You Have a Say in the Morning

Therefore don’t let sin reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in its lusts. Also, do not present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. (Romans 6:12-13, WEB)

Paul writes, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life. The word reign points to a throne. Paul is saying that sin wants to rule you, to sit as king over your body and give the orders you then obey, and he is telling you that you have a say in whether it does.

This might sound strange to a man who feels utterly powerless in the moment, who has stood there watching himself do the thing he swore he would not do. Paul is not pretending the passions are weak or that resisting is easy. But he speaks to men already brought from death to life, men in whom sin's reign has been broken even when its voice is still loud. The voice being loud does not mean the king is still on the throne. It often means the opposite, that a deposed ruler is shouting because he has lost his actual authority over you.

Every morning you present yourself to someone. You hand your eyes and your hands and your hours over to be used, either as instruments of the old ruler who wants his throne back or offered up to God who has already given you life. This handing over usually happens without ceremony. It is a small daily choice, made quietly, often before you feel anything at all, in the first minutes of a day that has not yet asked anything hard of you.

That quietness is a mercy, because it means the decisive moment is not always the loud one at night. It can be the still one in the morning. Before the day gets loud and the pull arrives, present yourself to God. Give him the body that sin wants to command, name it as his, and ask him to reign where the old king still tries to.