What a difference it would make in the life of every believer in Christ Jesus if we would follow the single admonition of Paul in Romans 6:13! Actually it’s a double-sided exhortation: it has a negative instruction and a positive instruction.
NEGATIVE:
“Do not present your members [the physical members of your body—your eyes, your ears, your hands, your mouth, your feet, your mind, etc.) as instruments of unrighteousness to sin.”
POSITIVE:
“But present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”
In the preceding verses, Paul has made the point that when we accept Christ as our Savior, we are
accepting His free gift of righteousness (5:17-19),
transferred out from under the dominion or reign of sin in our lives and transferred into the dominion or reign of grace over us (5:21),
identifying ourselves with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection (6:3-10),
free from the bondage and dominion of sin in our lives (6:6-7, 9).
This is who we are in Christ. This is what we have in Christ. We are FREE! Sin’s dominion has been broken through Christ. But it often doesn’t feel that way, does it? The pull of sin still seems so strong! But this is where we must learn to live by faith, not by the way things feel. We live by faith in the truth of what God has told us, not by the pull of our feelings or circumstances.
Do you understand the magnitude of the truth in Romans 6? YOU are FREE from sin! Now, what will you do with that freedom? Will you allow sin to continue its domination of your life—your thoughts, your actions, your words, your emotions? Or will you present the members of your physical body (for spirituality is lived out through our physical bodies!) to God, to be used only for righteousness?
As we begin this new year, what if every day of 2021 we simply took one minute at the start of each day—maybe even before we got out of bed in the morning—to pray this simple prayer in obedience to Romans 6:13: “Lord, today I present the members of my body to You. Let me be an instrument of Your righteousness today. Take my eyes, my ears, my mouth, my mind, my emotions, my hands, my feet—everything about me—and use them only to do right things today that the life of Christ would be seen and felt through me.”
Oh, what a difference that one simple prayer with its focus of heart, mind, and faith would make in our lives, our homes, our families, our churches, our communities, our world. O God, may it be.