Or, The Everyday Duties of Gospel Doctrine
Scripture: Romans 6:12-14
Date: June 12, 2022
Speaker: Sean Higgins
The categories in The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity apply all over. One pivotal component that gives direction to the matrix is the reality that we spend most of our lives interacting with others. In our relationships there is loss and benefit, drain or gain, experienced and/or extended. The helpless are drained even if they do some good, the bandits gain as others are drained, the intelligent gain as others gain, and the stupid are defined as those who cause loss to others without getting any benefit themselves. While the categories in Romans 6 may seem to be just two, it is right to see that unrighteousness messes with ourselves and others, and righteousness blesses both self and group.
We are united to Adam as human beings. Why wouldn’t our sin affect all those to whom we’re connected? More significantly, we are united to Christ as believers. Why wouldn’t our obedience and fruitfulness (and sin) affect more than our individual selves? While we have personal responsibilities as disciples to know, reckon, and yield, the blessings of righteousness bless the whole body.
Paul is writing about what grace does. Grace saves, grace sanctifies. By grace we are forgiven by God, by grace we are made fruitful for God. Christianity is the only religion where grace, not works, is the basis of acceptance with God, but the Christian doctrine of grace trains believers how to live in a sphere of work; God’s grace makes “a people…zealous for good works” (see Titus 2:11-14).
Since the end of Romans 5 Paul has been answering the valid argument in form, but not sound because not true, that since grace abounds more where sin abounds, we should keep on sinning. The answer to that is not a different or better law, but union with Christ in His death and resurrection. The gospel is a message to be believed, but in believing we are participants in the spiritual reality. We’ve been transferred by grace into a new way of living as pictured by our baptism.
The instructions for believers in dealing with our relationship to sin are as simple as the instructions for what to do when you’re on fire: 1) Know 2) Reckon 3) Yield.
“Do you not know” (verse 3). “We know that our old self was crucified” (verse 6). “We know that Christ…will never die again” (verse 9). This is gospel doctrine lived out in three dimensions, the indicative that leads to imperative.
Verse 11 gives the first command in the epistle. “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Comprehend the doctrine, count it so. It’s not the power of positive thinking, it’s the power of grace working through faith in our thinking. Believe that when you take a step, gravity will bring your foot to earth again. Believe that when you take a step, grace will bring your foot to walk in newness of life.
The third step for sanctification is in verses 12-14. It is summarized with the word yield, but there are a couple others verbs that help flesh it out.
Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions (Romans 6:12, ESV)
The imperative reign (βασιλευέτω) is a cognate with the Greek word for king. The believer, united with Christ, does not have to bow to sin personified as a monarch any more, indeed the believer must not submit to sin. We have been set free from sin.
“To say to the slave who has not been emancipated, “Do not behave as a slave” is to mock his enslavement. But to say the same to the slave who has been set free is the necessary appeal to put into effect the privileges and rights of his liberation.” (John Murray)
The mortal bodies is not just related to the flesh, but related to the fleeting nature of the desires. Why submit to what won’t last? That is stupid.
The bodies have passions, which is the typical NT word (here the plural of ἐπιθυμία) for “lusts” (KJV, NASB) or strong “desires” (NIV). The description in God’s Word is that man’s wants default to wrong. Men, of course, have always argued the opposite. “If I feel this way, so strongly, for so long, then it can’t be wrong.” But living for what we want is the way of pagans, “like Gentiles who don’t know God” (1 Thessalonians 4:5).
For our desires to be legit, they must have died first. Our natural wants had to be crucified with Christ, and even now must be resisted not rejoiced in.
The man of grace is the man who wants the blessing of blessing others not just more for himself. It’s not only not yielding to “big” passions of fornication, adultery, homosexuality, drunkenness, and embezzlement (see 1 Corinthians 6:9-10). Instead of passions for self-recognition, he can rejoice with others who rejoice. Instead of passions for earthly treasures or experiences, he can give and give generously. Instead of passions for his own will to be done, he can look to the interests of others (see Philippians 2:3-4).
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 6:13, ESV)
This is not possible apart from grace. It is not even desirable for one who has not been born again. Sovereign grace must sever the old ways, must bring to death the dead man, in order to even make this new approach conceivable.
Members is a way to talk about body parts, and of course there are many. They are both the external organs (eyes and ears and mouth) and internal ones (brain and bowels), they are heart and head, hands and feet. Members make us productive and reproductive. They are contemplative and constructive, or at least they could be.
The members are also called instruments (ὅπλα), tools for work, or even “weapons” for military engagement (a footnote in the KJV). In his second century letter to Polycarp, Ignatius used this word referring to baptism (“let baptism remain as your arms” as opposed to abandoning your baptism in Afghanistan, so to speak). Paul uses the same word in 2 Corinthians 10:4 referring to “the weapons of our warfare.” Your arms are arms, Christian, along with the fingers banging on your keyboard or your thumbs swiping on your phone.
We are to present the parts to a higher authority for service. Either we serve sin or we serve God, and both are in body. Serving sin isn’t only physical and serving God isn’t only pietistic or dualistic. Don’t put your parts at the disposal of sin.
Wake up in the morning, or in any given moment all day long, and think about the tools you’ve been given and for what purpose.
This is part of the reason why I said at the beginning that it’s not merely an individualistic concern. In yielding purpose to God, who would He have you bless? What has God given you that would bring profitable blessing? Let your purpose be greater than you.
Put to death (Colossians 3:5), yes, per Paul to the Colossians. And put on (Colossians 3:12), yes. But those behaviors come out of our identity as those who have died with Christ (Colossians 2:20) and been raised (Colossians 3:1). The middle of Romans 6:13 repeats that we do it “as (those) from the dead living” (ὡσεὶ ἐκ νεκρῶν ζῶντας). Based on the gospel doctrine, there are every day duties. We’ve been united to Christ so that we can obey and be fruitful in righteousness.
The good of your quiet time is for renewing your knowing and reckoning. If righteousness is limited to what happens during your quiet time you are not actually yielding.
Here is a(nother) doctrinal reason.
For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:14, ESV).
Have dominion (κυριεύσει) is cognate with the usual Greek word for “lord.” Lordship-sinning is to be rejected. Sin doesn’t win, a promise, and the reason is because we are under grace. The comparison/contrast between law and grace is the subject of much theology. While the law makes sin clear, and the law threatens consequences against those who sin, the law itself does not deliver from sin. Grace alone is potent for our presenting of members to righteousness.
“The yoke of the law cannot do otherwise than tear and bruise those who carry it.” (John Calvin)
This “not law but grace” comment warrants a whole new set of qualifications in the rest of chapter 6, and there is much more about the believer’s relationship to the law in chapter 7.
These instructions are how to live like a Christian as a Christian. Grace is not a license to be stupid, it is the power that enables us to bring blessing.
In my Bible reading this past week a couple phrases stood out about Asa, he “did what was right in the eyes of the LORD” and his acts were identified with “all his might” (1 Kings 15:11, 23).
And if it weren’t hard enough, remember that when we no longer live in the flesh for human passion but for the will of God (1 Peter 4:2), when we use our gifts to serve one another as stewards of God’s grace (1 Peter 4:10), when we keep doing good (1 Peter 4:19), it’s often not admired. Don’t be surprised when sinners choose to be stupid.
You are united to Christ as those who have been brought from death to life. Know. Reckon. Yield.
Sons and daughters of grace, by grace you must not be gullible/helpless, grabby/bandits, or up to no good/stupid. By grace all your members must be disposed to do good. By grace present your life and limbs to the Lord for righteousness.
Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. (Hebrews 13:20–21, ESV)