Romans 6:23
Romans 6:2323For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Jehovah's Witnesses cite primarily in two contexts. First, in their annihilationist framework: the "wages of sin is death" is read as proving that the dead cease to exist entirely, supporting the claim that hell is not a place of conscious torment but simply non-existence. The Watchtower combines this verse with ("the dead are conscious of nothing at all") to argue that death itself is the full penalty for sin — once someone dies, the debt is paid and there is no further punishment. Second, in their works-based soteriology: the organisation acknowledges the verse mentions a "gift" but teaches that receiving it requires exercising faith (an ongoing process), obeying Jehovah's laws, associating with the organisation, and loyally sharing in the preaching work. The gift language is effectively subordinated to a system of requirements that must be met before the gift is granted.
presents the gospel in its most compressed form: the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. The Protestant reading emphasises the deliberate contrast Paul draws between wages (earned, deserved, the natural consequence of sin) and gift (unearned, undeserved, received by faith). God takes sin seriously — death is the just wage — which is why Jesus' warning about the consequences of rejecting him must be taken seriously rather than dismissed as metaphorical. Against the annihilationist reading, the verse's gravity depends on death being a real and lasting consequence; Jesus himself taught conscious, ongoing punishment using language of eternal duration ( uses the same Greek word aionios for both the punishment and the life). Against the works-based reading, the verse is part of the apostolic gospel chain: (all have sinned), (wages vs gift), (everyone exercising faith has everlasting life), (believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved), (saved by grace through faith, not by works). Every key verse in this chain works in the NWT. The Watchtower adds four requirements to salvation — accurate knowledge, law-obedience, organisational association, and field service — but the apostolic gospel has two: repentance toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ ().
NWT renders zōē aiōnios en Christō Iēsou tō kyriō hēmōn as "everlasting life by Christ Jesus our Lord" — an instrumental reading of en rather than the expected locative "in Christ Jesus our Lord." This is a variant of the systemic NWT en pattern (compare , where en autō becomes "by means of him"): Pauline locative imagery ("life positionally located in Christ") is converted into a channel-of-delivery framework ("life by means of Christ"). The effect pulls the reader toward a picture of Christ as the instrument through which Jehovah dispenses life, rather than the one in whom life is found.