“The wages of sin is death.”

This is a familiar verse from the Apostle Paul, Romans 6:23. Any Christian who knows the classic “Roman Road’ presentation of the Gospel knows this verse. The Navigator’s Bridge Illustration uses it, too. But what does it really mean?  Specifically, what kind of “death” is Paul talking about?

A lot of the discussion goes back to Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. For God had specifically warned Adam in Genesis 2:17:  “In the day you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

Many Christians assume that this death that God warned about in Genesis 2:17 was physical death. However, there is a glaring problem with this interpretation. Neither Adam nor Eve physically died on that day. The story goes on to say that Adam and Eve instead lived long and full lives for many years. What is meant by all of this?

One interpretive move to try to avoid this difficulty is to say that the “day” that God is talking about in Genesis 2, which according to many Christians is day six of the Genesis 1 creation narrative, in expanded form, is actually not a 24-hour period, but rather symbolically representative of a long period of time. In other words, when Eve had her fateful conversation with the serpent, with her rather silent husband in earshot nearby, in Genesis 3, the “day” they ate of the fruit could have lasted the many years of their own lifetime.

Another interpretive move is to rephrase the verse to say something like: “In the day you eat of it, you bring into the world the consequences of sin, which is physical death, even if that death does not happen right away.” In other words, Adam and Eve received something like a death sentence in that “day,” a guarantee that their sin introduces the consequence of physical death, even if the actual event of that death has been delayed.

Evidently, there is a good measure of ambiguity about the meaning of “death” here in Genesis 2:17. Nevertheless for Christians, the authoritative way for resolving some of the ambiguity of Old Testament texts like these is to see what the New Testament has to say about them.  This brings us back to the Apostle Paul.^[1]

It is worth considering another alternative in that the “death” that what God is describing in Genesis  2 is actually a kind of “spiritual death,” as opposed to “physical death.” It might well be argued that a by-product of “spiritual death” is physical death. Yet it still leaves the question open as to what this “spiritual death” is all about.

When many Christians think about “spiritual death” they typically envision some negative result of sin, whether it be in terms of a natural consequence of sin, or a punishment for sin. Sin was never something viewed as being “natural”, but when it comes to “death,” particularly “spiritual death,” opinions vary among scholars. There is considerable debate among theologians as to knowing the best way to think about this “spiritual death”: Is it a natural consequence of sin, or a divine punishment for sin?

Yet the most important way to try to resolve such discussions is to consider what Saint Paul had in mind when he wrote his famous letter to Romans, saying things like “the wages of sin is death.” After all, Paul wrote the most definitively and clearly about the matter in the New Testament. Unfortunately, Paul is not always exactly as clear as we would like him to be, simply by reading from the text.

To sum it up, here is the question:  What was Paul thinking about when he talked about “death”?

Simon Gathercole’s Defending Substitution: An Essay on Atonement in Paul, has been hailed by some as the best, short defense of the classic Christian doctrine of substitutionary atonement. Defending Substitution is a serious academic work, but it is thankfully not overwhelming for the more casual reader. Gathercole’s work also offers helpful insights into Paul’s understanding of death.

The Apostle Paul’s Understanding of “Death” : Simon Gathercole’s View

New Testament scholar Simon Gathercole, whom I had the pleasure of meeting a couple of years ago in Cambridge, England, has written about the topic in his short but excellent book, Defending Substitution: An Essay on Atonement in Paul. However, it is important to lay down some context for understanding Gathercole’s work.

In recent times, there has been a lot of talk among evangelical Christians about the nature of the atonement; that is, how we should talk about Christ’s work on the cross, which takes away our sin. Jesus died on the cross for us, but what does that mean… exactly?^[2]

Gathercole’s argument is to say that Jesus died as a substitute, in our place. Christ died, in our place, so that we need not die. Of course, if physical death is something which Saint Paul had in mind when he talks about “death” in this context, we have a problem. How does Christ’s physical death play out with respect to the idea of substitution? Those who oppose the idea of substitution, with respect to the atonement, argue that such a problem makes the concept of substitution into an absurdity.

In his book, Gathercole addresses this with an excursus trying to answer the question,  “Why Then, Do Christians Still Die?” For if indeed the language of substitution requires that if Christ’s death is a substitute for our death, then it should logically follow that Christians should no longer die, exchanging our death with Christ’s death. But the answer to this objection to substitution comes down to defining what is meant by “death.”

Gathercole’s answer is to say that Paul believes that Christians do not subsequently physically “die,” in view of the cross event. Instead, Paul must have some meaning of “death” other than physical death for believers. Most of the time in Paul’s letters, Paul uses euphemistic language to speak of a believer’s physical death, such as “falling asleep” (See 1 Thessalonians 4:13-15;    1 Corinthians 15:6-8).

Paul also has a metaphorical understanding of death, such as dying to sin through burial in baptism (Romans 6:1-4).  A metaphorical understanding of death is used by Paul to express the concept of spiritual death.  In Romans 8:13, ” if you live according to the flesh, you will die,” Paul is not talking about physical death, as his readers would have intuitively understood that everyone eventually dies a physical death. But rather Paul “means something like ‘suffer the divinely ordained penalty for sin.’” (Gathercole, p. 92). ^[3]

Gathercole does not comment on Romans 5:12ff, where Paul says: “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.” But the idea is surely there in Paul’s thought. While one could argue that physical death was the consequence of sin, a closer look at the passage indicates that Paul is thinking about something more than physical death.^[4]

Just a couple of verses later in Romans 5:14, Paul writes: “Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.” So, did “death” stop “reigning” after Moses came? It would be odd to think that Paul had physical death in mind regarding the reign of death from Adam to Moses, when physical death obviously continued on after the time of Moses. Yet if Paul was thinking that during the time of Moses, the reign of spiritual death was altered somehow by the coming of Moses, presumably with the giving of the Law, this would make greater sense of the passage. Would it not make more sense to say that the announcement of the Law of Moses prefigured the coming of the Law of Christ, which took aim at taking down the reign of “death?”^[5]

In other words, prior to the coming of Moses, spiritual death had free rein in the world. But once the Law of Moses arrives on center stage, spiritual death has some competition to deal with. Once the Messiah has come into the world, Jesus takes what Moses did to a whole new level.

You can put it this way: Believers will continue to die in the physical sense, but they will not “perish” in the spiritual sense, as a result of Christ’s substitutionary death. Physical death is related to spiritual death, but the two are not the same. Therefore, the substitutionary aspect of Christ’s death in our place only fails to apply if we picture death merely in physical terms, and not the metaphorical language of death concerning believers as Saint Paul uses it.

Gathercole’s excursus in Defending Substitution is rather brief, and I wish he had dedicated some more space to expand on his argument. Yet in thinking more about this, I ran into the work of another scholar who offers some further help here.

“Death” As Being About Morality, and Not Mortality: William Horst’s View

New Testament scholar William Horst, who teaches at Fuller Seminary and Azusa Pacific University, has written an essay which explores the meaning of “death” in Paul’s writings, particularly this metaphorical sense of death which Gathercole writes about. Horst’s thesis is as provocative as it is compelling: While Paul does discuss physical death in Romans, there is more to death than just the physical cessation of life. This greater concept of death is about morality, not mortality. ^[6]

Horst argues that since Paul lived in the Greco-Roman world that he appealed to certain elements of Greco-Roman thought which are not readily apparent to the typical reader of modern English Bibles. While many Christians (like myself) are drawn to the idea of Paul’s concept of “death,” in the metaphorical sense, as “spiritual death,” the language of “spiritual death” is quite nebulous and vague. For Horst, you have to take a look at how other Greco-Roman writers in Paul’s day used ideas, particularly from Platonic philosophy, to talk about a metaphorical understanding of death.^[7]

According to Horst, Plato wrote about a rebellion of immoral desires which leads to the death of the soul. To Plato, there are conditions when the desiring part of the soul of a person enslaves the other parts of the soul and rules over the person as a tyrant. This tyrant compels these other parts of the soul to act contrary to the desire of the rational mind. Jewish writers in Jesus’ and Paul’s day, like Philo of Alexandria and the historian Josephus picked up on these same ideas. Philo often uses the language of death to describe human passions as dominating over the soul or mind. ^[8]

Paul, in turn, uses the same concept of rebellious passions bringing about the death of the soul, in passages like Romans 6:23:  “The wages of sin is death.” Paul explicitly writes about such rebellious passions enslaving the person:

“For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— because anyone who has died has been set free from sin’ (Romans 6:6-7 ESV)

Paul believed that human sin leads to a kind of corruption which enslaves a person, which results in the death of the soul; that is, spiritual death. Alternatively, it is the work of Christ which frees the person from the tyranny of this metaphorical death. Note that by describing death as “metaphorical,” this does not mean that “metaphorical death” is any less real than physical death.

Furthermore, this does not necessarily mean that Paul simply copied Platonic thought to talk about death. But it does suggest that Paul uses enough of the language of Platonic thought, which would have been well understood by his Greco-Roman audience, in order to educate his audience in a way that they could readily understand Paul’s intended message. To repeat, as William Horst summarizes it, the inception of death in the Book of Romans is not about mortality, but rather, about morality.^[9]

Early Church Witnesses for a “Spiritual Death” Interpretation

Even the famous and influential early church preacher, John Chrysostom, preached about this concept of “spiritual death,” where in a sermon on the Book of Ephesians, Chrysostom distinguished this “spiritual death” from physical death. For Chrysostom, physical death is the separation of the soul from the body.  In contrast, spiritual death is the separation of the soul from God. For Chrysostom, spiritual death is the real death.^[10]

Chrysostom was not the only early church father who held to this notion of spiritual death as the separation of the soul from God. It was a common view among other early church fathers.^[11]

According to Eastern Orthodox priest and scholar, Stephen De Young, St. Paul had this concept of “spiritual death” in mind, pretty much along the lines as Horst presents it. So, Horst’s work is not simply some modern scholar’s attempt to invent some kind of “new” interpretation to be read into the Bible. Rather, this Platonic-inspired concept of metaphorical death is rooted in the thought and reflection of the early church, as early Christians read Scripture for themselves.^[12]

Some may object that one should not appeal to Greco-Roman philosophy to help us to understand Paul. Two responses can be made to such an objection: First, since we already have some precedence in the early church to contemplate what is meant by “spiritual death,” it is reasonable to examine the thought world that surrounded these Christian thinkers, like Chrysostom, near their day. Secondly, Paul was a missionary to the Gentiles, so why would he not appeal to concepts that were readily available to the thought world of a first century Gentile, in order to get his message across?

For years, when I have tried to share the Navigator’s “Bridge Illustration” with others, which emphasizes that the “wages of sin is death,” I intuitively assumed that this “death” was “spiritual death,” which if not addressed in this life, has eternal consequences which can separate a person form God. Yet if I was honest about it, I could not effectively demonstrate that this is what Paul had in mind when he wrote his letter to the Romans. Thanks to scholars like Simon Gathercole, William Horst, and Father Stephen De Young, this assumption is not simply an assertion, but rather it is supported by evidence, not only in Scripture, but also in early church tradition and the philosophical world of Paul’s day.

So, what’s the bottom line?  When Paul says that “the wages of sin is death,” he means this enslavement to certain appetites which will kill the soul; that is, leading to spiritual death.

Notes