“Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness.” – Romans 6:13
The moment we are saved, the payment for our sins has been paid already. Indeed that the wages of our sins is death but since Christ has died for us already and He has saved us already, we are already saved and finally we can have eternal life through Him. The book of Romans is a book where Paul really wrote how should a Christians live and how we are so sinful and that we need a Savior.
Paul systematically and carefully wrote everything a Christians should do and how should a Christian live his or her life. In our verse today, we can clearly see that we have control over our sinful nature. Before we are saved, we always crave and desire to sin and we can’t say no to it. We always succumb to sin and will not think otherwise because that’s just who we are. We are bound to sin and our nature will always want us to sin. However, since we are already saved, the bondage of sin and death in us has been broken already.
Jesus has defeated sin and death already and has destroyed their hold in our lives. We are no longer subject to do what it wants and we can already stop sinning. This is why Paul in our verse today reminds us of what we need to do. We have to remember that we are already saved and that we have defeated sin and death through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and by that truth, we can resist evil and we can stop sinning. The grace of God and His power to defeat sin has been given on us already so that we too can defeat sin through Christ Jesus.
However, we also have to understand that our sinful nature will always try to crawl out of us. It will always want us to disobey God and to go back to the life that we already abandoned. So Paul is reminding us to never succumb to wickedness. We should not offer any part of our body as offering to wickedness. We should not use our eyes to covet and to be adulterous; we should not use our body to be sexually immoral; we should not use our hands to murder and to steal; and etc. It may be a repeated message but as sinful as we are and as hard-headed as we are, we have to be reminded always. We have to be constantly encouraged to walk in the path of Christ.
Now, as Paul reminded us to not use our body as an instrument of wickedness, he then told us how to use it. We are to rather offer our lives to God for He has brought us from death to life. He has saved us from our irrevocable death and has brought us into His loving presence where life and righteousness springs. Therefore, let us offer every part of ourselves to God as an instrument for righteousness. Let us not forget that our body belongs to Christ now and that the only response we can do for His salvation is through serving Him only with our lives.
We have to always remember that since Jesus became our sacrificial lamb and through Him we can find forgiveness. The old standard from before has been broken and He has restored our relationship with God. Therefore, we don’t need a sacrifice anymore because Jesus Christ has become our atoning sacrifice. Now, God encourages us to offer our lives as living sacrifices to Him. Thus, let us indeed offer every part of us as an instrument of righteousness.
May we always put this into our mind that we have control over our nature now. We should not succumb to sinfulness but we should focus on pleasing God through imitating Christ. May our good Lord bless us with the heart to obey and to seek His glory always. Amen.
