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

Now this tendency is in every case the same, “the wages of sin is death” everywhere to everyone. It is so not only where you can see it operating upon the body, but where you cannot see it.

I may perhaps startle you when I say that the wages of sin is death even in the man who has eternal life. Sin has the same deadly character to the one as the other; only an antidote is found.

You, my Christian brother, cannot fall into sin without its being poison to you, as well as to anybody else; in fact, to you it is more evidently poison than to those hardened to it.

If you sin, it destroys your joy, your power in prayer, your confidence toward God. If you have spent evenings in frivolity with worldlings, you have felt the deadening influence of their society.

What about your prayers at night? You cannot draw nigh unto God. The operation of sin upon your spirit is most injurious to your communion with God.

You are like a man who has taken a noxious drug, whose fumes are stupefying the brain and sending the heart into slumber. If you, being a child of God, fall into any of the sins that easily beset you, I am sure you will never find those sins quicken your grace or increase your faith.

But on the contrary, they will work you evil, only evil, and that continually. (( Charles Spurgeon,At the Master’s Feet [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005], January 23.))

Charles Spurgeon

Further reading

• WE MUST PREACH THE GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST AND HIM CRUCIFIED
• PUTTING FACES ON WORD OF FAITH VICTIMS
• BEWARE OF SPIRITUAL ABUSE