousness is eternal life.” But he wished to show us that life comes upon quite a different principle from that upon which death comes. In salvation all is of free gift: in damnation everything is of justice and deserving. When a man is lost, he has earned it; when a man is saved, it is given to him.

24. Let us notice, first, that eternal life is imparted by grace through faith. When it first enters the soul it comes as God’s free gift. The dead cannot earn life; the very supposition is absurd. Eternal life enjoyed on earth comes to us as a gift. “What!” one says, “do you mean to say that eternal life comes into the soul here?” I say yes, here, or else never. Eternal life must be our possession now; for if we die without it; it will never be our possession in the world to come, which is not the state of probation, but of fixed and settled reward. When the flame of eternal life first drops into a man’s heart, it is not as the result of any good works of his which preceded it, for there were none; nor as the result of any feelings of his, for good feelings were not there until the life came. Both good works and good feelings are the fruit of the heavenly life which enters the heart, and makes us conscious of its entrance by working in us repentance and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. “Eternal life is the gift of God in Jesus Christ.” By faith we come consciously into Christ. We trust him, we rest upon him, we become one with him, and so eternal life reveals itself. Has he not said, “I give to my sheep eternal life”; and again, “He who believes in him has everlasting life?” Oh beloved, you who have been quickened by the Spirit of God, I am sure you trace that first quickening to the grace of God. Whatever your doctrinal views may be, you are all agreed in the practical acknowledgment that by the grace of God you are what you are. How could you, being dead, give yourself life? How could you, being the slave of sin, set yourself free? But the Lord in mercy visited you as surely as the Lord Jesus Christ visited the tomb of Lazarus; and he spoke with his almighty voice, and commanded you to come to life, and you arose and came to life at his command. You remember well the change that came upon you. If any man here could have been literally dead, and then could have been made to live, what a wonderful experience his would have been! We should go a long way to hear the story of a man who had been dead, and then was made alive again. But I tell you, his experience, if he could tell it, would not be any more wonderful than our experience as quickened from death in sin; for we have suffered the pains that come through the entrance of life into the soul, and we know the joys which afterwards come from it. We have seen the light that life brings to the spiritual eye; we have felt the emotions that life brings to the quickened heart; we have known the joys which life, and only life, can bring to the entire man. We can tell you something about these things; but if you want to know them to the full, you must feel them for yourselves. “You must be born again.” We bear our witness that eternal life within our spirit is not of our earning, but the gift of God.

25. Beloved, since we received eternal life, we have gone on to grow, and we have made great advances in the divine life; our little trembling faith has now grown to be full assurance; that zeal of ours which burned so low that we hardly dared to attempt anything for Jesus has now flamed up into full consecration, so that we live to his praise. Where has this growth come from? Is it not still a free gift? Have you received an increase of life by the law, or has it come to you as the free gift of God? I know what you will say; and if any of you have so grown in grace that you have become mature Christians; if any of you have been taught by God so that you can teach others; if any of you have been led by the Holy Spirit so that your sanctification is known to all men, and you have become saintly men and women; I am sure that your holiness and maturity are still gifts received, and not wages earned. I will ask the question of you again: “Did this abundant life come to you by the works of the law, or by grace through faith which is in Christ Jesus?” Your instantaneous answer is, “It is all of grace, in the latter as well as in the earlier stages.” Yes, in every degree the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus.

26. Yes; and when we get to heaven, and the eternal life shall be developed there as a bud opens into a rose in full bloom; when our life shall embrace God’s life, and God’s life shall encompass ours; when we shall be abundantly alive to everything that is holy, divine, heavenly, blessed, and eternally glorious; oh, then we shall confess that our life was all of the grace of God, the free gift of God in Jesus Christ our Lord! I am sure that our heavenly education will only make us know more and more fully that while death is the well-earned wages of sin, eternal life is from beginning to end the gift of infinite grace.

27. Beloved, observe gratefully what a wonderful gift this is, — “the gift of God,” — the gift which Jesus bestows upon every believer; for “to as many as received him, he gave power to them to become the sons of God, even to as many as believed in his name; who were born, not by blood, nor by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of man, but by God.” How expressive is our Lord’s statement: “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life: and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God rests in him!” What a life this is! It must be of a wonderful kind, because it is called “life” par excellence, emphatically “life,” true life, real life, essential life. This does not mean mere existence, as some vainly say. There never was a greater blunder than to confound life with existence, or death with non-existence; these are two totally different and distinct ideas. The life of man means the existence of man as he ought to exist — in union with God, and consequently in holiness, purity, health, and happiness. Man, as God intended him to be, is man enjoying life — man, as sin makes men, is man remaining in death. All that man can receive of joy and honour the Lord gives to man to constitute eternal life in the world to come. What a life is this! The life that is imparted to us in regeneration is God’s own life, brought into us by “the living and incorruptible seed which lives and endures for ever.” We are related to God by the new birth, and by loving union with his Son Jesus Christ. What must life mean in God’s sense of it?

28. Moreover, we have life eternal, too, never-ending. Whatever else may end, this never can. It can neither be killed by temptation, nor destroyed by trial, nor quenched by death, nor worn out by the ages. The gift of the eternal God is eternal life. Those who talk about a man having everlasting life, and losing it, do not know the force of language. If a man has eternal life, it is eternal, and cannot therefore end or be lost. If it is everlasting, it is “everlasting”; to lose it would prove that it was not everlasting. No, if you have eternal life, you can never perish; if God has bestowed it upon you, it will not be recalled, “for the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” This eternal life is obviously a free gift; for how could any man obtain it in any other way? It is too precious to be bought, too divine to be made by man. If it had to be earned, how could you have earned it? You, I mean, who have already earned death. The wage due to you already was death, and by that wage you were effectively shut out from all possibility of ever earning life. Indeed, the earning of life seems to me to be out of the question from the beginning. It has come to us as a free gift; it could not come in any other way.

29. Furthermore, remember that it is life in Jesus; the “through” of our version is “in” in the original. We are in everlasting union with the blessed Person of the Son of God, and therefore we live. To be in Christ is a mystery of bliss. The apostle felt that this was an occasion for again rehearsing our blessed Master’s names and titles of honour — “in Jesus Christ our Lord.” I pointed out to you on a former occasion how, at certain seasons, the various honours and titles of great men are proclaimed by heralds with becoming state, and so here, to the praise of the Lord Jesus, Paul writes his full degree — “Eternal life in Jesus Christ our Lord.” He writes in large letters the august name before which every knee shall bow, and he links our life with it. Here we read the cheering and precious name of Jesus. By that name he is nearest to man; when he was born into our nature he was named Jesus, “for he shall save his people from their sins.” The life which comes in connection with him is salvation from sin. In this Saviour is life. The next name is “Christ,” or anointed, by which name he is nearest to God, being sent out and anointed by God to entreat with us on God’s behalf. He is the Lord’s Christ, and our Jesus. Next he is called “Our Lord.” Herein lies the glory of our anointed Saviour: we through grace becoming servants participate in the life and glory of our Lord. He reigns as our Lord, and by his reigning power he shows himself to be the Lord and giver of life. “All live to him.” Our Lord has life in himself, and breathes it into us. What a life this is, — a life saved from sin, a life anointed by the Holy Spirit, a life in union with him who is Lord of all. This is the life which is particularly the gift of God.

30. So I have described this doctrine, and I desire to apply it by adding a little more of practical importance. First, let us come at this time, one and all, and receive this divine life as a gift in Christ Jesus. If any of you have been working for it by going about to establish your own righteousness, I beseech you to end the foolish labour by submitting yourselves to the righteousness of God. If you have been trying to feel so much, or to pray so much, or to mourn so much, forbear from offering a price, and come and receive life as a free gift from your God. Pull down the idol of your pride, and humbly sue for pardoning grace on the plea of mercy. Believe and live. You are not called upon to earn life, but to receive it; receive it as freely as your lungs take in the air you breathe. If you are dead in sin at this moment, yet the gospel of life has come near to you. With that gospel there comes the life-giving wind of the eternal Spirit. He can call you out of your ruin, and wreckage, and death, and make you live. This is his word, “Awaken, you who sleep, and rise from the dead, and Christ shall give you life.” Will you have it as a gift? If there is any true life in you your answer will be quick and hearty. You will be lost if you do not receive this gift. Your earnings will be paid into your bosom, and dread will be the death which will settle down upon you. The acceptance of a free gift would not be difficult if we were not so proud. Accept it — may God help you to accept it at once! Even that acceptance will be God’s gift; for the will to live is life; and all true life, from beginning to end, is entirely from the Lord.

31. Beloved, have we accepted that free gift of eternal life? Let us remain in it. Let us never be tempted to try the law of merit; let us never attempt to live by our earnings. No doubt eternal life is a reward in one sense, but it is always a reward of grace, not a reward of debt. The Lord shall give us a crown of life at last as a reward; but even then we shall confess that he first gave us the work by which the crown was won. The Lord first gives us good works, and then rewards us for them. The labour of love is in itself a gift of love. Grace reigns all along; not only in removing sin, but in working virtue.

32. Finally, are we now remaining in eternal life, trusting in the Son of God, and clinging to his skirts? then let us live for his glory. Do we know that because he lives, we shall live also? If so, let us show by our gratitude how greatly we prize this gift. We live in a world where death is everywhere revealing itself in various forms of corruption; therefore let us see from what the Lord has delivered us. Let no man boast in his heart that he is not subject to the vile influences which hold the world in its corruption. Let no pride because of our new life ever cross our spirit. Chase every such thought as that away with detestation. If our life is of grace, there is no room for boasting, but much room for soul humbling. When you walk the streets, and hear the groans of the dead in the form of oaths and blasphemies, thank the Lord that you have been taught a more living language. Think of drunkenness and lust as the worms that are bred by the putridity of the death which results from sin. You are disgusted and horrified, my brethren; but these things would have been in you also except for the grace of God. We are like living men confined in a mortuary; wherever we turn we see the dreary works of death; but all this should make us grateful to the sacred power which has brought us out of death into spiritual life.

33. As for others, let us anxiously ask the question — “Can these dry bones live?” Then let us be obedient to the heavenly vision when the divine word says to us, “Son of man, prophesy upon these bones.” We must cherish the faith which will enable us to do this. Moreover, a sight of the universal death of unrenewed nature should drive us to prayer, so that we cry, “Come from the four winds, oh breath, and breathe upon these slain, so that they may live.” This prayer being offered, we should live in hopeful expectancy that the Lord will open the graves of his people, and cause them to come out and live by his Spirit. Oh for grace to prophesy believingly upon these bones, and say, “Oh you dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones, ‘Behold I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live.’ ” Beloved, we shall yet see them stand up a very great army, quickened by the Lord our God. He delights to burst the bonds of death. Resurrection is one of his prime glories. He heralds resurrection, work with trumpets, and angels, and a glorious high throne, because he delights in it. The living Jehovah rejoices to give life, and especially to give it to the dead. Corruption flees before him, grave-clothes are torn, and sepulchres are broken open. “I am the resurrection, and the life,” says Jesus; and so he is even at this hour. Oh God, save this congregation to the praise of the glory of your grace, by which you have made us to live, and to be accepted in your well-beloved Son. Amen and Amen.

[Portion Of Scripture Read Before Sermon — Ro 6]
{See Spurgeon_Hymnal “Spirit of the Psalms — Psalm 100” 100 @@ "(Version 1)"}
{See Spurgeon_Hymnal “The Work of Grace as a Whole — Sin Subdued By Grace” 238}
{See Spurgeon_Hymnal “Man Fallen — Faith In Christ For Cleansing” 474}

Spirit of the Psalms
Psalm 100 (Version 1)
1 Before Jehovah’s awful throne,
   Ye nations bow with sacred joy;
   Know that the Lord is God alone;
   He can create and he destroy.
2 His sovereign power, without our aid,
   Made us of clay and form’d us men,
   And when like wandering sheep we stray’d
   He brought us to his fold again.
3 We are his people, we his care,
   Our souls and all our mortal frame;
   What lasting honours shall we rear,
   Almighty Maker, to thy name?
4 We’ll crowd thy gates with thankful songs,
   High as the heavens our voices raise;
   And earth with her ten thousand tongues
   Shall fill thy courts with sounding praise.
5 Wide as the world is thy command;
   Vast as eternity thy love;
   Firm as a rock thy truth must stand,
   When rolling years shall cease to move.
                        Isaac Watts, 1719.

Psalm 100 (Version 2)
1 All people that on earth do dwell,
   Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice;
   Him serve with mirth, his praise forth tell;
   Come ye before him and rejoice.
2 Know that the Lord is God indeed;
   Without our aid he did us make;
   We are his flock, he doth us feed;
   And for his sheep he doth us take.
3 Oh enter then his gates with praise,
   Approach with joy his courts unto:
   Praise, laud, and bless his name always,
   For it is seemly so to do.
4 For why? the Lord our God is good,
   His mercy is for ever sure;
   His truth at all times firmly stood,
   And shall from age to age endure.
                        William Kethe, 1562.

Psalm 100 (Version 3)
1 With one consent let all the earth
   To God their cheerful voices raise;
   Glad homage pay with awful mirth,
   And sing before him songs of praise.
2 Convinced that he is God alone,
   From whom both we and all proceed;
   We, whom he chooses for his own,
   The flock that he vouchsafes to feed.
3 Oh enter then his temple gate,
   Thence to his courts devoutly press,
   And still your grateful hymns repeat,
   And still his name with praises bless.
4 For he’s the Lord, supremely good,
   His mercy is for ever sure;
   His truth, which always firmly stood,
   To endless ages shall endure.
                        Tate and Brady, 1696.

Psalm 100 (Version 4)
1 Ye nations round the earth, rejoice
   Before the Lord, your sovereign King,
   Serve him with cheerful heart and voice,
   With all your tongues his glory sing.
2 The Lord is God; ‘tis he alone
   Doth life, and breath, and being give:
   We are his work, and not our own,
   The sheep that on his pastures live.
3 Enter his gates with songs of joy,
   With praises to his courts repair;
   And make it your divine employ
   To pay your thanks and honours there.
4 The Lord is good, the Lord is kind;
   Great is his grace, his mercy sure;
   And the whole race of man shall find
   His truth from age to age endure.
                           Isaac Watts, 1719.

The Work of Grace as a Whole
238 — Sin Subdued By Grace
1 Lord, we confess our numerous faults,
   How great our guilt has been!
   Foolish and vain were all our thoughts,
   And all our lives were sin.
2 But, oh my soul! for ever praise,
   For ever love his name,
   Who turns thy feet from dangerous ways
   Of folly, sin, and shame.
3 ‘Tis not by works of righteousness
   Which our own hands have done;
   But we are saved by sovereign grace
   Abounding through his Son.
4 ‘Tis from the mercy of our God
   That all our hopes begin;
   ‘Tis by the water and the blood
   Our souls are wash’d from sin.
5 ‘Tis through the purchase of his death
   Who hung upon the tree.
   The Spirit is sent down to breathe
   On such dry bones as we.
6 Raised from the dead, we live anew;
   And, justified by grace,
   We shall appear in glory too,
   And see our Father’s face.
                        Isaac Watts, 1709.

Man Fallen
474 — Faith In Christ For Cleansing
1 How sad our state by nature is!
      Our sin how deep it stains!
   And Satan binds our captive minds
      Fast in his slavish chains.
2 But there’s a voice of sovereign grace
      Sounds from the sacred Word,
   “Ho, ye despairing sinners, come,
      And trust upon the Lord.”
3 My soul obeys th’ almighty call,
      And runs to this relief;
   I would believe thy promise, Lord,
      Oh! help my unbelief.
4 To the dear fountain of thy blood,
      Incarnate God, I fly;
   Here let me wash my spotted soul
      From crimes of deepest dye.
5 Stretch out thine arm, victorious King!
      My reigning sins subdue;
   Drive the old dragon from his seat,
      With all his hellish crew.
6 A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
      On thy kind arms I fall;
   Be thou my strength and righteousness
      My Jesus and my all.
                           Isaac Watts, 1709.