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Today's Pathway: Romans 6:12-13 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

Paul concluded verse 11 by stating that the believer needs to start thinking properly about how he lives. He needs to realize that he is dead to sin and alive unto Christ. So in verse 12 Paul says "therefore". Once we get our thinking straight, it should become obvious what we should do. In verse 12, we should not allow sin to be in charge in our lives. We should not obey it as if it were our master, because, according to verse 6, the old man is crucified and the body of sin has been destroyed. We must always remember that we are not obligated to sin anymore. We have the Holy Spirit indwelling us. We have the completed Word of God. God Himself has rendered our sin nature ineffective. We are new creatures in Christ, and the old things have passed away. We no longer have to live our lives based on the lustful thinking of the world. Peter said that we were to be "as obedient children, not fashioning yourselves according to the former lusts" (I Peter 1:14). We are not what we used to be before we were saved. So, why should me conform (fashion) to the lifestyle that we lived before we got saved? We should instead be obedient to our Heavenly Father.

In verse 13 Paul reveals why believers sin. It is not because they have to, but rather because they "yield" themselves as "instruments of unrighteousness". The word "yield" means "to place or set beside or near" and "to place at someone's disposal". When we drive our cars and come to a yield sign we are supposed to let the other driver go first, or "have his way", or make the decision and we will follow his lead. The Christian sins because he is choosing to allow sin and lust to make the decisions in his life. We need to stop blaming circumstances, other people, the devil, or the fact that we are "only human" for our sinful choices, and start admitting that the problem lies exclusively in our own decisions. What we should be doing is yielding to God, and allowing Him to go first, allowing Him to have His way, and allowing Him to make our decisions.

The word "instruments" in verse 13 refers to basic tools, but it also is used for the "instruments of war." Kenneth Wuest put it this way,

"Paul thinks of the members of the Christian’s body as weapons to be used in the Christian warfare against evil. The saint, counting upon the fact that he has been disengaged from the evil nature, does two things: he refuses to allow it to reign as king in his life, and he stops putting his members at its disposal to be used as weapons of unrighteousness."

Who did you yield to today?