Wages (3800) (opsonion from ópson = cooked meat + onéomai = buy) whatever is bought to be eaten with bread. It meant rations for a soldier and so his stipend or pay. At Athens it meant "fish." It came to mean the "provision-money" which Rome gave its soldiers. The wages paid by sin. Death can be "earned". Eternal life is God’s gift. Some see this allusion to wages as a continuation of the metaphor of warfare (Ro 6:13) for Roman soldiers received wages for serving their Emperor. Christian's have an "Emperor" to Whom we owe our allegiance and from Whom we receive gifts by virtue of His grace, not our merit. As the Roman soldier received provision-money with which to sustain life so that he could fight and die for Caesar, so the unsaved receive provision-money from sin, spiritual death, so that they can serve it, then physical death, and final banishment from the presence of God for all eternity. Moule The Greek is same word as Luke 3:14; 1Co 9:7; 2Co 11:8. It strictly denotes pay for military service; and the metaphor here therefore points not to slavery so much as to the warfare of Ro 6:13. The word is full of pregnant truth. Death, in its most awful sense, is no more than the reward and result of sin; and sin is nothing less than a conflict against God. (The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans) Opsonion is found 4x in 4v in the NAS... Luke 3:14 And some soldiers were questioning him, saying, "And what about us, what shall we do?" And he said to them, "Do not take money from anyone by force, or accuse anyone falsely, and be content with your wages." Comment: Luke uses opsonion with its literal meaning as a military technical term for what is appointed to soldiers to buy food commonly known as ration (money), allowance, or more generally as subsistence pay, wages, expense money . Thayer adds that opsonion referred to "grain, meat, fruits, salt, (that) were given to soldiers instead of pay (Caesar b. g. 1, 23, 1; Polybius 1, 66f; 3, 13, 8), opsonion began to signify: 1. universally, a soldier's pay, allowance (Polybius 6, 39, 12; Dionysius Halicarnassus, Antiquities 9, 36)" Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. 1 Corinthians 9:7 Who at any time serves as a soldier at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, and does not eat the fruit of it? Or who tends a flock and does not use the milk of the flock? 2 Corinthians 11:8 I robbed other churches, taking wages from them to serve you; Thayer adds that wages (opsonion) in Paul's day referred to... whatever is bought to be eaten with bread, as fish, flesh. Corn, meat, fruits, salt, were given the soldiers instead of pay. That part of a soldier’s support given him in place of pay (i.e., rations) and the money in which he is paid Wuest adds that... Paul used a military term hopla (see word study), the weapons of a Greek foot soldier, translated “instruments” (see note Romans 6:13). Now, he uses the illustration of a soldier’s wages. The battle is between Satan’s hosts of wickedness and the people of God. The wage that Satan doles out is death. (Wuest, K. S. Wuest's Word Studies from the Greek New Testament: Eerdmans or Logos) The IVP Background Commentary has an interesting note on wages explaining that... Slaves could and often did receive some “wages.” Although the slave’s owner legally owned the slave’s possessions, the slave could use this property or money (called a peculium), sometimes even to purchase freedom. That such wages were normally a positive symbol makes Paul’s words here all the more striking. (Keener, Craig: The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. 1994. IVP) Warren Wiersbe makes an excellent point... We quote this verse as we witness to the lost, and rightly so; but Paul wrote it originally to believers. Although God forgives the sins of His children, He may not stop the painful consequences of sin. The pleasures of sin are never compensated for by the wages of sin. Sinning is not worth it! (Wiersbe, W. W. With the Word : The Chapter-by-Chapter Bible Handbook Nashville: Thomas Nelson) William Newell explains that... Death, as we read in Romans 6:23, is the wages of sin. Men. speak of it lightly. But it is indeed "the king of terrors" for the natural man (Job 18:14). A well-known writer says: "Man finds in Death an end to every hope, to every project, to all his thoughts and plans. The busy scene in which his whole life has been, knows him no more. His nature has given way, powerless to resist this master (death) to which it belongs, and who now asserts his dreadful rights. But this is far from being all. Man indeed, as man alive in this world, sinks down into nothing. But why? Sin has come in; with sin, conscience; with sin, Satan's power; still more with sin, God's judgment. Death is the expression and witness of all this. It is the wages of sin, terror to the conscience, Satan's power over us, for he has the power of death (See notes Hebrews 2:14; Hebrews 2:15). Can God help here? Alas, it is His own judgment on sin. Death seems but as the proof that sin does not pass unnoticed, and is the terror and plague of the conscience, as witness of God's judgment, the officer of justice to the criminal, and the proof of his guilt in the presence of coming judgment. How can it but be terrible? It is the seal upon the fall and ruin and condemnation of the first Adam. And he has nothing but this old nature. (Romans 6) BUT THE FREE GIFT OF GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD: to de charisma tou theou zoe aionios en Christo Iesou to kurio hemon: (Ro 2:7; 5:17,21; Jn 3:14, 15, 16, 17,36; 4:14; 5:24,39,40; 6:27,32,33,40,50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58; Jn 6:68; 10:28; 17:2; Titus 1:2; 1Pet 1:3,4; 1Jn 2:25; 5:11,12) H C G Moule writes... “Is life worth living?” Yes, infinitely well worth, for the living man who has surrendered to “the Lord that bought him.” Outside that ennobling captivity, that invigorating while most genuine bond service, the life of man is at best complicated and tired with a bewildered quest, and gives results at best abortive, matched with the ideal purposes of such a being. We “present ourselves to God,” for His ends, as implements, vassals, willing bondmen; and lo, our own end is attained. Our life has settled, after its long friction, into gear. Our root, after hopeless explorations in the dust, has struck at last the stratum where the immortal water makes all things live, and grow, and put forth fruit for heaven. The heart, once dissipated between itself and the world, is now “united” to the will, to the love, of God; and understands itself, and the world, as never before; and is able to deny self and to serve others in a new and surprising freedom. The man, made willing to be nothing but the tool and bondman of God, “has his fruit” at last; bears the true product of his now recreated being, pleasant to the Master’s eye, and fostered by His air and sun. And this “fruit” issues, as acts issue in habit, in the glad experience of a life really sanctified, really separated in ever deeper inward reality, to a holy will. And the “end” of the whole glad possession, is “life eternal.” Those great words here signify, surely, the coming bliss of the sons of the resurrection, when at last in their whole perfected being they will “live” all through, with a joy and energy as inexhaustible as its Fountain, and unencumbered at last and forever by the conditions of our mortality. To that vast future, vast in its scope yet all concentrated round the fact that “we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is,” the Apostle here looks onward. He will say more of it, and more largely, later, in the eighth chapter. But as with other themes so with this, he preludes with a few glorious chords the great strain soon to come. He takes the Lord’s slave by the hand, amidst his present tasks and burdens, (dear tasks and burdens, because the Master’s, but still full of the conditions of earth,) and he points upward — not to a coming manumission in glory; the man would be dismayed to foresee that; he wants to “serve forever”; — but to a scene of service in which the last remainders of hindrance to its action will be gone, and a perfected being will forever, perfectly, be not its own, and so will perfectly live in God. And this, so he says to his fellow servant, to you and to me, is “the gift of God”; a grant as free, as generous, as ever King gave vassal here below. And it is to be enjoyed as such, by a being which, living wholly for Him, will freely and purely exult to live wholly on Him, in the heavenly places. Yet surely the bearing of the sentences is not wholly upon heaven. Life eternal, so to be developed hereafter that Scripture speaks of it often as it began hereafter, really begins here, and develops here, and is already “more abundant” (John 10:10) here. It is, as to its secret and also its experience, to know and to enjoy God, to be possessed by Him, and used for His will. In this respect it is “the end,” the issue and the goal, now and perpetually, of the surrender of the soul. The Master meets that attitude with more and yet more of Himself, known, enjoyed, possessed, possessing. And so He gives, evermore gives, out of His sovereign bounty, life eternal to the bondservant who has embraced the fact that he is nothing, and has nothing, outside his Master. Not at the outset of the regenerate life only, and not only when it issues into the heavenly ocean, but all along the course, the life eternal is still “the free gift of God.” Let us now, today, tomorrow, and always, open the lips of surrendering and obedient faith, and drink it in, abundantly, and yet more abundantly. And let us use it for the Giver. We are already, here on earth, at its very springs; so the Apostle reminds us. For it is “in Jesus Christ our Lord”; and we, believing, are in Him, “saved in His life.” It is in Him; nay, it is He. “I am the Life”; “He that hath the Son, hath the life.” Abiding in Christ, we live “because He liveth.” It is not to be “attained”; it is given, it is our own. In Christ, it is given, in its divine fulness, as to covenant provision, here, now, from the first, to every Christian. In Christ, it is supplied, as to its fulness and fitness for each arising need, as the Christian asks, receives, and uses for his Lord. So from, or rather in, our holy bond service the Apostle has brought us to our inexhaustible life, and its resources for willing holiness. (Commentary on Romans) "Copy and paste the address below into your web browser in order to go to the original page which will allow you to access live links related to the material on this page - these links include Scriptures (which can be read in context), Scripture pop-ups on mouse over, and a variety of related resources such as Bible dictionary articles, commentaries, sermon notes and theological journal articles related to the topic under discussion." http://www.preceptaustin.org/romans_621-23.htm#w