Romans 6:13 - Exposition

Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as being alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God . By our members seem to be meant, not merely the several parts of our bodily frame—eye. tongue, hand, foot, etc.—but generally all the parts or constituents of our present human nature, which sin may use as its instruments, but which ought to be devoted to God (cf. Colossians 3:5 ). Many commentators would translate ὅπλα "weapons" rather than "instruments," on the ground that St. Paul usually uses the word in this sense ( Romans 13:12 ; 2 Corinthians 6:7 ; 2 Corinthians 10:4 ; Ephesians 6:11 , Ephesians 6:13 ); and also that ὀψώνια in Romans 6:22 , taken in the sense of the pay of a soldier (as in Luke 3:14 ; 1 Corinthians 9:7 ), is supposed to imply that the apostle has had all along the idea of warfare in view. The second of these reasons really proves nothing. Whatever the meaning of ὀψώνια in Romans 6:23 , it is too far removed from the passage before us to be taken in any connection with it. Neither is the first reason at all cogent. ὅπλα bears the sense of instruments as well as of weapons, and may more suitably bear it here. When St. Paul elsewhere speaks of armour, it is the armour of light, or of righteousness, which we are told to take up, and to put on, in order to fight against our spiritual enemies. Such a conception is inapplicable to our own members, which we have already, which we may use either for good or evil, and which require the protection of heavenly armour rather than being themselves armour; and we certainly could not be told to take them up or put them on. We may, in the next place, observe that the two clauses of this verse are differently expressed in two respects.