“Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the more important parenting lessons I’ve heard and tried to live out is to not speak negative characteristics into the life of your child. What I mean is, when you are angry or frustrated with your child, don’t say, “You are such a __________,” or, “you are so _________,” where the blank is filled in with some negative characteristic. Jerk, slob, cheater, lazy, stupid, embarrassing, and so on. The reason is simple: when you say that kind of thing to your kids, what they hear is, “I’m lazy,” or, “I’m stupid,” or, “I’m a cheater,” or, “I’m a jerk.” With that idea drumming through their mind, there is a higher than zero likelihood that they’ll live down to it. Instead, call them forward to virtuous characteristics by the way you speak to them. “I see how hardworking you are, but this didn’t reflect that. How can I help you live out more consistently who I know you are?” Paul here is doing some good parenting with believers by calling us to live up to our identity in Christ. Let’s take a look at how he’s doing this.

Yesterday, we talked about the fact that in Christ, we are dead to sin. This is an idea that Paul has been jumping up and down on for pretty much this whole chapter so far. He’s about to shift his focus a little bit, as we will see tomorrow, but so far it has been all about our being freed from sin’s power by spiritually participating in Jesus’ atoning sacrifice on the cross.

What we see Paul doing here is landing on the conclusion of his argument. We know that because this section starts with the word “therefore.” As a general rule of studying the Scriptures, whenever you see the word “therefore,” especially when you are reading one of Paul’s letters, you need to go back and see what it’s there for. (Get it?) In this case, we’ve been talking about what it’s there for, so let’s jump right to Paul’s conclusion itself.

Because we are dead to sin and alive in Christ, “therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires.” When Paul speaks of sin throughout chapter 6, and really, throughout his writings more generally, he always imagines it to be a kind of invading, foreign force in our lives. It’s like a parasite that has attached itself to us, and has taken control of our senses such that we know the right thing to do, but do the wrong thing anyway. The nature of this particular parasite, though, is that it has corrupted our wills such that we want to do the wrong thing. We choose that ourselves. In this way, we are simultaneously victims and offenders. This is the power that the sin parasite has over us.

We cannot break its power on our own. This is what Jesus accomplished for us and accomplishes in us. In Him, again, sin’s power is broken. Because this is the case, the only rational response is to live like it’s the case. Because we have the power and ability to choose other than sin once we are in Christ, we need to choose other than sin. We cannot give ourselves back to it as obedient slaves (to preview tomorrow’s passage), or it will take control of our lives once again. If we have indeed been made new in Christ, then we need to live in a manner consistent with our transformation.

And sin is sneaky stuff. It doesn’t often come for our entire selves. It is happy to take more of a piecemeal approach wherein it grabs hold of us one part at a time. Paul understands this. “And do not offer any parts of it [your mortal body] to sin as weapons for unrighteousness.” Sin distorts and destroys. Whatever it manages to grab hold of it will gradually twist and corrupt into an ugly, evil facsimile of what it once was. And it will use this thing to distort and destroy other things around it. Sin will use whatever tool it manages to get its tentacles around as a weapon to advance its evil aims.

Paul is borrowing here on Jesus’ warning that we should not give any part of ourselves to sin. Jesus used hyperbolic imagery to make a serious point. He said that if our hand causes us to sin, we should cut it off. If our eye causes us to sin, we should gouge it out. Again, He wasn’t calling for dismemberment as a solution to sin. His jarring imagery was about helping us grasp just how serious a problem sin really is. It’s not something small that we can mostly ignore and occasionally tap back into its box. It is an invading force that will entirely take over our hearts and minds and use us to break everything and everyone around us.

This idea is what Paul is seconding here. “Do not offer any parts of [yourselves] to sin as weapons for unrighteousness.” You don’t belong to sin anymore. Don’t let it use you. Instead, “as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness.” You were redeemed from sin and belong to Christ. He is the one who purchased you from the prison of sin to live in the spacious boundaries of His kingdom. As a result, let Him work through you to accomplish His kingdom-advancing goals. These goals are all about advancing and expanding the righteousness of God. That is, they are about helping you and the people around you to live more fully in a right relationship with God and with one another.

The reason for all of this is simple: “For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace.” Apart from Christ, we are ruled by law. I don’t necessarily mean the Law of Moses. I mean that apart from Christ, there is some other set of rules that govern our lives. It may have been forced on us, or we may have adopted it for ourselves, but the rules rule either way. They rule because we don’t do what’s right on our own. When sin is in charge, whether by motivation, action, or final outcome, sin will always be the defining feature of our lives. The rules are there to restrain us from living as fully into that as we otherwise will. And the more steeped in sin we are, the tighter the restraints of the rules will be.

But that’s not who we are or how we live in Christ. We are under grace. We are freed from sin’s power over our wills. It will not rule over us. We can choose righteousness on our own with His abiding help. The price of our sin has been paid by Jesus, and we are able in Him to stand before God with humble boldness.

Because that’s the case, let’s live like that. Let us be who we are in Christ. Anything less brings shame on the name we proclaim to be ours. It gives the people around us a false understanding of who He is. It distorts the beauty of grace into something that looks like little more than everything else around us. We are instead to be salt and light in a world that is tasteless and dark. We are to bring joy and gladness everywhere we go. We are to be people of peace, offering hope to those who are downtrodden and anxious. We are to let the fruit of the Spirit grow in our lives like a fragrant garden, bringing beauty and bounty to the world. We are to advance the righteous purposes of God’s kingdom into the lives of everyone we meet.

This is who we are in Christ. Let’s be this together.