Romans 6:13

Neither present your members unto sin as instruments of righteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

The encroaching power of sin must be continually thwarted; not only must sin be kept from seizing the inner monitor of life with the consequent dethronement of the true Master; but Christians themselves, through a firm and decisive assertion of the will must, through the power of the indwelling Spirit, take charge of the body particularly, commanding its members in such a manner as to preempt their service for God and to deny it to evil. From the exalted view of Christ with God on high, just mentioned, Paul evidently had in mind in this verse such a thing as the Christian's presentation of himself in acts of adoration to his true king, as seen in the words, "Present yourselves unto God," That same thought recurred to Paul at the beginning of Romans 12, where a fuller discussion of the meaning will be found.

This view of the Christian's relationship to his body is instructive. The inner person has authority over the body and the mind. Although it is the body in focus here, the mind is also an "instrument" no less than members of the body; and all such instruments are used at the direction and according to the will of the true person, which, in the Christian, is the seat of the inner reign of Christ in human hearts. Deductions of the greatest concern flow out of this.

All sins come from the heart, or spirit, of man; and it is absurd in the extreme for anyone to claim, as some do, that the body of a regenerated man may sin, but his spirit remains pure and sinless. Certainly the body, being merely an instrument, is not responsible for the sin; and if the spirit of the regenerate is not responsible for the sin, it would seem that a regenerate man is not in any sense responsible for any wrong that he does![25]

That there is indeed an inner seat of control in man, the essence of the person itself, and having authority over both mind and body, is seen in the following:

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city (Proverbs 16:32).

This shows that there is an essence of the human person that has rule over the spirit; and from this it is certain that the same essence has final authority over the whole man, both in mind and body. In human creation, that essence has the shape of a throne and is so arranged that the person himself cannot sit upon it but must merely submit to the government enthroned there, there being only two candidates for that seat of control, Satan and the Lord Jesus Christ, or, as Paul has it here, Christ and sin. The great endowment of the person itself is in the ability to choose the occupant of that throne. This power of decision is life's greatest emolument, for it is the pivot upon which the destiny of every man turns to either shame and death or everlasting life.