Romans 6:12. The First Step When Confronting Sins

Romans 6

12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.

Up to now, we have shared what Christ has done for us.

Here we are given responsibility.

Many believe that the Christian life is praying a simple prayer or generally expecting God to deal with our sins.  We may even try methods to stop certain sins. But all seems to be a failure.  Understand, we, on our own without the power of the Spirit cannot stop sins.

But there are things we can do to begin the process.

One is verse 12.

DON'T LET ANY SIN REIGN IN YOUR PHYSICAL BODY

SIN=a living force, a principle we live by, a desire we feed.   Sin is personified as a king, a dictator forcing us through enticement to do its will.

The Apostle Paul strongly appeals to the believer, not to let any sin reign in the body.

Let nothing rule you.  Don't let a sin become a habit. Once you play with sin, it will keep coming back.  You will keep letting in.  At a point, you won't be able to make him leave.  

Tragic are the stories of everyone who dabbled in a sin, soon to become its slave.  Even after years of slavery and finally find victory they still suffer the memories of lost "what might have been."

For that habit will destroy more areas of your soul and its pursuit of life and fruit, you will not so easily recover from.  Later on, you will see the effects of it with great sorrow.

Sin habits will also permanently destroy strengths in your thinking and parts of your personality.  Sin is more dangerous than we think.

Though we return to God, sin will always leave a mark, a scar that may never fully heal.

But the hope is this:  God can and does restore.  The magnitude of that depends upon our responsibility to follow the Holy Spirit's guidance from Christ's Word.

The 1st responsibility is to fix a mindset to not let any sin rule us.  The habits must be broken.  Nothing which stands against the knowledge of God must continue.  They must fall to humble obedience to Christ.

"and as for you, you shall make no covenant with the inhabitants of this land; you shall tear down their altars.' But you have not obeyed Me. What is this you have done? "Therefore I also said, 'I will not drive them out before you; but they shall become as thorns in your sides, and their gods shall be a snare to you.) (Jdg 2:2, 3)

Cain failed to heed the Lord's instructive warning "If you do well, will not your countenance be lifted up? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must master (Lxx = archo = rule over, govern) it. (Genesis 4:7).

These were some of the sins warned by Paul to eradicate:

lust, sexual impurity, covetousness, anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy language, and lying can show up in the lives of Christians (Colossians 3:5, 6, 7, 8, 9).

I will give you two pieces of advice to begin:

1.  Get alone with God and discuss your sins.  Proceed to repentance and believing God's mercy to wash you clean.  Then begin the road by asking His help to show you how.

2.  When we learn to enjoy a new food, we reject the old of poorer taste.  I strongly believe this in regard to dealing with sin.  Until you learn to experience the joy of learning God's deep truths your hunger for the flesh will not change much.  But as you grow to enjoy Bible study, exploring the depths of word studies and a deep understanding of the truths of verses and their passages, you will continue to hunger more for your sins.

My experience has been this:  As I have experienced more of God from prayer and the Bible, my appetite for God has grown and my appetite for sin has greatly decreased.  Over time, sin habits have ended.

Grow your taste for prayer and the Bible.  It will change what you eat.

Romans 6:13 Steps to Take Toward Temptation

Romans 6

13 Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: 

but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, 

and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.


1.  Don't yield body parts to sin.
2.  Yield yourself to God immediately upon each situation and temptation
3.  This is consistent with those who are alive in Christ.  Aliveness will fail to occur if disregarded.
4.  Decisively yield your body parts to endure temptation as a living sacrifice to serve God.  Do this as a lifestyle, progressively practicing and perfecting over time.

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Other Translations:

Amplified: Do not continue offering or yielding your bodily members [and [1] faculties] to sin as instruments (tools) of wickedness.

Phillips: Nor hand over your organs to be, as it were, weapons of evil for the devil's purposes.

Wuest: Moreover, stop putting your members at the disposal of the sinful nature as weapons of unrighteousness

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Which body parts do you find yourself offering to the sin nature?

• your words
• your eyes
• your ears
• your hands
• your feet
• your sexual organs

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Remember

Sin is no longer king.  Jesus is.  You no longer own your body.  It was paid for with a price.

1 Corinthians 6:20 

For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.

You have a choice how you will use your body.  But God will not let you use your body without increasingly severe conviction and chastisements.  Your successes, from God's view, will be slowed and become fruitless.  Frustration will increase.  Anger will grow.  Faith and endurance from all Satan will throw at you will diminish.  You cannot and will. not win by living a separate life of serving Christ and serving Sin.

Romans 12:1

I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship. 

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1 Peter 2:9 NASB

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God’s own possession, so that you may proclaim the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light;

Please think how chosen your are.  You are a member of the royal family.  God owns you.  We do not consort with the enemy of sin.  Yes, we struggle and fall into sin.  But that is not our heart, to commit sin.  Our true heart is to display God's Light through us; children of righteousness.  It is always the better way.

Pursue that mindset.  Keep it before you.  Never make sin a conscious habit of desire or practice.

Choose this day to use your body to honor Christ at all times in every circumstance.  This is your calling, your duty, your unexpected path of blessings.


AS INSTRUMENTS OF UNRIGHTEOUSNESS:

God says your body is His conduit to channel life in and through you.  Your greatest fulfillment and joy is when the flow of God is actively flowing through your eyes, tongue, the hands and feet for good works.  Use your tongue to speak things that are good, praise-worthy, Christ-exalting, respectful, positive and constructive, edifying all people at all times when possible.

Your body

• is a sacrifice at all times to and for God
• your wear the righteousness of Jesus
• your have the full of armor of God for a defense and a weapon to break evil, available.  We fail because we let our mind and emotions rule us.  We allow our spirit and our will to remain neutral while thinking it is God's responsibility to do something.  Our responsibility has been stated in this chapter.  Once we realize how Christ has defeated Sin and how we must surrender to Christ at the moment of the battle, He then, not us will over come for us. We cannot overcome Sin.  But we must yield, wait, and endure in faith to Christ until the battle is won.

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The fear of the LORD is to hate (despise, oppose, detest) evil… (Proverbs 8:13)

… By the fear of the LORD one keeps away (turns aside, departs) from evil. (Proverbs 16:6)

The fear of the LORD leads to life, so that one may sleep satisfied, untouched by evil. (Proverbs 19:9)

There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job, and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil. (Job 1:1)

         Ps 34:11-14 Come, you children, listen to me; I will teach you the fear of the LORD. 12 Who is the man who desires life, And loves length of days that he may see good? 13 Keep your tongue from evil, And your lips from speaking deceit. 14 Depart from evil, and do good; Seek peace, and pursue it.

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Present (3936) (paristemi from para = near + histemi = place) conveys the idea of placing yourself beside God, in so doing placing yourself at the disposal to Him. 

Paul's use of this verb also conveys the ideas of yielding or surrendering because if you place something at the disposal of God, you are in essence surrendering your rights and power to God and His power (a very good exchange indeed!). copied with permission from Preceptaustin.org

This command is more than agreement, it is an action required to do each and every time when challenged by sin to succumb to its temptations.  

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WHAT YOU MUST DO WHEN FACING TEMPTATION

1. Before you sin, present your body to God.  
2. Express your inability to resist temptation.  
3. Present your body to Him.   Ask Him to take over. 
4. Then wait and endure temptation.  Refuse to think on it.  "set your mind on things above [not upon sin] and you will find in a short amount of time the temptation will leave.  

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Why must we wait?  To bend our will so that faith may harden against temptation.  The longer and more we resist sin by the power of Christ, the easier it will to forsake it.

A life wholly lived to please God, a dedicated body to glorify the Father, does not go unblessed.  But rather that kind of sacrifice 

Remember, it an act of the will, not a feeling.  If you are waiting to feel like obeying God, you will fail into sin.  Choose present, to trust, to wait until the feeling leaves.  This is victory.

Romans 6:9-11. Part 1

Romans 6:9 New King James Version (NKJV)

9 knowing that Christ,

 having been raised from

 the dead, dies no more. 

Death no longer has 

dominion over Him.

Romans 6:10 New King James Version (NKJV)

10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

Romans 6:11 New King James Version (NKJV)

11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Vs 9, 10--before we can go any farther to eliminate sins from our life, we must know [be convinced, understand] what Christ did at the Cross.   He died once to complete the dismantlement of sin as a ruling power in our life.  

His Life could not be resisted.  His Life continues to please the will of God, His Father.

Vs. 11--Likewise, our life means the same.  The power and excuse to Sin has been eliminated.  Our old life has an end.  Having His Life within us, sin cannot resist His Life.

And that same Life has the desire to please the Father.  This is what we live for.

A professing Christian who does not desire to live for the Father even as Christ is in a dangerous state between himself and Christ.  

Either he has not been to the Cross and new Life poured into Him or he possesses the Seed of Life but has failed to understand His position in Christ.

And to remain in that state of little Life poses Him to a greater fight with the flesh and with Satanic forces which will take every opportunity to prey upon him.  Satan will do everything possible to take advantage of his Biblical ignorance to create overwhelming doubts to pull him away from Christ as far as possible.  The goal is turn as many away from Christ as possible.

The final statement of one turned away is

 this:  "The Christian life doesn't work.

  They are all hypocrites."

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Romans 6:8

Romans 6:8 New King James Version (NKJV)

8 Now if we 

died with 

Christ, we 

believe that 

we shall also 

live with Him, 

Amplified: Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, (Amplified Bible - Lockman)

GWT: If we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. (GWT)

NLT: And since we died with Christ, we know we will also share his new life. (NLT - Tyndale House)

Phillips: And if we were dead men with him we can believe that we shall also be men newly alive with him. (Phillips: Touchstone)

Wuest: Now, in view of the fact that we died once for all with Christ, we believe that we shall also live by means of Him,

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Many of the topics in this verse have already been covered so let' take a look at some new words to investigate.

Lets talk about believing in Christ

If we believe...

     "If" implies "assuming we believe."  None of the accomplishments by Christ stated here will have happened to anyone who has not believed.

Now, what does it mean to believe in Christ?

believe.  

1st there is mental agreement of a fact.  Such as, I believe in George Washington.  The agreement I believe in such a man does not mean I have a relationship with him.

2nd the Bible says the demons believe in Jesus.  But of course they have no submissive relationship with him; therefore are not a part of Christ's kingdom.

3rd there is the Greek meaning of belief we will examine here.

Here are the biblical facts about true believing in Jesus Christ:

• Meaning:  persuaded to be true and real, we then  choose to trust and act
• Convinced to partner with
• Persuaded to the point that it is genuine persuasion; fully convinced with the message.
• a continual attitude that grows and does not disappear.
• willing to abandon contradictory thoughts in order to accept the whole message.
• belief is more in the person of Christ as it is His message.  
• means changing our mind.  This thought defines the meaning of repentance "a change of mind" which leads to a change of behavior.  When we believe in Christ, He enters our life and alters the way we see things, thus leading to the way we express ourselves.
• "Believe" used in this verse means this:  when we understand and accept what Christ did for us on the cross--dealing with our sin problem--we can then proceed to become freed from them.  
• It means surrendering ourselves to the truth of the Person and His message.
• This persuasion takes place in the heart.  It may begin in the mind, but the will of the heart must surrender and take part in the offer made by Christ.
• This conviction is evidence we are born again.  When we sin, we know it, it bothers us, and guilt drives us to the Solution available by the Cross.  A true Christian cannot continue in a habit of sin without "conviction, persuasion, belief" he is must find remedy in the Cross

If we believe [surrendering to Christ's work on the cross] it means our mind is in agreement with Him, His Lordship, His commands, His promises, His specific guidance to our conscience from the Bible.  

It also includes an agreement of the heart.  Our heart goes out to Him, is convinced in our heart He is the Son of God worthy of our following.  Believing is also a conviction.  Something inside us has become persuaded He is true to believe therefore prompts us to obey.

If we believe, ...

We will live with Him

     means this:  to be connected, woven into, becoming a constant recipient of Christ into our spirit and soul, thus energizing our body to follow "the narrow way."  This means more than living with Him in heaven.  It means that this believing is like opening a door to another place.  It is the place of Life, enjoyable, refreshing, and desiring to remain.

Life is...

• that energy possessed by the Godhead.
• abundantly fruitful with Their personality and goodness
• Gloriously enjoyable
• inviting, desiring, comfortable
• giving us what we need in the spirit and soul
• opposes the Old Self and all that is corrupted

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me." (Gal 2:20-note)

Since you have believed, continue to hear and follow Him and you will increase to experience and to enjoy His life in you.