I put my wages in the bank today. But I only deposited one cheque.
I am paid £10 per hour. Every hour I earn £10. At month's end I am paid my wages - so many hours times £10.
The wages (plural) of every moment, every hour, every day will be tallied up and one payment will be made - the one payment of the wages which mounted up in life.
A lifetime of sin - every moment, every hour, every day : year after year : decade by decade.
One payment.
Because every moment, with every breath, I deserved to die. I was worthy of death - because of sin. It made me unfit to live and the righteous result was the cessation of life.
But every moment of every day, I was invited to repent and invited to believe. No works were ever asked : just repentance to God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.
But I never did, and come the time, the allotted time, the span of days given, my life is taken away.
Because of sin. The forfeit of life is my reward for the sinful state in which I existed.
And then , after death - the judgment. For the actual sins and the degree of harm caused to others and the shocking rejection showed to God who made me and the appalling fact that I spurned his Son and lived contrary to his purposes made known in Christ.
But if through repentance and by faith in Jesus Christ I am in Him, then am I crucified with him.
I am crucified with Christ . . . . [Gal 2:20 KJV]
And not only so, but 'quickened together with him' and risen with him and ascended with him and 'seated with him in the heavenlies', Ephesians 2:5.
Then I shall no see death, but I shall fall asleep in Jesus, as did Stephen, and shall go to be with him.
For he was made (or, 'effected', for it is poeio, 'make' or 'do') sin for us, he who knew no sin, 2 Corinthians 5:21.
Thus the penalty is exacted already, in him, at Golgotha. And I am seen, by God, in him : and seen dead in him, my humanity removed in righteousness.
And alive in him, under his humanity, as part of his humanity and his body.
Thence to live in him, and to wait for his return, occupied with his things, like writing an article on the subject of wages and death and life.
For the wages of sin is death . . . .
. . . . but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord, Romans 6:23, KJV.