Alive to God Under Grace

“In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. 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. For sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace.”

Paul said earlier in this chapter that baptism is like being buried with Christ and resurrected to walk in newness of life. This public, symbolic act represents the burial of our old life of sin and the birth of a new life in Christ. We proclaim that the old has gone and our new life has begun.

But if we don’t think the old life is gone, if we keep resuscitating the old body, we continue to live in a life that is plagued with sin. The pre-redeemed flesh, the life that is surrendered to the wrongful master is perfectly willing to follow our will.

If we let sin reign, we have no choice but to serve it. Then the body of the soul of the redeemed becomes useless to God because it has not escaped the power and control of sin. The heart may yearn, the hands and feet may reach and strain, but the body is held in the grip of the death from which the soul sought to escape. What use is a person who has surrendered his heart to Jesus Christ, but leaves his body in sin? For he will always desire to do what is right but his physical being will be trapped in another dimension. Yet he can escape. For grace has bought him at great price. Christ has created the way that the Mosaic Law simply could not. The once and for all atonement. The lifetime deal. The gift.

So, Paul instructs us to bring the whole package to God, soul and body, with all parts intact and complete in surrender. And then to recognize that sin has no power over the grace-lifted life. That the urges and temptations and desires that visit are simply the poor attempts of a dead life to rob the living. That God through grace presented a different outcome, one in which the new life turns away from sin, having surrendered it in the waters of the baptismal pool.