Let Not Sin Reign

Romans 6:12–14 LSB

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.

The question of the relationship between sin and the christian has been, and continues to be, a significant one throughout the world. Even non-Christians have weighed in, and know something about a preoccupation and focus on sin within the church. It permeates each and every theological group in the christian traditions – catholic and protestant alike, calvinist and arminian alike.

Many people will point at these verses, and say “see, look, I told you… we must not let sin reign in ourselves, it is up to us to see what God wants us to do, and since what the Law of Moses does is tell us what sin is, we need to make certain we don’t do those things.”

There are those who believe that you must work to ensure that sin is removed from your life, so you are to do things like ‘follow the law’. There are those who break the law into various parts, and say, “here, just follow the moral part of the law, don’t worry about the various ceremonial parts of it.”

And there are others, more popular today, who stand aghast at them and point and shout “Legalism! We’ve got Legalism here! That’s a bad person, don’t listen to them, we are saved by faith alone, all you have to do is believe!”

But desiring that we understand these verses properly, was the genesis of my desire to go all the way back to the beginning of Chapter 5 as we tackle the core question we’ve been asking since last summer - “How does a Christian live a Godly Life?”

Remember, Paul was raised and trained to think clearly and critically from a very young age; he knows how to build an argument. He has building this argument piece by piece from the very beginning, we even see his intent in his introduction of himself, “Paul, a slave of Christ Jesus, called as an apostle, having been set apart for the gospel of God...” He has demonstrated in the preceeding chapters that all, both Gentile and Jew alike, are unrighteous before God and worthy only of His wrath, that even those who are saved were in themselves only worthy of God’s righteous wrath against ungodliness, that rather than providing life the law is only able to bring condemnation and death, because the law only serves to increase our condemnation in Adam, and that the only relief possible comes through faith.

His mighty statement in Romans 5:20 declares, “Now the Law came in so that the transgression would increase, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,”

And so the question! If faith is what shows God’s mercy, what does it matter what we do? Let’s re-read the culmination of this doctrinal teaching:

Romans 6:1–11 (LSB)

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?

Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died has been justified from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all, but the life that He lives, He lives to God.

Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

But he is not content to leave us just with an argument, so even though he has now answered the question posed in verse 1 from a doctrinal sense, concluding in verse 11 by effectively saying “hey, don’t just read this and move on, but spend time intentionally and logically working them out in your life”, he of necessity writes the verses before us today to provide the practical application of the doctrine he has so wonderfully laid before us.

He is, by his very words, underscoring the immense need for us to not simply view this as a mental exercise, an academic novelty for the intellectuals of the group. No! This doctrine is critical for all believers, there is no place at all for a person to say “oh, that is doctrine, that’s not for me”, this is something we must, of necessity, not only comprehend but also put into practice! Each New Testament writer says something of this!

Consider 1 Peter 1:16 “because it is written, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.””

or 1 John 2:3 “And by this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.”

or again James 1:22 “But become doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves.”

Or Jude 23 “and for others, save, snatching them out of the fire; and on others have mercy with fear, hating even the tunic polluted by the flesh.”

We could go on, but I think you begin to understand!

Romans 6:12 LSB

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts,

As we turn to our text today, it is important that we, then, not minimize the importance of this first word, “therefore”. To take these verses out of their context, as so many often do, rob them of not only their strength, but of their very meaning. If we were to do so, we could not rightly understand what the apostle is saying. Let me take this first phrase to show you what I mean, “do not let sin reign in your mortal body”.

I have heard many sermons on this verse as I was growing up, often in what we now call a more legalist setting, in which this was taken as an absolute command. In order to make God happy, you cannot allow sin to reign in you, and so long as sin reigns in you, God will never be pleased with you. Or, in earlier times, in the working out of “give up, let go, and let God” of the holiness and higher life theologies, point to this scripture and say, “look, we are not to let sin reign, but to let God reign in our lives”, in their position that a good theologian is unlikely to be a truly holy person.

But both of these are wrong, in that they do not understand ‘therefore’. Paul demands that we start with doctrine, but he also demands that we hold to right doctrine, and that right doctrine must effect our lives!

So if we read these 3 verses in light of the doctrine which we have been learning these last months from Romans 5 and then the first 11 verses of Romans 6, we see a most glorious truth, and it begins right here in this first statement, Romans 6:12 “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts”.

And what we immediately must grasp is that the apostle’s words are specific here. I have heard many people claim that what he means by “your mortal body”, is you, in your present earthly state. But these claims are entirely wrong, for they forget the context, they forget the doctrine! They do not take time to consider the clear, literal words that Paul uses.

Paul is very specific here, he doesn’t use the word “body” alone, but ‘mortal body’. That which is mortal is that which will die. But I myself am not to die, I heave eternal life, I am alive to God, Paul just said in v11. But what I do have, said verse 6, is a ‘body of sin’, we learned when looking at that verse that this is ‘sin’s body’, the physical part which is not truly me, but it is my body which presently remains within the realm and sphere of relationship to sin. Although the me that was, my old man, was crucified with Christ through my union with him, recall, sin’s body yet remained to be dealt with, recall to mind the words of Romans 6:6 “knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin”. And that body, still within the reign of sin, still able and intended to one day die, has yet to be glorified and redeemed, we will find in chapter 8.

In other words, it is futile and misleading to consider these verses apart from the doctrine they are based upon.

But what this also tells us, is that sin can reign in our mortal bodies, even though a person is in Christ. Sin most assuredly does reign in the mortal body of the non-believer, for they remain entirely in Adam. But the Christian – now in Christ, now a new creation, the me that was being dead and buried and the me that is now alive to God, myself dead to sin – yet still has a body which sin not only desires to control, but can control, it will control it if I do nothing to stop it.

This must come as a shock to those who despair as they petulantly wait for their sinful desires to subside, expecting God to remove them from their path. But is that what God says? No! Was that the way God dealt with Cain and his sin? No! Indeed, was not Cain warned in Genesis 4:7, “... sin is lying at the door; and its desire is for you, but you must rule over it.” Were not the Israelites given their inheritance parcel by parcel, rather than the whole at once (Ex 23:30)?

No, Jeremiah 17:9 remains absolutely true, “The heart is more deceitful than all else And is desperately sick; Who can know it?” The modern trend of saying “all that you must do is believe, and then let go and let God”, fails to give the whole counsel of God; it soothes the conscience with a false sense of self-satisfaction and comfort. The world beckons us to follow our heart, that as long as it is happy we are fine.

But that is not what God says, Paul’s first active command for us to do in the entire book of Romans is found here in the 11th verse of Ch 6: do not let sin reign in your mortal body! The literal translation of this could easily be “reject even the idea of ‘kingdoming’ the sin”! We are commanded to actively engage ourselves in this task!

The truth is, we will continue to be bothered by sin as long as we continue to possess a mortal body, and if left unchecked, if we let our body have its own way, rather than the ‘me that is’ controlling my body, actively preventing sin from having its way with my body, sin will continue to reign in my mortal body.

My body lusts, it lusts after power, it lusts after authority, it lusts after pre-eminence, it lusts after the ‘things of the flesh’. Colossians 3 tells me it lusts after sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, greed, wrath, anger, malice, slander, abusive speech… the list goes on even further in Galatians 5, speaking of sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.

But the great truth of these verses in Romans 6 tell me that instead of continuing to do those ungodly deeds done in ungodly ways, on account of who and what I am in my union with Jesus Christ, I need no longer do these things, sin no longer has the exclusive control over my body!

To turn to a man who is not a Christian, who has not confessed Jesus as Lord and does not believe in his heart that God raised Him from the dead, to go to that man and say “do not let sin reign in your mortal body”, is not only futile but will only bring him a thin veneer of false and damning peace; it is heartless and cruel and leaves him destitute before God, despairing of hope.

Why? Because he remains in Adam; both his mortal body and he himself remain together in the kingdom of darkness, sin still reigns over him; he remains under the law, and is subject to its penalty of death.

But you yourself, if you are in Christ, have died with Christ! You have been buried with Christ! And you now live with Christ! We are alive to God in Christ Jesus! You are now in a position to positively control your mortal body and prevent sin from continuing to reign in it.

In other words, you control your body, it does not control you!

And knowing that Jesus Christ left the glory which He had with the Father before the world was (Jn 17), that He humbled Himself in the likeness of man (Phil 2), that He was crucified by wicked men (Acts 2), suffering the unimaginable agony of being forsaken by His Father (Mt 27:46), 1 John 3:8 says He did all of this “for this purpose, to destroy the works of the devil.”

How, then, can I not consider allowing my body to continue in sin, to be abhorrent! That to continue in sin disgraces and spurns His purpose in suffering all those things! I must act in holiness, I must reject sin’s desire for me, I must not let sin reign in my mortal body!

And because of my union with Christ, I am now able to do just that! I have received the grace of God in Christ Jesus, I am united with Him, the sins of sexual immorality, of idolatry, of adultery, sexual impurity in transgenderism and homosexuality, of thievery, of drunkenness, of reviling, of swindling, of coveting… these kinds of things, the moment a person is saved, no longer have power over the believer the way they did before! Those who remain under the reign of sin, those who do not truly have Christ, have no lasting capability to overcome these things in themselves.

I may, then, take great assurance from this fact, that I am in Christ, and though sin may affect my mortal body, although I feel and at times may succumb to it, sin is wholly and completely unable to change the fact that I am now in Christ, it can no longer affect the me that is. It is completely incapable of placing me under its dominion, it is unable to bring my soul into peril, even though it is able to reign in my mortal body!

Why? Because of this great work which God has done in me, He has united me with Christ.

In other words, I should set aside worrying if I am saved when I see sin in my life – what Paul says is that is entirely normal for the Christian to experience – and take up the reigns once more to exercise the control over my body that is mine by right!

But that’s not really the end of the discussion! This is simply the first waypoint in our understanding, but it is entirely vital to living a Godly life!

We were told in v11 that the most logical conclusion we can come to on account of who and what we are through our union with Christ, is that we are dead to sin, and alive to God – in other words, that we are holy.

We who died to sin are holy! We are saved, we have been once and forever transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s beloved Son, we have been united with Christ Jesus. We are set aside, we are to consider ourselves as having been set aside and holy.

And so now, we have not only the responsibility to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies, but now for the first time in our existence, through our union with Christ Jesus God has also given us the capability to do so as well.

Though we abhor sin, though we try through Scripture to not let sin reign in our mortal bodies, we still know that we will fail, but we also know that we now have a loving Father who treats us as wayward children, rather than rebelling sinners.

What great assurance we have in this marvelous truth!

Let us pray!