Your Future is Tethered to Christ’s Life

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

Paul uses two main metaphors in this passage (read 6:20–23 for the full context): 1) Slavery and Wages, and 2) Fruit.

Without Christ we are slaves to sin. In other words, our whole life is tethered to our master’s. And the wages of sin — that is, the end result of all our work for this master — is death.

But when we trust Christ, we become “slaves of God” (verse 22). Now, our whole life is tethered to Jesus himself. That’s why Paul says, “but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Living the life of sin that our old selves want leads only to one place: death. But Jesus, through the gospel, puts our old self to death with him and he becomes our life. We are united to him, so that if he goes on living forever, so will we!

The second metaphor is fruit. Imagine sin like a tree. This tree can only bear one kind of fruit: death. We can’t cultivate this Sin Tree and expect peaches or apples. But if sin is like a tree, so is Jesus. And the fruit of being united to this tree is life!

So rejoice today, brothers and sisters! Take comfort and joy from the fact that Jesus freed us from slavery to sin, so that our future can be irrevocably tied to his glorious life! If you are united to Christ by faith, then your future is to be in the City of God forever, enjoying the fruit of the Tree of Life. And it starts now!