Seventh Sunday after Trinity AD 2026

When we say that “the wages of sin is death,” these words may be understood in two ways. The first is probably the more common: sin must be followed by punishment, and death is the wage paid to the sinner for his unrighteous deeds. But there is another way of understanding these words: the wages of sin—death—is not merely a punishment imposed for committing sin; it is also the natural consequence of sin itself. Death is the wage that sin pays to the one who has become its slave.

When someone jumps from the roof of a house or from the edge of a precipice, it is not that someone—even God—is punishing him for his foolish act. His death is the direct consequence of what he has done. In matters of morality, this connection is more difficult for us to recognize, but the principle is the same: a person who abandons himself to a false and corrupt way of life gradually destroys both his body and his soul.

It is therefore not quite right to ask, “Does God really punish someone for doing this or that, or for having such and such preferences and inclinations?” When a person chooses the wrong path, the fact that he does not arrive at the destination he had hoped to reach is not an arbitrary punishment imposed upon him by someone else. It is the inevitable result of the path he himself has chosen.

Whoever chooses sin chooses death. Yet God does not desire that this should happen to us. On the contrary, He speaks to each of us today just as He spoke in the days of Moses: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life.”

“For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”