Eternity Daily Bible Study: No. 527 Romans 1-8 - A Righteousness That Is By Faith Verses: Romans 6:11-18 Topic: Yielded To Righteousness Date: 19th October 2005 Romans 6:11-18 MKJV Likewise count yourselves also to be truly dead to sin, but alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (12) Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. (13) Do not yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourselves to God, as one alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. (14) For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under Law, but under grace. (15) What then? Shall we sin because we are not under Law, but under grace? Let it not be! (16) Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves to him whom you obey; whether it is of sin to death, or of obedience to righteousness. (17) But thanks be to our God that you were the slaves of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered. (18) Then being made free from sin, you became the slaves of righteousness. Paul says two seemingly contradictory things: A) That we are dead to sin, and free from sin, and that sin shall not have dominion over us (verses 11, 18, 14). B) That we are not to yield to sin or to let sin reign over us. (verses 12, 13,14) It is as if we are free men walking in bandit country. We have to be alert and we need to resist the bandits and beat them off or they can capture us and drag us off into slavery. While we are in the flesh and while we are in this "present evil world" the big bad bandits of sin and lust and temptation are all around. But the fact that bandits exist does not mean that freedom does not exist. We are free from sin, we are dead to sin and there is no actual compulsion for us to serve sin. To continue the analogy, if a sin-bandit comes up and says "You must serve me!" the right response is "I refuse to yield to you, because I am dead to sin and alive to God and sin shall not have dominion over me so goodbye and good-riddance! But when Christ turns up we eagerly say: "I yield myself to serve Jesus Christ and to righteousness, Master I am gladly Thy slave!" Now a very clever sin-bandit might say "Aha I have you, see this is the Law, you are convicted as a sinner and by the law of sin and death you must serve me" To which the saint should firmly respond: "I am not under law but under grace and sin has no dominion over me. I am dead to the Law and free from it. I serve in the newness of the Spirit instead." (more on that in Romans 7). A still cleverer sin-bandit might respond: "If indeed you are under grace then why not sin all you like so that grace might increase!" To which the saint should say: "May it never be - for how can we who have died to sin still live in it! (Romans 6:2) Besides I am a slave to righteousness and cannot serve sin any more, I have a new Master. (Romans 6:16-18) Now as free men we must stay free, for Christ has redeemed us for that very purpose (Galatians 5:1) and we are not be be enslaved by sin again (2 Peter 2:19). Staying free from sin involves a series of daily choices - particularly about what we will do with our bodies. Sin tries to come in through the flesh, through what we do with the members of our body - our hands, feet, tongue and other members. That is why Paul writes: Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. (13) Do not yield your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, So if you find a fleshly impulse taking hold of you, do not yield to it. Deny it, do not let your body go along with it. Hold back your hand from hitting, your foot from going into a wrong place, or your tongue from speaking a sharp word. Restrain your body from acting on the sinful impulse. Do not let sin tell your body what to do, instead let God tell your body what to do. Yield your members to God and to righteousness, so when you have a holy impulse yield to that! Follow the nudges of the Holy Spirit so that your feet go to good places, and your mouth speaks kind words and your hand is put to constructive work to the glory of God the Father! So God's work in Christ, which wins our freedom from sin, needs also to be made effective in our life by the myriad daily decisions for God and for righteousness that committed Christians make. We need to be prepared to face the sin-bandits and to tell them that we are freedmen. We do not serve sin, we are dead to sin, we are Christ's slaves and slaves of righteousness and we do not belong to the world of sin and death any more. We need to convince ourselves of this or we will give in far too easily. That is why Paul says "reckon yourself dead to sin and alive to God". We need to put it in our mental notebook, and count it up and reckon it about ourselves that we are dead to sin and alive to God. It has to be a noted part of our personal identity that we are dead to sin and alive to God. With this firmly fixed in our minds we then need to escape from the tyranny of the law. Legalism drags down many well intentioned saints. We do not serve as slaves of the Law, rather we walk in the Spirit. (Romans 8:1-14, Galatians 5:16-25) Then we need to firmly resist fleshly lusts and to surrender to God and joyfully yield ourselves to our new Master - Jesus Christ. The acronym READY encapsulates the teaching of today's passage: Reckon yourself dead to sin and free from sin. (Romans 6:11,18) Escape from being under the law (Romans 6:14,15) Affirm you are alive to God (Romans 6:11,13) Deny fleshly lusts (Romans 6:12, 14,16) Yield yourself to God and to righteousness (Romans 6:13,17,18) You are free from sin and dead to sin and sin shall not have dominion over you but you must not let it fool you, and you must never yield to it no matter how tempting and nice it seems. Rather you must refuse sin and yield yourselves instead to God and to the work of righteousness. Blessings, John Edmiston (johned@aibi.ph) REFER OTHERS: If this devotional is a blessing to you, maybe you have a friend or family member that would like to start receiving this daily bible study. 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