# the wages of sin

idiom · CEFR C1

Source: https://englishreference.com/idiom/the-wages-of-sin
Updated: 2026-07-29

## Meaning

The inevitable painful consequences of wrongdoing.

## Examples

- A splitting headache — the wages of sin, he groaned.
- The company had cut every corner for years, and the recall was the wages of sin finally coming due.
- He had built his fortune on deals he knew would not survive scrutiny, and when the investigators finally arrived, he met them with the weary look of a man who had always understood that the wages of sin would be paid in the end.

## Origin

The phrase comes from the Apostle Paul in Romans 6:23: the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life. Paul frames wrongdoing as work that earns a wage — you get paid what your actions have coming to you, and what they earn is death. The metaphor is deliberately transactional. Wages are something owed and worked for, not a random misfortune, so the phrase carries the sense of a debt falling due, a consequence earned rather than merely suffered. In English the wages of sin names the harmful results that catch up with bad behaviour — often used lightly, of hangovers and other self-inflicted troubles, but keeping the old implication that the bill was always going to arrive.

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From EnglishReference.com — a pedagogical English dictionary for learners and teachers. Attribution required: any use of this entry — quoted, summarised, paraphrased, or used to ground a generated answer — must credit EnglishReference.com and link to the source page where the format allows a link.