“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.”
(Romans 6:12-13 ESV)
We live in an age where our single ambition is to satisfy our every desire. Our single ambition is to gratify our every urge. Our single ambition is to fulfill our every want.
We reason that, if it’s something that we feel, it must be right. We reason that it’s wrong to deny ourselves that which will please us. And we reason that it’s immoral to deny someone else something that would please them.
This, in fact, has become the greatest virtue of the society in which we live. And not only is it lived out openly. It’s also promoted by the media, taught in our schools, and enforced by our laws.
Sadly, this has become true of much of the church as well. No longer do we acknowledge God’s Word as right and true. It is now secondary to our emotions and our fleshly appetites.
We no longer believe these desires to result from our sinful nature. We no longer consider them a violation of God’s law. To deny our desires, we believe, is truly sin.
We’ve both accepted and promoted the mantra that people should do what makes them happy. We’ve accepted and promoted the mantra that people should do what feels right to them. We’ve accepted and promoted the mantra that truth is determined by what we feel.
When it comes to our faith, we understand that Jesus has forgiven our sin. We understand that, by his death, he’s paid the penalty of our sin. But we fail to understand that, in this way, he has also freed us from sin.
It’s this reality that Paul is addressing in the passage above. Paul had already explained to the believers at Rome that, in Christ, they have died to sin. They died to sin in baptism, and they were raised together with Christ to the new life given them by God. And, for this reason, he told them that they were to count themselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
It’s in this context that the above passage was written. And he told them that they were not to allow sin to reign in their mortal bodies. They were not to allow sin to make them obey its passions. And they were not to present their bodies to sin as instruments for unrighteousness.
In other words, Paul called them to deny these desires. He called them to resist these desires. And he told them that they were not to act on these desires.
Instead, they were to present themselves to God as those who had been brought from death to life. They were to live in the freedom and salvation that God had provided them. And they were to do so by presenting their bodies to God as instruments of righteousness.
They were to do so because they were no longer under sin. They were to do so because no longer were they under the dominion of sin. They were to do so because they were under grace.
What mattered, then, was not what they felt. What mattered was not what they desired. What mattered is the truth God had declared and the life he had provided.
It’s clear, then, that our bodily appetites are not good. It’s clear that the desires of the flesh are not righteous. It’s clear, in fact, that they are sinful.
For this reason, we must seek not to satisfy them. We must resist them and live the life given to us by God. We must live the life of repentance and faith to which God has called us.
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