Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but
alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in
your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on
presenting the members of your body 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.
14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law
but under grace.

The Battleground and Its Participants

Last week from these verses we described the battleground and
the participants in the struggle. Let me review that quickly.

1. Verse 12: There is a throne or a reign. "Do
   not let sin reign in your mortal body."
2. Verse 12: There is a challenger to the throne: sin.
   "Do not let sin reign in your mortal body."
3. Verse 12: There is a castle where sin threatens to
   reign: the human body. "Do not let sin reign in your mortal
   body."
4. Verse 12: There are loyal servants in the castle who
   may go over to the other side and join the conspiracy as enemy
   agents inside the walls of the castle: desires. "Do not let sin
   reign in your mortal body so that you obey its (that is, the
   body's) desires."
5. Verse 12: There is incremental surrender possible in
   this conflict: obedience to disloyal desires. "Do not let sin reign
   in your mortal body so that you obey its desires."
6. Verse 13: There is a true king on the throne who has
   the reign in the castle: God. "Do not go on presenting the members
   of your body to sin as instruments [weapons] of unrighteousness;
   but present yourselves to God as those alive from the
   dead, and your members as instruments [weapons] of righteousness to
   God."
7. Verse 13: There are weapons in the castle that can be
   used to advance the cause of the true king, God, or the cause of
   the pretender to the throne, sin: members [parts] of the human
   body. "Do not go on presenting the members of your body to
   sin as instruments [o[pla, weapons] of unrighteousness; but present
   yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as
   instruments [o[pla, weapons] of righteousness to God."
8. Verse 14: There is a constitutional authority in the
   kingdom: grace, not law. "For sin shall not be master over you, for
   you are not under law but under grace."

How the Enemy Does Battle

Then we saw how the enemy does battle. Sin is the enemy, the
rebel, the pretender to the throne. And the main way sin does
battle against us is to turn servants into traitors. It turns
servant-desires into conspirators against the throne. Desires which
were appointed by God to serve us – like desire for food,
desire for drink, desire for sex, desire for rest, desire for
friends, desire for approval – are attacked by sin and
captured and corrupted and turned into betrayers –
Judas-desires, Delilah-desires. Then these desires – now in
the service of sin instead of God – lure us to obey them.
When that happens we hand over our members – eyes, ears,
tongue, hands, feet, sexual organs, vocal cords, etc. – to
serve these desires and their master, sin, and our members become
weapons of unrighteousness.

How does sin succeed at this? How do the desires that he
captures and turns into betrayers turn us into slaves of sin? They
do this by making obedience to the Judas-desires seem very
rewarding. They lie to us with half-truths. "It will feel good."
Obeying Judas-desires does feel good. But only for a short time.
Then later comes the misery and destruction. That's why Hebrews
11:25 refers to "the fleeting pleasures of sin." These
Judas-desires are very deceitful. Ephesians 4:22 says that our "old
man" is corrupted by the "desires of deceit." 1 Peter 1:14
refers to "the desires of your former ignorance."

Sin takes our desires and makes liars out of them. They promise
satisfaction and happiness, and they deliver cheap, fleeting,
shallow stimulation that leaves us less content and less peaceful
and less hopeful and more guilty, more restless, more discouraged,
more enslaved. In the end, if we don't fight the way this text
tells us to, we may be cut off from God in hell. That's why Romans
6:21 says, "The outcome of those things is death." And that's why 1
Peter 2:11 says, "Abstain from fleshly desires which wage war
against the soul." There is a war for the soul going on. Sin is
fighting for the throne of your soul; it is using your desires as
betrayers; and it is turning your members into weapons of
unrighteousness.

Lest you have in your mind here only the so-called gross sins
like drunkenness or fornication or adultery or stealing or murder,
keep this in mind: The book of James says that the most deadly
member of our body – the most deadly weapon of
unrighteousness – is the tongue. "The tongue is a small part
of the body. . . . See how great a forest is set aflame by such a
small fire! And the tongue is a fire, the very world of iniquity;
the tongue is set among our members as that which defiles the
entire body, and sets on fire the course of our life, and is set on
fire by hell. . . . No one can tame the tongue; it is a restless
evil and full of deadly poison" (James 3:5-8). That is what happens
when sin perverts our desires so that we present our tongues to
these Judas-desires as a weapon of unrighteousness. What a weapon
of destruction it can be! So this battle strategy is for everybody
here, not just for someone you might point your finger at.

How Shall We Do Battle Against Sin?

How then shall we fight? I want to look with you now at how
Romans 6:11-14 teaches us to do battle with sin.

First, remember that five chapters on God, sin, and
justification have gone before chapter 6. Paul does not teach us
how to do battle with sin until we have learned how Christ has done
battle with sin first and done what we could not do and what the
law could not do. This is astonishing for us pragmatic Americans.
Five chapters to help us see why justification by faith is utterly
essential as a foundation for doing battle with sin! You cannot
fight sin successfully until you know your sin is forgiven. The
only sin that you can triumph over in practice is a sin that Christ
has died for. If he had not died to take away our condemnation, we
could make no progress at all in sanctification. You don't make
yourself holy in order to be justified. You are justified by faith
in order to become holy. That is why Romans 1-5 precedes Romans 6.
Your triumph over sin in the body follows Christ's triumph over sin
on the cross.

Strategy #1 – Christ Died for Your Sin

So strategy #1 in your battle with sin is that Christ died for
your sin. Romans 3:25 said, "God displayed [him] publicly as a
propitiation in His blood through faith." That is, Christ shed his
blood so that God's wrath would be propitiated, that is, satisfied,
appeased, taken away. Or as Romans 5:8-9 says, "God demonstrates
His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ
died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His
blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him." That
is strategy #1 in our battle against sin. Don't ever skip it. If
you do, Satan will defeat you with a hopeless and guilty
conscience.

Strategy #2 – You Died and Rose with Christ

Strategy #2 is that when Christ died and rose again, you died
and rose again. Or to be more precise, God viewed you as united
with Christ so that his execution for sin, became your execution
and his reward with resurrection became your reward. Romans 6:6,
"Our old self was crucified with him." Verse 8: "We have died with
Christ." (See Galatians 2:20; 5:24; 6:14.) These first two
strategies of defeating sin in our lives happened historically
outside ourselves before we were even born. This is history.

Strategy #3 – We Have Become United with Christ

Strategy #3: God united us with Christ by faith. This is the
application to us of what was accomplished for us on the cross and
in the life of Jesus. Romans 6:5, "We have become united with Him
in the likeness of His death." How does this happen? Paul answers
in 1 Corinthians 1:30, "But by [God's] doing ["from him,"
evx auvtou] you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from
God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption." God
grafted us into Christ. What was our part? Faith in Christ –
looking on what he has done and what he is and what he promises to
do, and receiving that as a free gift as our treasure in life.

Strategy #4 – God Justifies Us

Strategy #4: God justifies us by this faith because we
are united with Christ. He forgives all our sins and imputes to us
the righteousness of Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21 puts it like this:
"[God] made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we
might become the righteousness of God in Him." As God
reckoned Christ
to be sinful though he was righteous, so he reckons
us to be righteous, though we are sinful. And he does this because
we are "in Christ."

So far, then. Strategy #1: Christ died for our sins. Strategy
#2: We died with him. Strategy #3: God united us to Christ through
our faith. Strategy #4: God justifies us because of our union with
Christ. He counts our sins as punished in Christ and Christ's
righteousness as credited to us. All of that precedes the
command of Romans 6:11. That is the difference between Christianity
and every other religion and every other moral improvement
program.

Strategy #5 – Consider Yourselves Dead to Sin

But now comes strategy #5 in the battle with sin – and it
is really an extension of the faith in Strategy #4. But Paul treats
it separately, so I will too. Strategy #5 is a mental and
volitional act preceding direct engagement with temptation. It's
found in Romans 6:11, "Even so consider yourselves to be dead to
sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus."

Notice two things about this strategy:

1) It is something you do with your reason and your will. You
"reckon" something to be so. (For "reckoning," see 2:26; 8:18, 36;
14:14.) "Reckon yourselves" (logi,zesqe e`autou.j) to be dead to
sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." The "even so" at the
beginning of verse 11 refers back to verse 10 where Paul said
Christ died to sin and lives to God. "Even so" – as you have
been united with Christ in his death and resurrection – "even
so" bring your mind and will into alignment with this. Think this
way. Know yourself this way. Count this to be the truth about
yourself. You died and you rose with Christ.

2) Notice that this deadness to sin and life to God is "in
Christ." Paul is still, amazingly, at the objective level of what
is true outside of yourself. He is pointing you still to a reality
about you that is objective and external to yourself. In the
strategy of verse 11, your death to sin and life to God is not yet
something in experience. Paul is saying: first bring your mind and
heart into alignment with all that objective reality in the first
four steps: Christ died for you, you died in him, you were united
with him by God's doing through faith, you were justified.
Now think this way. Know yourself this way. Seize this
reality as who you truly are. Welcome and embrace this work of God
and all it means for you as your treasure in life. (This is why I
said that this strategy is an extension of the faith of Strategy
#4. Reckoning ourselves to have died and risen with Christ is
believing it and embracing it with all its promises as precious
beyond all earthly things.)

Strategy #6 – Say No . . . and Choose God

Now comes the direct engagement with temptation in Strategy #6:
When sin sends deceitful Judas-desires to tempt you to present your
members as weapons of unrighteousness, prefer another Ruler,
God.

Notice the "therefore" at the beginning of verse 12. "Therefore,
do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its
lusts." The active engagement of our will now in verse 12 comes
after and is based on all the other strategies of
God. The bumper sticker and the T-shirt morality, "Just Say No," is
not Christian. You don't just say no. Five great things
have preceded and undergirded and enabled us to say no. Saying no
is Strategy #6.

O we must say No. When sin attacks with the Judas-desire of
lust, we say, No! When he attacks with the Judas-desire of
covetousness we say, No! When he attacks with the Judas-desire of
alcohol or nicotine or marijuana or crack cocaine, we say, No! When
sin attacks with the Judas-desire for retaliation or gossip, we
say, No! So yes, there is a real engagement of our will.
Choose to say, No!

But it is so much more. It is based on what God did in Christ,
and what happened to us in Christ, and who God is for us in Christ
and who we know ourselves to be in Christ. We embrace all that as
our treasure. And because of that, we say, No.

But there is one more thing to stress about this last Strategy
#6 (verse 12) – "Don't let sin reign in your mortal body so
that you obey its desires." Notice that sin is attacking through
desires, Judas-desires. We are called to choose against those
desires. "Don't let sin reign." Don't present your eyes and tongue
to fulfill that desire. Don't choose those desires.

But what is this choosing? It is preferring. To choose is to
prefer one thing over another thing. If God is to get glory in our
choosing against sin, it must be because we regard God and what he
is and promises as preferable. Choosing is finding one
thing preferable to another thing. So you can describe the battle
at this point in negative terms: Say no to the Judas-desires of sin
on the basis of what God has done and who you are in Christ. You
are dead to sin and its desires; they do not look preferable. Or
you can describe the battle positively: When sin sends his
Judas-desires to tempt you, prefer God and his work and his ways
and his promises. See God as preferable to the fleeting pleasures
of sin. You are alive to God and he looks preferable. If Satan
attacks with deceitful desires, counter with reliable desires that
will not let you down, and that lead to everlasting joy.

In other words, the front-line battle against sin, which
glorifies God, is based on what he has done for us in Christ to
forgive all our sins and count us righteous in him, and is fought
by experiencing death to Judas-desires and life to new desires, new
preferences – God and his way!

O labor to know what God has done for you in Christ. And look to
him continually until you see him as preferable to all other
things.