Session 19 – Romans; Romans 6:11-13: Mark Lanier, 10/12/25

Romans 6:11-14 - Think Rightly About Who You Are (Mark Lanier)
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Mark Lanier: [00:00:00] I love the power of a good story, and a set of my favorite stories are found in those books that CS Lewis wrote. During the World War II and immediately thereafter, era, we know them as the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Chronicles of Narnia has one of the volumes, depending upon whether you're reading 'em in the order they were written or whether you read 'em in a chronological order.

That's been done since, so it's either volume four or six, but it's a, a volume called the silver Chair. Now, I don't know if many of y'all have read the Silver Chair, but I'd love to know do, does it ring a bell? The [00:01:00] silver chair. It's not one of the more popular Narnia books, but it's one of my favorites.

Now, in this book, there is the, the king is a fellow who still gets called Prince Caspian. He's got a son, Rian and Rian's mother gets killed by a serpent. And so really Prince Relian goes to try to slay the serpent that killed his mother. Now, of course, his students of the Bible, we know that a serpent is often symbolic of Satan, that great serpent in the garden, who, um, uh, in some ways started this cascade of sinful, uh, troubles that we still see today and experience.

Well, prince Cas, or, I mean, prince Rian goes after the serpent, but the serpent transforms into a witch and actually is [00:02:00] either a witch or a serpent, whichever you'd like. But as a witch, she be witches Prince Caspian, I mean Prince Rian. I'm gonna have that trouble the whole way through. It's my Jonah Noah problem.

He, and so the witch. Be witches. Prince Rian, who's been chasing ultimately her, but he thought a serpent and she straps him to this silver chair with a magical incantation and these magical ropes, and she tells him as the witch, she says. I've got you here for your own good. See, you've been having, you're terribly disturbed.

You've had these visions. Visions of a serpent, visions of, of a life outside of here. Visions of a mother, visions of a father, [00:03:00] visions of Narnia. But instead, she's got him in her underground world. Magically affixed to a silver chair and for over a decade convinces him that that's really all there is, and that he's there for his, she's taking care of him.

It's for his own good because he's so out of his mind. If he weren't tied down, he would self harm. Now, meanwhile, his dad up above in the land of Narnia. Is real concerned. He's lost his son, so he pleads to Aslan. Aslan, of course, being the lion that is typ, uh, typifies Christ. In the Narnia stories, he prays in essence to Aslan.

The Lion says, please, can you help find and send help to find my son? [00:04:00] So Aslan pulls out of the. Normal world. Our world. Clarence Eustis scrub Jill and joins forces with a narium named Puddle glum. And they go into the underworld to find Prince Rian and to rescue 'em. And while they're in the underworld, they encounter the witch of the Underland.

Underland. Now, when they encounter the witch, before they encounter her, they find Prince Rian. They find him in the chair. He think he explains he's gotta be there because he's, you know, just not in his right mind. Well, they break the spell, they destroy the chair, and he realizes that he's meant for something better.

He belongs in a different land. He is [00:05:00] a child of the king. And before they can, uh, uh, escape, the queen comes in the witch of the underland. And so this witch comes in and she says, uh, what are you doing? You, you can't be out of the chair. You're not of your right mind. And who are these other people? And they said we are from, uh, one pu puddle glimpse from Narnia.

We're from above. We've been sent here to rescue and we'll be on our way. Now we've rescued the child of the king and the witch, takes some kind of green powder and throws it into the fire and starts talking to them in a very kind of just entrancing way. And that, uh, smell produced by the green stuff in the fire starts numbing their brain [00:06:00] and she starts challenging their worldview and challenging what they think is real.

And she's saying there's nothing real except here. The underground, there's no Narnia, there's no world outside. And she picks up an instrument that kinda looks like a mandolin and she just thumbs it. And that beat of that music with that sweet sticky smell. From that, the aroma of that burnt, uh, substance starts really doing a number on the kids.

And they're fighting it, and they're trying hard to say, no, no, no, no, no. This is this, this is not the real world. This is just the underland. And they say because, and she says, oh, children, bless your hearts. Y'all aren't in your right mind either. I'm so sorry. Tell me of this land you think you know exists.

And they said, well, there's a, there's a [00:07:00] sun. And she says, what is a sun? They said, well, it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a light. And she says, it's this big bright light. It rises in the morning and it goes down and it, and in the middle of the day, it's so bright you can't even look at it. And she says, and what does it sit on?

They said, whoa, whoa. It, it doesn't sit on anything. It's just, and she said, it's just what? Well, it's up in the sky. Wait a minute. This just floats magically in the sky. And, and they're like, and their brain's all fogged up and they're not understanding, and that stupid smell and that stupid thumb, thumb from music.

And they're getting, and, and they're like, well, uh, and she says to 'em, she says, bless your heart, there's no sun. You are just imagining it based on our lamps. Children do this all the time. It's your childish thinking. [00:08:00] You are just thinking, oh, there's a lamp. What if there's this great big lamp in the sky that doesn't even have to stand, that magically floats in the air across the sky?

And they said, well, no, no. And, and, and then they're like, yeah, I guess maybe. And you can see them starting to fall to her spell. But then Al Glum remembers Aslan the lion that typifies Christ. And he says, no, no, no. There's a, a Aslan and he is a, a lion. And, and the the witch says, what's, what's a lion? And they said, well, it's, it's like a, a cat, but it's much bigger than a cat.

And it's got this mane and it's got, and she says, bless your heart, this is just typical of children in the way they think. You see our cats, and so you've imagined something even bigger. Oh, there's a big cat and [00:09:00] all you've done, there's no such thing as a lion. You just imagined it based on our cat.

And they're like, no, there's this whole world, it's called Narnia and it and it, and it's got trees and people. And she says, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There is no Narnia. This Cavern is the only world there is. Well, as time and pages go by puddle, glum gets enough fortitude to go over and to stomp out the fire that's got the green smelly stuff that's entrance.

The, the kids, the company. And then, um, uh, she drops her instrument and quits doing the thrum thrum. And ultimately, uh, she gets angry and she turns into the serpent. She was. And Prince Cassian realizes she's a serpent and she tries to strangle him and he kills her. Uh, it, it keeps going. But I wanna pause [00:10:00] there because Lewis is doing something very profound.

He's asking a question through story. What is real? What is the real world? Where does the world try to seduce us into believing it's something that it's not? Where does the world try to strip us of our true Christian understanding and reason and supplant it with a lie from hell? And that's very vivid imagery through a story that I want in the front of our brain.

While we look today at the passage in Romans, we're gonna be looking at, we're gonna have three points to this. First, Paul tells us we need to think rightly about who we are. Don't let the witch, the serpent begyle us into [00:11:00] wrong thinking. May we think rightly. And that's gonna be Romans five, verse 11, six verse five, six, verse 11.

Six, sorry, wrote it down wrong. Six verse 11. And then we need to second, don't let sin reign in our life. And that's gonna be verses 12 and 13. And then third, we'll look at Romans six 14 with its great promise. So if we can get through those 1, 2, 3, 4 verses, we will have done good today. So let's start about thinking rightly who you are.

This is a problem for everyone. It is hard for us to think rightly about who we are. We can so easily get Beguiled, just like the characters in Narnia. [00:12:00] And so I want us to pause and let what Paul says, soak in deeply so that we'll remember it forever. So we'll start with Romans six 11. Now Romans six 11, which reads, so, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus as just pulling it up immediately.

You see it begins with, so you also, and that means that we're having to look back a little bit at what Paul has already said. It. So if we just back it up just a little bit. Paul, two verses earlier in verse nine said, we know we know idol taste. We know that [00:13:00] Christ being raised from the dead will never die again.

That death no longer has dominion over him. Because the death, he died to sin once for all. Once for all time. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. Now. I've highlighted the word must consider

in the Greek is the form that's used here. This is a, a word that's good. It's a, it's a useful word. Paul's used it [00:14:00] before and it's a word that's translated variously. It can be translated reckon. It can be translated calculate. It can be translated account. It was a word used for different adding and subtracting type stuff, but it was also used as a banking term, a financial term.

It's the idea that. You've got, you, you, you put the money in, the money is in your account. You reckon it, you count on it. You rely on it. You, you know that you've got that money in there. You can go to the ATM machine and you can pull out money without fear. It's gonna say it ain't got it in here. You know it's in there.

You can account for it. It's a banking term. You rely upon what is real and there. It's to reckon, to [00:15:00] calculate, to account. But I've told you many times that while English is built off of oftentimes the placement where a word is placed in a sentence, um, I ate the chicken or mark, let's use Mark. Mark ate a chicken and.

This is worth writing 'cause I'm kind of hungry. Mark ate a chicken.

You got it. Now I can use those exact same words and just change their place. A chicken eight. Mark [00:16:00] and it will have an entirely different meaning. Right? But in Greek it's different because in Greek they put little tags on words, and so they can put a tag on mark that says, mark's the subject, and they put a tag on chicken that says Chicken is the object.

The subject ate the object and it doesn't matter. Then where you put mark in the sentence, you can say ate. If you want to emphasize the word ate, 'cause you emphasize it by putting it first in the sentence, ate a chicken,

the object mark.

The subject, and then you would know as long as they held those tags on the back, [00:17:00] that mark is the one who ate the chicken. You got it? Okay. This gets a little more complicated, but what I want you to see here, iSay here is a form. That in Greek, we would call a present imperative, and we know it from the form of the word, from Zo, that it's, it's a present, present tense.

So the aspect of the verb is present and it's an imperative, a command, an order, an instruction. And Paul uses commands and orders and instructions all the time, but he does so often. Generally he does so with another grammar usage right before it. Now, if you're getting [00:18:00] lost in this, that's okay. You'll come back around 'cause we're gonna have to talk about it.

But if you really wanna get what's going on here, it's worth just hanging on for a moment. See? You can take different words, verbs and put 'em in different forms. And so there is a form where Paul will state reality. He'll just state a fact that typically is called the indicative form. It, it indicates a reality.

This is a fact. I'm just stating a fact. Then there are other times where Paul will give you a direction. Usually it's considered an imperative form, an express direction, or an expressed imperative. Sometimes it's an implied imperative with a little different form, but, but there's a difference between stating a fact act [00:19:00] and giving an instruction or a command or a directive.

Okay. Now what Paul generally does is he will first state a fact before he gives you your instruction. Because Paul's instructions and commands aren't just arbitrary. It's not just, huh. I think I'll tell 'em to do this. It's based upon a reality. So he'll give the reality first and then he'll give the instruction.

Let me give you some examples that are not from Romans and then we'll go to the Romans one, Colossians three. One. Paul says, this is the truth. This is just real. This is a fact. You have been raised with Christ. It's indicative [00:20:00] you. This has hap. This is a fact. It's reality. Therefore, in a sense, because of that, I can give you an instruction, I can give you an imperative.

So you set your minds on things that are above the reason you're gonna do that. Is because of the reality of what you are, you have been raised with Christ. So you can, it. I'll instruct you to set your mind on things above. Lemme give you another example. Ephesians four, you were taught to put off your old self.

So that's a fact. That's reality. Now, let me give you an imperative. So put on the new self created after the likeness of God. Here's your [00:21:00] reality. Here's your fact, here's your instruction, what you should do. I think I've got a third example. If I remember correctly, Galatians 5 25, if we live by the spirit we live by, the spirit is indicative.

Let us also keep in step or walk with the spirit, the same thing. You've got a reality. And so from that reality, we get an instruction Now, that's what Paul's doing here in Romans and, and it's very. Typical Paul, we need to go back to verse nine to get Psalm of the reality he's given us in the indicative.

He said, Christ will never die again. That's the truth. That's the real story. That's the facts. That's uh, was it Sergeant Friday? Just the facts, ma'am. That's, that's the facts. [00:22:00] Christ will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. It doesn't. That's the real truth. He lives to God. That's the real truth.

But because of those things being true, Paul gives us an instruction. Those are true. And so you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ. You must consider yourself that. Is this. Present imperative that is, is hand in hand with the truth, the indicatives, the, the facts that Paul has already told us.

Now, if Paul is saying then that you must reckon our account, our, um, [00:23:00] consider yourself dead to sin, if he's saying that's in your bank account. Live that way, then it's fair to ask a couple of questions. And the first thing I want to do is urge you to realize Paul is not saying a couple of things. When the Christian struggles with sin, we struggle over just not being the righteous, holy people we wanna be.

We might struggle with different sins for different people. For some, the big sin is greed and, and it's almost an insatiable appetite and you can never have enough. For some, it's envy and, and you just always wonder why it's better for Joe or Sally than it is for you. For some, it's honesty. It's just so much easier to just slip into [00:24:00] saying something that's not quite true.

For some, it's, it's the pleasures. The pleasures of appetite, of food, of sexuality, the pleasures of, of, of fun and frivolity. And, and some find that that is the struggle, the, the, the place where they really have this battle. And Paul's talking to people about this and he's saying, look, you are dead to sin.

Count yourself, reckon yourself because Christ died. That's the reality. Here's the command. You count yourself dead to sin, enter it into the bank book. And Paul is not telling you that there's power and positive thinking. This is not Paul saying, fake it till you make it. Paul is not saying, just deny reality.

Don't worry. I [00:25:00] don't struggle with sin. I'm a Christian. Really? Then yours is pride and arrogance and you're struggling with it right in front of my face. I mean. And Paul's not here saying you should have some mystical feeling, you know, like, uh, grain sorghum or something. You know? I mean, this is not hippie days.

Here's what Paul is saying. Paul is saying you want to align your thinking with reality. The command is based on the indicative. It's what really happened that causes me to tell you to be this way. You will be doing this because it's aligned with what is real and factual. You are to believe that what God says about you is true.[00:26:00]

You are not who you used to be, and you need to start thinking from your new identity and not your old habits.

So this is all wrapped up in this simple start of verse 11. You also must consider reckon, calculate account. Now, I left out one other thing about this Incre. I mean, I could have done the whole class on this verse. You realize if you think I'm going too slow, I could have stopped after these first 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 words, four in the Greek, and we could have done the whole class because this is also not just an imperative.

It is a present imperative and a neat feature of Greek verbs. Is that they aren't [00:27:00] simply tenses like that was then. This is now, and that will be in the future. They're not simply tenses. They have aspects to them that carry a little extra thought. So this as a present tense verb, means that it's something you should be doing minute by minute, day by day, every moment.

This is. It, you know, it's, it's always present. I have a great guy, his name's Manuel and Manuel has worked with us and overseeing our gardens and beds and lawn care for, um, 30 plus years. He's just amazing. He's a wonderful, godly man and I'm so thankful to God for him. And he recently celebrated 30 years of doing this with us.

And I remember when I was a younger man, um, I [00:28:00] would get out there and actually work with them. Now, when I work with him and his team, they offer me water. But there's this standard saying of, uh, no travago, no awa. In other words, I don't get water if I'm not working. Um, Manuel uh, said to me one time, he said, uh, uh, I, I said, Hey, let's get this and this done.

And he said, uh. Let's do it manana. And I said, okay. And he laughed and he said, Mr. Mark, never say okay on that. And I said, what do you mean? He says, manana never comes. Manana is tomorrow. He says, so if you come to me tomorrow and say let's do it, I'll say, no. We agreed to do it. Manana. Okay. Manana never comes, but the present never leaves.

So when Paul is telling us to do this in a present imperative, he said, do it [00:29:00] all the time, every moment. Count yourself dead to sin. Reckon yourselves dead to sin. That's the reality of the moment. That's the reality of the present. Now, he does this with kind of a two-sided coin. If you look at it again, so you must also, you must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ.

See, there's dead to sin and alive to God in Christ, and you get that more in the Greek. Because there's a construction in the Greek, a men day construction, which means men is like on the one hand, and then day is on the other hand. And when you have those two together in a thought, then, then you're contrasting two things.

And so in the Greek, it's very clearly contrasting of [00:30:00] death. On the one hand, sin life on the other hand to God, live on the other hand to God. It so you reckon yourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Dead to sin on the one hand, alive to God on the other two-sided coin, Paul says, continually, minute by minute, every day a command, a directive, an imperative, do this because of what is real and true.

Every day, every minute you need to consider yourselves dead to sin, and you need to consider yourselves alive to God in Christ. And it's that process of doing that. And that's what was ex unfolding in that Narnia story that I loved. And the witch would try to give them non-reality so that they couldn't live, right?[00:31:00]

So the witch would say, this is all there is. It's all just the underland, it's this cavern. This is all there is. It. And as they started to believe it, it echoes what we hear sin say to us with that sticky, sweet smell. And the from, from from of this world drowning out truth as sin tells us this life is all that matters.

This life is it. And the witch would say, oh, those other things don't exist. Those other things, those you made that, oh, the son isn't that sweet that you think of such a vivid imaginations. You children have a lion. Oh, what a wonderful thought off of a cat. [00:32:00] And the world in sin tries to give us the same thing, says spiritual realities aren't real.

You're trapped. You should know that you are not a child anymore. You should know this is all there is. You should know that this spiritual stuff, it sounds good, but that's not real life. That's make believe. So that witch was saying, accept my reality children and the world is telling us the same thing.

Live by my values. That's what matters. And into this comes the invading gospel. And Paul lays it out clearly, and, and Paul's gonna do it puddle, glum the nar, and goes over and he stomps out the fire with the green [00:33:00] stuff and as he stomps out the fire. Paul is gonna talk to us, and Paul's gonna say, you need to be renewing your minds.

Get rid of that sickly sweet smell that's polluting your brain, that's causing you to think in a fog. And let's get about renewing our mind. And then when the witch challenges, it says there's no Narnia puddle. Glum actually says to her, well, I'm gonna live like there is, because even if there's not, this world of yours has nothing to offer me.

And somewhere there's room for the believer that says, I'm going to reckon myself what I am in Christ. I am not gonna accept that I am bound to sin. Do I sin? Oh, yes I do. Old habits die hard, but that's not me, [00:34:00] and that's not who I will be. And that's not the transformation that God's making of me. That's the old self that is dying.

And so in Narnia, as true reality breaks through. That's what Paul gives us. He says, the gospel truth defeats the lies of sin and reveals it to be nothing more than the serpent's. Work in elaborate and enticing disguise with mind numbing effect, and that's wrapped up in think rightly. About who you are in verse 11.

Now, as we shift to verses 12 and 13, Paul takes it a step further and says, don't let sin reign [00:35:00] in your life. Let's look at these together, starting with verse 12. Let not sin, therefore. Reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions. Let not sin, therefore reign in your bodies. Now this is great.

This word reign, it's right up here. Bale, uo, I think is, uh, the root of the verb. Boss, I'm probably not saying it right, but I'm from Lubbock and, uh, Texas Tech won last night. Oh, isn't that cute? Texas Tech won last night. We'll give them the credit instead of people seeing the apple on my computer. So, ba saluto, um, this verb [00:36:00] right here.

Do you know what form it is? Anybody want to guess? Scott Callahan's in here. He's like a Hebrew Aramaic guru, probably, and Chinese and English. Probably Greek as well. He'll know some of the rest of his capes is here. He knows it's another president Imperative. This is another one of these things where Paul says, because of what is real, here's what you need to do.

Because of what is real, because of a fact, because of an indicative, because you have been raised with Christ, set your mind on things that are above. In Romans six, nine, Christ will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. He lives to God. Here's another imperative. Here's another therefore type command.

So don't let sin reign. To make you obey its passions. [00:37:00] Don't do that. Not because I'm just telling you things that aren't achievable. I'm telling you things based upon reality, based upon fact, based upon what is real. Let not sin reign in your body. This is a present imperative and and it's translated with good effect.

With this word, let. Because we have a choice in the matter. Now, some, some scholars and linguists will say that this present imperative should be translated. Stop letting, and, and there's good reason to translate it that way. There are also arguments against translating it that way and just don't let.

Both are legitimate. I still fall back into Paul being a rabbi with rabbinical ambiguity in so much of [00:38:00] what he says and he intends for us to read it both ways. Stop letting sin reign in your mortal bodies. Don't let sin reign in your mortal bodies, but you have a choice. You are not a puppet. You can make it.

I can't, I, I, nothing I can do about it. It's just me. No ior. It's not just you. It is just me. Whoa. No, you have a choice. Let not sin, therefore, reign. This verb is built off the word for a king.

It, it, Paul is, is saying, don't let it reign over you anymore. Now, when I first started preparing this, I, I thought you, his point is, sin no longer has legal [00:39:00] authority over you. It just doesn't. And I thought, how can I do that? Oh, I know. I mean, we don't really have a king in America. Hopefully. And, uh, you know, we, we don't, you know, we, we don't have a, king England had Queen Elizabeth.

I'm not sure she really had that much legal authority, but she had some, but she dead. She doesn't have any now. Who's gonna buy? Uh, queen Elizabeth wants me to do this. No, she dead. She got no legal authority anymore. It's gone. I thought, well, yeah, but then I've just equated Queen Elizabeth with sin and I don't wanna do that.

She seemed like a nice young lady. I think she had great Christmas messages. She would speak about Jesus as Lord and Savior to, to the Pagan England half the time. I mean, she was just really I, so I didn't want to equate her with sin. So then I thought, okay, maybe I could do this fixture. Don't let a deposed king retake the throne.[00:40:00]

But that's not quite right either. 'cause he's dead, he ain't gonna retake the throne. So I just decided to let Paul speak for Paul and I don't have a good picture for it. But don't let sin be the king of your life. Don't let sin reign in your mortal body. Now this word for mortal body, Paul uses it in one Corinthians 1553 and 54.

Um, uh, it's, uh, the NATOs in the Greek. Paul's the only writer who uses it in the New Testament. It's a, it's a word that was used in classical Greek a lot. Uh, I think it's used in the Sept, God in proverbs once or twice. But other than that, it doesn't, it doesn't find its way into biblical writing at all.

Um, the NATOs in classical Greek would've been what makes the difference between the gods and the people. [00:41:00] And we've gotta be careful because we tend to think mortal bodies. Oh, Paul's saying that the physical body is bad. Paul doesn't teach in those terms that we often think Paul was not a platonist who divided up the soul in the body into different camps.

God made us as a human. Physically, emotionally, spiritually, whole, a singular. And so, uh, uh, Paul will use this term. But what Paul's talking about here is what it, it's just our, our mor mortal body. It's your person, not just your physical body. So he is not saying, let not sin, therefore reign in your physical body, because here's the problem.

Sin doesn't just reign in your physical body. What did Jesus say about sin? [00:42:00] He says, don't murder, but he took a step further and said, don't what hate. That's not in the physical body. That's, that's in the that thinking realm. Don't commit adultery. That's in the physical body. Don't lust. That's in the thinking realm.

Don't, Paul's not saying that this is just physical stuff. This is, this is your person. Don't let sin reign not just in your body. It's not just, Hey, I can't do that, but I'll think about it. He's saying, no, no, no. Give it no quarter. Don't let sin rain in your mortal body. A couple of things got me through law school.

One of them was playing risk. Every time we had a break in the board of Barristers room, we played risk all the way through law, school, love, risk. It's a conquer the world game. [00:43:00] Sin wants to place its headquarters in your. Life. Your physical life, your world life, your life, your brain, your hand, your person becomes the battlefield where this choice is gonna play out.

Who are you gonna follow? And so Paul says in verse 13, don't present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness or 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 and, and, and Paul's using healer military metaphors.

His brain is so deeply wired with so many pictures and images, and there's a, a, a couple of [00:44:00] military metaphors present here. The most prominent one is hala. Here instruments is the way it's translated in the English standard version. It means weapons and he's used it twice. Hala weapons can't be a tool, but he's using it in a military metaphor here.

Look, there are lots of different weapons, but don't present yourself as a as weapons. For unrighteousness. Don't take the talents, the skills, and the, you got a creative mind. Did God give you a creative mind? Don't use that creative mind for unrighteousness. Use it for the Lord. Did God give you a skillset?

A skillset that enables you to think mechanically and figure out how things go together? Don't use it for unrighteousness. Use it for the Lord. My friend James Hammond down here, he comes up with Excel spreadsheets for everything. God's given him an ability and a desire to do that, and he does it for the [00:45:00] Lord.

You want an Excel spreadsheet on anything in the Bible? I promise you he's already done it. He's got methuselah's birth mapped out through all the genealogies he's got. I mean, he's, he's, look, take what God has given you. Don't use it as a tool for unrighteousness, a weapon for the enemy. Use it. And, and Paul does this here with a positive and a negative.

And so I wanna, I wanna back us out just a moment on this verse. Let's take it apart. Here's the negative. Don't present your members to sin. Whoops. That, that should have gone down here. Sorry. Don't present. Ignore the circle. Your members descend as instruments. Hope law weapons for unrighteousness. Don't do it.

Don't present them that way per, do you know what that is? In Greek? That is a present [00:46:00] imperative because of what we know and what is real. Don't go doing this. Don't present your members to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. Don't do it. Stop supplying weapons to the opposing army.

Don't present your members to sin as instruments or weapons of unrighteousness or 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, by the way, present here, care to get. Whoops. Go back. Go back, back.

Care to guess what form it is in the Greek trick question. It's an imperative, but [00:47:00] it's an hest imperative, not a present imperative because it, it's, it's, uh, it's, it's trying to say just in totality here, just present yourself. It's still an imperative. Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, your members to God as weapons for righteousness.

God's gifted you and skilled you to work for his kingdom. You have a heart of compassion. Use it for the Lord. You have a skillset. Use it for the Lord. Don't let sin be your boss. And then verse 14. A great promise. Paul says, for sin will have no dominion over you since you're not under law. But grace, I love this, sin will not have dominion.[00:48:00]

Dominion is a verb built off of the Greek idea of Rios, our Lord. In Ephesians four, Paul says, there is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God, and Father of all, there is one Lord. Don't let sin be your Lord. The Lord Jesus is your Lord. Sin does not have dominion over you. And, and I love this because you're not under law, but you're under grace.

This is because of the work of Christ on the cross. This isn't because you've got good willpower. This isn't your achievement. This is Grace's guarantee. Uh, I [00:49:00] didn't see Charles Mickey here this morning. Uh, he always sits there, so he is not here. But I tried to call him out for helping me remember a song from Youth group and I hit him cold with it, but he sent me an email and said, I think this is the song you wanted.

And it was, did any of y'all sing that song? Little by little in every day? Little by little in every way. Jesus is changing me. He's changing me since I made a turnabout face. I've been growing in His grace and Jesus is changing me. It's, it's what we are guaranteed following him, and we should never believe the lies of the witch.

We should never believe the lies and deceptions of Satan. Do not ever think for a moment that you have an inability to call upon. The resurrection power of God's [00:50:00] Holy Spirit to help you. The problem is most of us, either A, aren't thinking it, or B, aren't calling on it.

Now, this isn't the end and this isn't the whole picture. Paul's still got a lot to write about, about our struggle with sin, and we're gonna continue reading about it through the end of six, through chapter seven and through chapter eight. But this is a huge time for us to recognize a couple of things.

Number one, your thinking determines your living.

I'm not calling you to get arrogant to start thinking you're something you're not. I'm not calling you to start thinking you've conquered sin. I'm start calling you to start thinking that God has conquered sin and God will empower you to make the right choices to [00:51:00] walk in victory, and you may not. I mean to, if your biggest area of sin is losing your temper and you lose your temper 20 times a day, then maybe by the grace of God tomorrow you'll lose it.

19. And if so, praise God for the victory. You just got a 5% improvement in your temper.

If you don't only lose at 18, that's 10%. That's pretty good return. Paul says, consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Oh, so here's my real rubber meets the road suggestion. When temptation comes, you pause and you say, I'm dead to this. This is not who I am anymore in [00:52:00] Christ. I'd say it out loud.

I'd take a picture of this. I'd remember it, I'd ride it. Our girls growing up, especially Rachel if I recall, but I think several of our daughters, Sarah too. I, maybe all of our daughters had had taken, uh, like, I don't know if it was lipstick or what, lip gloss, I guess they used more than lipstick at that age, but they had written on their bathroom mirror about vanity.

Which is appropriate since it's in a vanity, which is named because that's where you go when you're vain and you get all fixed up. But they had written on there that beauty is deep within or whatever that proverb is, so that even when they went in in the morning to get themselves together, they had that reminder.

Some of us need that on the refrigerator. I'm dead to this. This is not who I am anymore in [00:53:00] Christ.

Point for home. Number two, you're always gonna serve someone.

The question isn't will I serve? The question is, whom will I serve? And Paul says, do not present yourselves as weapons for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, alive to God. And so rubber meets the road before making choices ask which master am I serving with this decision?

And the third thing that I want us to take home from just these four nugget verses is that grace will empower what it demands.

The [00:54:00] same God that justifies you by his grace, by the cross of Christ also sanctifies you, washes you, cleanses you. Not just in an eternal sense, in an ultimate paradigm sense by the cross of Christ, but in a practical, everyday living as he transforms us little by little every day. And that's what he's about.

But we're empowered here. We're not under law. We're under grace, and God will empower. So when you struggle, pray, Lord, your grace saved me now. Let your grace empower me to live differently. Now, there's a ton of other things you can do, but they stem from these general concepts. If you're having trouble [00:55:00] going over here or going over there, don't just pray these things, but present your weapons for causes of righteousness.

Get your Bible out and start reading. When temptation comes your way, just flip it to the center of it and the Psalms, you're gonna find Psalms that just speak to you. Start making your choices and using your weapons, and using your skills for God and his righteousness and prayerfully God, your grace saved me.

Let your grace empower me to live differently. Saying, well, this is all sounding like a struggle. Well, it is. It's a war. Satan is, oh, you're a Christian. I'll leave you alone. No misery loves company. He's miserable and he wants you to be miserable too. And some of the most miserable you can get is where you're so into God.

You can't enjoy the world and you're so into the world you can't enjoy [00:56:00] God. That's called fence straddling, and it's not comfortable. You need to follow the Lord. That's what Paul's urging us to do in these Romans passages. Amen. Amen. Amen. Thank you for your patience with all of the grammar this morning.

Uh, I look forward to continuing this and maybe finishing chapter six next week. Maybe, maybe not. We'll see. Let me bless you. Father, in the name of Jesus, we call down your blessings. I pray that people who are listening to this message right now here and on the internet, I pray that you will bless them from the top of their head to the soles of their feet.

Just pouring out your spirit and blessing upon them of understanding of conviction, of realization of who they are as children of the King. Expose the lies of the evil one father and help us learn to walk in the victory you [00:57:00] won for us on Calvary. That's our fervent desire and prayer in Jesus. Amen.