Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

I finally got around to asking myself why the word wages is used in comparison to sin and gift for life through Christ. My study of the historical implications was very interesting.

In our modern army we receive subsistence pay which is a pay to live on that we can spend any way we chose. This was in addition to room and board. I lived in barracks and ate free from the mess hall.

Back at the time of this writing soldiers were given provisions, sustenance, i.e. food, as a substitute for pay. They could do nothing with it but eat. Since they received no real coin of the realm to spend, they had no freedom to choose for themselves anything that might give them joy.

There was no indebtedness in this pay, it was pure survival, do the duty or die of starvation. Those wages were tied directly to starvation and death.

The gift from God is life and freedom, there was no demand for obedience to stay alive. You have the right to choose not to serve and the threat of death is not held over your head. This freedom of life was meant to promote gratitude, thankfulness, and a love response to the One that cared more about your life than anything you might do in service.

We do not serve Christ because of the threat of death, we serve because He gave us a life we love. It is always more pleasing to serve out of love than fear.

Understanding this context finally made sense to me why Paul would use the word wages in this verse. It made perfect sense to the people of those times but lost some of its historical implications over time.