ESV Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Let’s look at contrasts:

5. “wages” vs. “free gift” – Which is owed, death or eternal life?


6. Why is it owed?

ESV Romans 6:11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

It’s easy to treat our “life in the body” and “life in the Spirit” as two different lives. We see God’s plan here for the body. Your life on this earth is but a vapor… and eternity is a long time (actually timeless and without end).

2. When you reflect for an eternity what you did while “in the body,” will you have a different perspective on the way you should have used your body?



3. How will you view the times you blew it and used your body as an instrument of immorality?



4. How will you view the times you submitted your body to God’s higher purposes?

Gnostics (a very early heresy… present in Paul’s day) believe that basically the body is bad and the spiritual is good; material world bad/spiritual world good. Because anything flesh couldn’t be good… since Jesus was good he couldn’t have really come in flesh …

Side Note: This is what prompted John to write:

ESV 1 John 4:2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

1. Does Paul view the body as necessarily bad?