There's a verse which is very famous. Most people who have been in contact with Christianity

have heard it. And, you know, if you, someone who's trying to convert you, often they

will cite you this verse. It is from the Book of Romans. For the wages of sin is death.

The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord. So what I would like to do is I would like to look at that verse in its basic concepts in the book of Romans

and look at how this, the structure that St. Paul traces for us in the book of Romans and

especially in this section can really help us understand the way that symbolic structures work,

the way that things hold together in the world,

and that ultimately what St. Paul says is fractally true at every level

and isn't just a question of morality or of dying and going to heaven

and all that kind of stuff.

And so hopefully we can have a fruitful examination of this passage.

This is Jonathan Peugeot. Welcome to the symbolic world.

So I'm going to read part of the text. maybe not the entire text, it's from Romans 6.

I will start at verse 15.

You can read around it if you want to get more context than what I'm going to say.

And so I'll start with 14, actually.

So St. Paul is talking about becoming free from sin and becoming attached to grace,

becoming slaves of God, becoming slaves of grace, and no longer

being slaves of sin. And so he says, for sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not

under the law, but under grace. What then shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace?

By no means. Don't you know that when you offer yourself to someone as obedient slaves,

you are slaves to the one you obey, whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death,

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