Should the word "free" appear in Romans 6:23 as an adjective to "gift"?

Question

I have always understood Romans 6:23 to read "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus (our Lord)." And that is how my NASB 1995 renders it. But now that I check out the translations and Greek, the picture seems somewhat confused with regard to the inclusion of "free" as an assumed? adjective to "gift".

The translations are divided with the NIV, KJV, and INT not including "free". But then again, the KJV has "free" in Romans 5:15 and 16 and the current NASB has replaced "free" with "gracious" in all 3 instances.

Looking at the Greek, Strongs 5486 charisma, (χάρισμα) is defined as a "a gift of grace, a free gift", but the usage is "a gift of grace, an undeserved favor" . The derivation is said to be Strongs 5483 charizomai (χαρίζομαι) meaning "to show favor, give freely" with usage (a) I show favor to, (b) I pardon, forgive, (c) I show kindness.

My over-all impression then is that the adjective "free" should not be included in any "literal" translations, as appears to have been recognized in the NASB. But I'm no Greek scholar and would appreciate clarification in view of the above confusion. To be clear, I am distinguishing "free" from other terms such as "gracious", due to it's particular meaning and common understanding.

Answer 1

BIB Romans 6:23: “τὰ (The) γὰρ (for) ὀψώνια (wages) τῆς (-) ἁμαρτίας (of sin) θάνατος ( is death); τὸ (-) δὲ (but) χάρισμα (the gift) τοῦ (-) Θεοῦ (of God), ζωὴ (life) αἰώνιος (eternal) ἐν (in) Χριστῷ (Christ) Ἰησοῦ (Jesus) τῷ (the) Κυρίῳ (Lord) ἡμῶν (of us).”

Free is always superfluous with gift. Charisma is not even gift in the proper sense, which is dorean. Charisma should be understood as endowment, generosity, riches, benefaction.

Danker lexicon on Charisma:

χάρισμα, ατος, τό [χαρίζομαι] ‘that which results from the activity of generosity’, in NT always in connection with divine generosity bestowed on believers, divine gift —a. in general Ro 1:11; 5:15f; 6:23; 11:29.
—b. in ref. to corporate welfare Ro 12:6; 1 Cor 1:7; 7:7; 12:4, 9, 28, 30f; 2 Cor 1:11; 1 Ti 4:14; 2 Ti 1:6; 1 Pt 4:10.

Answer 2

The simple answer is that there is not an adjective "free" before "gift".

The only reason translators include this superfluous word is to emphasize the theological point that the gift of salvation is "free", but that is not in the original Greek text.

The closest we get is the word used for "gift" which is χάρισμα (charisma) which is a gift of grace, ie, free. That is, the meaning is already inherent in the noun itself.

Answer 3

Adding "free" to "gift" would be tautological and thus redundant (and therefore wrong in the most forgiving sense of the word), since the definition of gift (as distinct from other things given) is: "a thing given willingly to someone without payment; a present." Protestant-influenced definitons of the word charisma (which simply means gift) involving the word "free" might therefore be purely disambiguatory in nature (i.e. not intended to end up as/in the translation itself, only to aid in distinguishing it from other possible but erroneous understandings—but this would only make sense, in my view, in cases where a word is open to more than one understanding, which gift isn't...), or simply influenced by Protestant theology's emphasis on grace as free as opposed to earned (a reaction to a strawman of Catholic theology).

Moreover, such translation choices do not merely range from the strawman of Catholicism which says that grace can earned and the Protestant insistance on emphasizing that grace is not earned, but extents beyond these, to the so-called 'free grace' theology of some Protestants (if they can really be called that fairly) which dictates that, essentially, in so many words, there is literally nothing you have to do as a Christian after you accept that Jesus is your saviour. There are things you are called or asked to do. There are things that would be nice, but grace does everything you need for salvation and you can do nothing to 'un-earn' or reject that grace. Some of them insist you would never want to or try, some that it doesn't matter even if you do.

This is why translation is so important when it comes to this kind of stuff — at least, when we are dealing with a sola-scriptura brand of Christianity, where interpretation of the text is not strictly bound to a tradition of interpretation, but rather free, ultimately, to be anything the 'best' translation yields to whoever is reading it 'properly' regardless of whether that interpretation is novel or not.

Scripture says:

Proverbs 22:28 Do not remove the ancient boundaries set by your forefathers.

Translators might do well to heed this when considering adding terms that were never seen as necessary before, and should ask why they are needed now, and why the Word of God needs to be affected, and not rather the people misinterpreting the Word of God instead!

Answer 4

Can you fully trust the translators? There are many versions of it for a reason. I look at modern Christianity and it's nothing like what I read. A great deception came into the modern church as Jesus has prophesied within the last 150 or so years. You can't live for the world and your own ambitions and not take up your cross and seriously call yourself a Christian but we have the vast majority of "Christians" doing just that. Jesus didn't ask us to do certain things, he commanded us to do so. There is something wrong with the word "free" in this verse in the sense of how we understand the word today. When read the Bible, I don't understand how anyone can come away thinking they can live like the rest of the world and go to Heaven.