For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)
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Most people think of life and death only as the physical events associated to being alive and to the moment after we take our last breath, respectively.
When Paul writes to the Roman church, he speaks of life and death with a different meaning behind those words. He talks about spiritual life and death, not the physical ones.
Death, from Paul’s point of view, means life without God. So a person can be walking around and breathing, and still be spiritually dead.
Life means having a relationship with God. And this life is eternal, it doesn’t stop when our body dies.
So just being “physically alive” doesn’t determine the most important state of our soul: the spiritual one.
The fact is, spiritual life and death are the ones that really matter.
The death Paul talks about is not a definitive state, but it is a cycle that needs to be broken. He says that “the wages of sin is death”. So if one sins, they get death as consequence, they get to be apart from God. One sins again, and they remain in that cycle of death.
There is only one thing that can break this cycle: accepting Jesus as one’s Savior (check this post for more details about it). When you do that, Jesus frees you from sin, and the cycle is broken. Not only you get freed of sin and its wages, which is death, you receive eternal life!
We have little to no conscious choice about our physical death. Most of us won’t be able to determine when it is going to happen, how it will happen. But death is a reality for all who are living.
Although we might have no choice regarding our physical death, we have the choice regarding our spiritual state. We can choose between life and death at any moment, and that choice has eternal implications.
Even if one chooses to do nothing, they end up choosing death.
If you choose Jesus Christ, you get salvation from your sins, you get eternal life, you get a relationship with God for all eternity. Physical and spiritual deaths are no longer threats, and eternity becomes a reality to be enjoyed.
You have the choice. If you think about it, it is not a difficult one…
“Eternity to the godly is a day that has no sunset; eternity to the wicked is a night that has no sunrise.” — Thomas Watson