A selection of verses showing that this theme runs consistently through the Bible.
The apostle Paul makes it clear that the result of sin (missing the mark of God’s commands) is death:
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
He makes it equally clear that we are all sinners:
23 for all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God;
The book of Proverbs tells us that relying on our own thinking will result in our death:
25 There is a way which seems right to a man,
but in the end it leads to death.
The apostle Paul tells the Roman and Galatian believers that if they rely on their natural (fleshly) thinking they will have no long-term future:
13 For if you live after the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.
7 Don’t be deceived. God is not mocked, for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. 8 For he who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life.
Paul says that the problem starts with our first parents who decide to ignore what God says:
12 Therefore as sin entered into the world through one man, and death through sin; so death passed to all men, because all sinned.
God tells our first parents the consequences of ignoring his command:
16 The LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; 17 but you shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; for in the day that you eat of it, you will surely die.”
Unfortunately for us, they do ignore God’s command:
6 When the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took some of its fruit, and ate. Then she gave some to her husband with her, and he ate it, too.
God spells out the consequences of their disobedience which we still live with today:
17 To Adam he said,
“Because you have listened to your wife’s voice,
and ate from the tree,
about which I commanded you, saying, ‘You shall not eat of it,’
the ground is cursed for your sake.
You will eat from it with much labour all the days of your life.
These chapters have links to this theme: