Many of us who grew up with Penal Substitutionary Atonement (PSA) as the Gospel, probably learned it through the Romans Road.

The Romans Road consists of four verses that are presented together as a succinct summary of what you need to believe in order to be saved.

The Romans Road

• Romans 3:23 (all have sinned)
• Romans 6:23 (wages of sin is death)
• Romans 5:8 (Christ died for us)
• Romans 10:9-10 (confess and believe)

It begins with Romans 3:23: “… all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

From here, it jumps to Romans 6:23, which states that “…the wages of sin is death.”

This is the bad news. No matter how good you think you are, the Bible plainly states that all have sinned. And because the wages of (any) sin is death everyone is deserving of execution.

The good news of the Gospel, however, is that Christ died for us. To get there we curiously have to backtrack a chapter to Romans 5:8: “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.”

The “for” here is doing some heavy lifting. It is taken to mean that Jesus died instead of us. As a sinner, you are deserving of death, but Jesus steps in and dies the death you should have died.

From here the Romans Road jumps 5 chapters ahead to conclude with Romans 10:9-10: ”9 … if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For one believes with the heart, leading to righteousness, and one confesses with the mouth, leading to salvation.”

A Closer Look at Romans 6:20-23

I’d like to take a closer look at Romans 6:23. In a way, the entire Romans Road turns on what it means that “the wages of sin is death.”

In the PSA way of looking at things, there are only two parties. Us and God. Sin is narrowly defined as actions we commit that “miss the mark” — things that God takes offense with. Because there is only us and God then it has to be God who is the one paying the wages due to us who sin. God must take our life because as the verse says “the wages of sin is death.”

But if we look more closely at what Paul is talking about in Romans 6, sin does not seem to be only about the things we do. Sin is described as an active agent in the world. Paul personifies it as a power to which we are enslaved.

Here is the full context in which verse 23 is the climactic conclusion:

Romans 6:20-23

20 When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. 21 So what fruit did you then gain from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. 22 But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the fruit you have leads to sanctification, and the end is eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For Paul it isn’t just us and God. There is a third party, a menacing entity called Sin. We don’t sin just because as humans we are born sinners. We sin because we are held under an oppressive power that causes us to sin. This is the human predicament. We are caught up in forces that we are helpless to break free from.

As we looked at in our last post, this is how the Gospels contextualize the ministry of Jesus. God sends Jesus into enemy territory in order to plunder the Strong Man. Paul is saying the exact same thing, just worded differently.

When Paul says that “the wages of sin is death,” he doesn’t mean that God is the one who demands death as payment for our sins. Rather Sin, capitalized here to help distinguish it as a power, is the one who doles out death to those it enslaves. When you labor under Sin, what you get is death. This is the meaning of “the wages of Sin is death.”

In Paul’s mind there is the realm of Sin which leads to death and there is God’s realm, which is marked by life. To read Romans 6:20-23 in this way helps make clear what Paul is saying. “When you were slaves of Sin,” meaning, when you were held captive within the realm of Sin, “you were free in regard to righteousness.” That is, “you were free, in the sense that you were not bound to the deeds of righteousness which characterize the realm you now find yourselves in.” And Paul asks, “Tell me, where did that get you? What was the upside of living under Sin?” Paul answers his own question, “The end of those things is death.” Paul then goes on to describe our new surroundings. “But now, you have been delivered from the realm of Sin and you are under new management. You now work for God.” Paul concludes by saying, “And what can you expect for your salary? It ain’t death, which is the wages of Sin. Rather, it is nothing less than eternal life.”

The Gospel

Paul lays this out in a nice and concise manner in another letter of his. In Colossians 1:13 Paul writes of God, “He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son.”

This is the Gospel. Plain and simple. There is no need to jump around taking verses out of context. It is not God who demands our death for the sins we commit. As we said in our last post, we need to remember who the real enemy is.

It is not God.

It is Sin.

It is God who has defeated our enemy (and his). In Christ we are freed from Sin so instead of Death we receive the free gift of God, which is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

This is the Gospel of our Lord.

Thanks be to God.