To Encourage You

Romans 6:19 “I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.”

How does one actually live for and serve Christ?  It’s actually pretty much the same as how we do anything for anybody.  When a friend has a need, we can choose to either help meet that need, or not.  In that choice, we always have some decisions to make. We can’t do more than we are capable of, but there’s much we can do with the abilities and resources we possess.  Maybe it’s a helping hand with some task.  But then in that decision we must first decide whether or not to use our feet to go to them.  It could be a word of encouragement that is needed. In that case we must make a choice on whether we want to use our mouth in that way.  In each of these instances we are presenting our bodily members as instruments to be offered to serve another.  

That’s the same way it is with Christ, as the passage in Romans 6 above informs us.  God has created us with eyes, ears, hands, feet, a mind, a mouth, and other individual members of our bodies, each with the capacity to act in some way.  An unbeliever never chooses to present those members to God for His use. They don’t see themselves as obligated to Him in any way.  They are their own person, and they’ll do what they want, no matter what God has said about how they should act in His Word.  They aren’t beholden to Him. They are not His slaves, so to speak, or so they think.  What they do not realize is that they are demonstrating with this thinking and way of life that they are actually “slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness.”  

The Bible makes it clear that none of us are “free” in one sense, i.e., in how we choose to live. We are either slaves to impurity or slaves to righteousness.  Which of these two ways is true of us is demonstrated by how we use our members.  Think about how we use our tongue.  Is it being used to glorify God, to love Him, and to love our neighbor, or is it full of cursing, complaining, bitterness, and gossip – that sort of thing?  How are we using our ears?  Are we listening to God’s Word? Do we have “ears to hear” what Jesus has said?  Or are we listening to everything but the Word of God as we walk in the counsel of the ungodly, stand in the way of sinners, and sit in the seat of mockers (Psalm 1)?  What about our eyes?  Do we see the needs of others around us, and act to meet those needs, are our eyes frequently drawn to pornography, other sexually charged media, or lust?  

You see, in the following words, the Bible makes it clear that we all serve somebody: “Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness” (Romans 6:16)?  The Lord puts all these things in “human terms” because of our “natural limitations,” as it says in Romans 6:19 above, so that we can understand the truth about our own supernatural condition.  And that supernatural condition is revealed to us so that we can know we are headed for the consequence of that condition – be it death, or life.  

May God help us to have our lives so transformed by His Word and His indwelling Spirit, that our individual members are used to glorify Him. He’s the King of Kings, so worthy of our service.  But He’s a King that has given us the freedom to either serve Him with our members, with the blessings that accompany such service, or, conversely, to serve the enemy of our souls, a choice that makes no sense at all.