11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness. 14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
This is where doctrine and truth give way to faith. Where head knowledge becomes heart knowledge which becomes practical knowledge.
What is that truth? You no longer live in a a sin nature. You are a new creation. You walk in newness of life. You are no longer a victim of the old man. Christ dwells within you. You are united with Him.
We need to not just knows those truths intellectually, we need to affirm them in our hearts.
And that's hard.
Sometimes it's hard because we didn't even know the truths to begin with. Sometimes it's because Satan is casting doubts in our minds about those truths because he doesn't want us to believe them. Sometimes because the experience of dying and rising wasn't actually a physical experience - we have to accept them by faith, and that can be very difficult for some people. And lastly, probably most importantly, we struggle with believing this because our very own struggle with sin makes it hard to believe it could possibly be true.
But the truth is, God's Word tells us that the power of sin has been broken in the life of a believer. God's Word tells us that our old nature is dead. God's Word tells us that we are a new creature. We do not have two natures fighting about who's going to get the upper hand today.
MacArthur explains it this way...
Paul says "reckon." Affirm that it is so. What does he say? "Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin." "In truth," it means. Truly dead unto sin. Count on it. Affirm it that your biography has been written in two volumes. Volume one is the old man, the old nature, the old self before salvation. Volume two is the new man, the new self, the new creation. Volume one ended with my death in Christ. Volume two began with my resurrection in Christ. It is both impossible and inconceivable to reopen volume one...
The doctrine of salvation by grace does not free me up to sin and have God just keep exercising grace in behalf of my multiplied sinfulness. No, no, no. Because when I was saved, sin as a tyrant was cancelled out. And I must believe that. I must believe that. I am in Christ. And His holiness is mine and sin has no more dominion over me.
What does this mean practically?
When we both know in our heads and affirm in hearts that this is true, it gives us confidence to overcome temptation. We know that the power of sin is no longer enslaving us, but rather we can overcome temptation in the power of God.
It also gives us confidence to not doubt our salvation when we sin. We will still fall, we will still sin, sin will still rear it's ugly head, but it cannot take away our salvation.
It also gives us confidence over death - knowing death has no hold on us. And that the believer will not really taste death. We will go from living on earth to living in heaven in the blink of an eye. Death has lost its sting.
How freeing!
So, we know intellectually that we are dead to sin and alive to God, we affirm it in our hearts (11 In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. ) - we also need to live it. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.
Sin is no longer our master, so don't act like it is! Before we were Christians we were slaves to sin. Sin was our king, our master, our slave driver. But as believers, that power is broken. So, don't give sin power that it has no right to have. It no longer has dominion over you.
here comes a very important truth. "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body." Would you underline that? Your mortal body. I think this will erase an awful lot of confusion. You know where sin wants to reign? It says in that verse. Where does it want to reign? In your...what?...body, your mortal. What does mortal mean? Corruptive. Is our mortal body that which will dwell eternally with God? No, that's our glorified body. It's this earthly cursed physical organism which encompasses the physical body with all of its members and organs as well as the brain and all of its functions. It is the physical body which sin seeks to rule.
Now listen very carefully to me. Before you were saved, sin reigned not only in your body but in your soul as well. But I believe when you were redeemed, the new creation is the soul. And sin is only left with the physical body to rule. And I say that because that's what he says. It is a very specific term. This is not our old nature. We're not talking about the nature, the real man, the real I inside. That was the soul, the inward man. It is not the new man, the new nature sharing residence with the old vile, sin-ruled soul. No, no, that is dead and we have a new soul, the real me, the real self. The inward man is holy and pure and set for heaven. The only beachhead sin has to approach me by terminology of Paul, and we're--granted--talking about semantics, but let's get it right, the only beachhead is the body. You want some other terms? Our flesh, our humanness. And the word "mortal" in the dictionary, I looked it up, it means "transitory, subject to death and belonging to this world." We are new souls. We are new creations. But sin is still left in our bodies.
And that means, people, listen. If we could just get rid of these bodies, we would have instant holiness. You believe that? That's exactly what the Bible teaches, Romans 8:21, look at it..."The creation itself, also, shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption," and he's talking about the physical, "and will be set loose in the glorious liberty of the children of God." I mean, won't it be great when we get rid of this...this part of us? "And we know that the whole creation, that whole physical dimension, groans and has labor pains," and not only the whole creation, "but ourselves who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, that is the redemption of our...what?...of our body." That's what we're waiting for. We're waiting for a redeemed body. We want to get rid of the one we've got....
Would you look what Paul does not say? Listen to what he doesn't say. He doesn't say - Let not sin therefore reign in your soul. He doesn't say - Let not sin therefore reign in your spirit. He doesn't say - Let not sin therefore reign in you. He says, "Don't let it reign in your...what?...your mortal body." That's the only place sin can operate. Why? Because the real you, the real self is holy now. And that's why you have this struggle in Romans 7 where you say - I want the right things, that's coming from the real me, but my body is a problem to me....
"Let not sin reign therefore in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts." What it tells us is that sin will dominate you if you let it, right? I mean, if you pamper the body and you feed the body and if you entertain the body and if you entice the body and if you expose the body to temptation, you're going to have a problem. Because it's the body and all of the sensory factors that are exposed to this world become channels through which temptation can draw you into sin and sin can reign over you. So, sin will dominate you if you don't deal with it.
But you know what else this tells me? It doesn't have to dominate you because the very fact that he says "don't let it" indicates that it doesn't have to, right? He says - Don't let sin reign in your mortal body. You know what that means to me? It would like to but I don't have to let it. Isn't that comforting? Sure it is...
It's God who's working in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure, but it will only come to the surface as your will is activated in accord with His....
holiness in behavior is not a sudden instantaneous thing, it's a way of life and you fight it all the way along to be holy because as long as you're in this...what?...this body, you're going to have problems...Sanctification is a process and that's why we don't know the fullness of sanctification until we get to be with God....
Sin is seen as a king. He's a king who demands our bodies to be weapons to promote sin. He uses our bodies as weapons to gain dominion over the world. The body becomes the weapon for him to promote unrighteousness. So he says, "Don't let Satan be a king who collects weapons to bring unrighteousness around the world. Don't let him use you as one of his weapons." So, don't yield your bodily parts as weapons of unrighteousness for the propagation of sin.
Now, there's nothing wrong with your bodily parts. God looked on the creation He made and said, "It's good." And you can use your hands and feet and every part of your body for His glory, can't you? Why of course. Romans 12:1, "Present your bodies a living sacrifice," are you ready for this? What's the next word? Holy and what? Acceptable. Your body is acceptable unto God. That's right. Your body is neutral in that sense. You can use it as an instrument to sin or you can use it as an instrument of righteousness and you decide...you decide.
13 Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body to him as instruments of righteousness.
Have you forgotten who you are? Have you not affirmed who you are? Now yield on that basis. And yield your bodily parts as weapons of righteousness in the hand of God to produce what He wants. You have to see your body as a weapon in the hand of a holy God to produce righteousness....
Sin is a dethroned monarch. We want to know it. We want to affirm it. And we want to yield our lives as weapons in the hand of Almighty God for the purposes of righteousness...
14 For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.
law and sin go together because the law came to show us our...what?...our sin. The law commands, the law demands, the law rebukes, the law condemns, the law restrains, the law can't conquer sin--either its penalty or its power. By the law shall no flesh be justified. So being under law is to be damned. Being under law is to be under the power of sin. Law only increases our bondage by manifesting the sinfulness of sin and the utter inability of man to do what is right. So to be under law sort of sums up the enslavement to sin. The law aggravates sin. The law condemns the sinner. The law calls for the penalty and the law has no ability to deliver the victim. You're not under that. You're under grace and grace embraces and sums up all of the righteousness in Christ, all of the mercy of God in salvation.
And so, Paul answers the question in verse 1, "Shall we sin that grace may abound?" Oh, no, no, no, no. We're new creations. We know it. We count on it. And we yield to God and sin is no longer our master. We're not under law...we're under grace.
Beloved, that's the way to know victory. Know who you are. Believe it with all your heart. And yield to God.
Tomorrow's scripture focus: Romans 6:15-18
1 comment:
Very interesting!
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