Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body to obey its lusts.
Romans 6 has argued that the believer has died with Christ. Verse 12 turns that truth into a command. It raises a sharp question. If sin still needs forbidding, what has Christ's death changed?
The word that opens the verse ties it back to verse 11. Faith counts first; obedience follows.
Our responsibility is bound up with what Christ has already accomplished... It is to "reckon" ourselves dead to sin. We must meet every evil suggestion, craving and impulse that rises within us by remembering that we have died with Christ. This act of faith is the secret of strength to overcome. Only in this way can believers obey the apostle's command: "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body."
The command itself is evidence about the Christian's condition. You do not warn someone off a power that has already vanished.
The flesh exists in the believer and will be there to the end... In Romans 6 we read, "Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body." Such an instruction would be pointless if the flesh were not in the believer... There is a great difference between dwelling and reigning. It dwells in a believer, but it reigns in an unbeliever.
The precise wording carries the weight. Paul chose one verb and not another.
Not, let it not be, but Let it not reign: a very small result if we were actually and experimentally dead to it.
The command has three parts, and each needs defining.
Verse 12 has three things in view: the evil principle of sin, or self-will, the mortal body, and the lusts of the body. Sin is the determination to do one's own will by satisfying lust. The body is the instrument for satisfying the lust. We are still in these mortal bodies, and the principle of sin is still in us. But if we reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ, our mortal bodies will in practice be free from the rule of sin.
The description "mortal" is not a throwaway word either.
Paul calls the body our "mortal body," or body of death, because it is in our present body that sin seeks to reign to death (see Rom. 5:21).
Sin acts here like a king pressing for the throne.
The truth is then, not that sin is dead. Christ's death and resurrection entitle us to regard ourselves, in the reckoning of faith, as dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus... Sin is spoken of here as a person, as it sometimes is elsewhere, seeking the upper hand in our mortal body so as to subject us to its lusts. But through Christ it has no claim over us... As dead to sin we owe it no allegiance whatever.
Refusing one ruler means serving another.
The truth behind this command is that by nature the evil principle inside us rules us completely. Selfish pursuits and pleasures carry away the whole person. The gospel delivers us from this slavery and brings us under a new Master, even Jesus the Lord.
Much religious effort aims at removing the sinful nature. Verse 12 asks for something else, and that saves the believer from a hopeless task.
I cannot rid myself of the enemy. But God has judged it, and I have only to act on that judgment. I must keep it in the place of death where He has already put it. So we are not told to expel sin, to root it out, to cast it away from us, as moralists, and even clergy who do not know the Scriptures, sometimes urge us to do. We are told not to let it reign. That is, we must keep it under, in the place and under the sentence of death already passed on it... Indwelling sin is strong and active, yet He who tells us to reckon ourselves dead to it has supplied the power to obey. The Spirit of God is our strength in this warfare, the all-sufficient power He gives so that we can keep sin from reigning in our mortal body.
Sin regains the throne by one route only: our consent.
While sin is in our mortal body, it has no more right to reign there. However it will reign, if we yield to the desires of the old nature... Whenever temptation comes, the believer must take refuge in prayer, self-judgment and self-surrender. He must present his members afresh as instruments of righteousness to God... Therefore sin shall not have dominion over a believer because he is under grace. But we must take hold of this promise by faith.
- Reign, not reside. Sin still dwells in the believer; the command is that it must not rule. Dwelling and reigning are two different things.
- Reckon before you resist. The "therefore" points back. Faith counts itself dead with Christ first, and that counting gives the strength to obey.
- Dethroned, not destroyed. Christ's death has cancelled sin's title as master, so we owe it no allegiance.
- Refuse, don't uproot. Scripture never tells us to expel the sinful nature. We keep it in the place of death God has already assigned it.
- Consent is the only door. Sin reigns again only if we yield. Prayer, self-judgment and the Spirit's power keep the new Master on the throne.
Neither yield your members instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourselves to God as alive from among [the] dead, and your members instruments of righteousness to God.
Romans 6 has just told believers to count themselves dead to sin and alive to God. Now it turns that into a daily question: who gets the use of your hands, your tongue, your eyes?
This command is not for everyone. The phrase "as those who have been brought from death to life" marks out who it is for:
"Free" has a double sense in English. People say, "that horse is free from vice," meaning he has none at all. But suppose a man had been a slave and he is now free: we are "free from sin" in that sense. He does not say to a person who has never turned to God, "Give yourself to God." He says, "Present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life." You have died in Christ. As those alive from the dead, what are you going to do with yourselves? Give yourselves to God, completely... God comes in. Grace cleanses us from guilt, then He says: "Now you are set free, and you have the privilege and title of giving yourselves."
The Greek uses two forms of the same verb, and they are not the same shape. One describes something ongoing, the other something settled once and for all:
The first occurrence of "yield" means, in the form of the word, the habit of yielding; the second, by its form, implies the surrender already made. This is not a gradual improvement of the nature or the will, as people speak of it. It is giving ourselves up to God in one complete act, as those alive from among the dead, and giving our members to God as instruments of righteousness.
That single act has a parallel later in the letter, where the same appeal returns:
In Romans 6:13 the Apostle had indicated that the way of deliverance from the service of sin was to yield ourselves to God, and our members as instruments of righteousness to God. We were to have the thing done, definitely and for ever, as a settled thing... Once each of us held his body as the vehicle in which his own will would be expressed. Once we each said in effect, "I am the captain of my body and it shall serve my pleasures."
The verse names two things to give, and it names them in a deliberate sequence. Conduct is not the starting point:
Notice that in giving ourselves to God, it is not only the details of conduct that are mentioned, and not only our members. The order is first, "present yourselves to God," and afterwards "your members." What rich and profitable teaching this is!... It is one thing to try to make my conduct fit God's desires. It is another to give myself to Him. But once I have given myself fully and held nothing back, let my members become steady "instruments for righteousness."
"Members" means the actual parts of your body. Each one has already served a master:
This yielding is a very practical thing, as verse 13 makes plain. It affects all the members of our bodies. In the past, sin enlisted every member in its service, so each one became an instrument of unrighteousness. Is it not a wonderful thing that every member may now serve God? Our feet may run His errands. Our hands may do His work. Our tongues may speak His praise.
Elsewhere Scripture tells believers to put their "members" to death, which sounds like the opposite of this verse. Commentators resolve it by noting that the word covers two different things:
The Christian is called to put these members of the flesh to death... The members of which the Apostle speaks in that passage can hardly refer to the members of the body. Far from putting the parts of our bodies to death, Romans 6 tells us to give our members to God as instruments. The members here seem to be all the sinful things through which the flesh expresses itself, just as the actual parts of the body are the instruments it uses for its own service.
The next line — "you are not under law but under grace" — is given as the reason the command can be kept, not as a loophole:
But note this well. The source of practical power — and that is the real question — is grace: "sin will have no dominion over you, SINCE you are not under law but under grace." If God and sin are in question, God is without doubt the strongest!
- Freed — the command speaks to people already set free through Christ's death. Only a freed slave can give himself away.
- Given — one decisive act of surrender, not a slow improvement of the old will. And never hand your body back to sin.
- Order — yourself first, your members after. Tidying up conduct without giving the person reverses the verse.
- Reach — feet, hands, tongue: every part that once served sin can now serve God. Put the flesh's sinful ways to death; hand the body's members over.
- Power — grace, not law, is the reason sin will not rule you.
For sin shall not have dominion over *you*, for ye are not under law but under grace.
Paul has just called believers to give themselves to God as people brought from death to life. Now he gives the reason such a life is possible, and it raises an old question: does taking a believer out from under law make him safer from sin, or more dangerous?
Dominion means rule. One writer connects the promise to the meaning of the name Jesus:
The very first page of the New Testament tells us there is something more than the forgiveness of our sins. It says, "You shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins." He saves not only from the penalty of our sins, but from our sins themselves. "Sin shall not have dominion over you." Literally this is, "Sin shall not lord it over you."
The promise is not that sin disappears from the believer. One writer draws the line between now and later:
We speak of the power of sin, not of its presence. Let the reader carefully note this. On the question of sin, there is a real difference between a Christian now and a Christian in the life to come. Now he is set free only from the power of sin. Later he will be free from its presence. In his present condition sin lives in him, but it is not to reign. One day it will not even live in him. The reign of sin is over and gone. The reign of grace has begun.
That leaves room for real struggle. It also ties our freedom to how well we know grace:
There may be sudden temptation — yes, failure — but sin shall not have dominion — it shall not reign. But why shall sin not reign? "For you are not under law but under grace." … The more the free favour of God in Christ Jesus is known and enjoyed, the greater our deliverance from the slavery of sin, and the more we can live a holy life.
The reason the verse gives is surprising: law itself leaves a person under sin's mastery. One commentator lists what law fails to supply:
Being under law leaves me under the dominion of sin. What we want is a free life, free from bondage to sin; for he who commits sin, says the Lord, is the slave of sin. Law gives no life, no freedom, no strength, and not even an object to turn our hearts elsewhere. It rightly forbids sins, as it must, but it gives no life and no power. But under grace we have power. Life is given, strength is given, and an object is given; none of which, as we have seen, law gives. So, under grace, sin has no dominion over me. Under law it does.
These two phrases mark two positions, each with its own history:
"Under law" simply means a position where law has authority. Israel was in that position from Mount Sinai until the cross of Christ. "Under grace" means a position where grace rules. The contrast is drawn clearly and completely. The two things cannot be mixed. "Under grace" is our position, and it comes from the blessed cross of Christ. "Under law" was a position that supposed no cross and no salvation from bondage.
Some fear that grace makes people careless about sin:
Sin, then, is not to have dominion over us, for the very reason that we are not under law but under grace. Some say that if we tell people they are no longer under the rule of law, they are sure to plunge into sin. Here is God's answer to them. The fact is that nothing so subdues the heart and promotes holiness as the grace of God.
Elsewhere the same writer shows how grace does this:
In Christianity grace not only saves but teaches, and what an effective teacher it is! It does not fill our heads with cold rules and regulations. Instead it brings our hearts under the subduing influence of the love of God. We learn what pleases Him, as shown to us in Jesus. And because we have the Spirit, we begin to live the sober, righteous, and godly life.
- Dominion — sin will not lord it over you. Christ saves not only from sin's penalty but from sins themselves.
- Dwelling, not reigning — now you are free from sin's power, later from its presence. Failure may come, but rule may not.
- Law's poverty — law forbids sin but gives no life, freedom, strength, or object for the heart. So it leaves sin in charge.
- Grace's supply — grace gives life, strength and an object for the heart. That is why sin no longer rules you.
- Grace's schooling — grace is not permission but a teacher. Nothing subdues the heart and promotes holiness like the grace of God.
What then? should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Far be the thought.
Paul has just told believers they live under grace, not under law. He raises the obvious objection himself — if law no longer rules us, are we free to sin? — and rejects it outright.
This is the second challenge in the chapter, and it is not a repeat of the first. One writer keeps them apart:
Two questions in this chapter are worth noticing, for people often confuse the second with the first. The first is in verse 1: "Are we to continue in sin?" The second is in verse 15: "Are we to sin?" The first asks about the moral sphere a person lives in, and so the chapter contrasts being "in sin" with being "in Christ Jesus." The second asks about acts or practice, and so it contrasts yielding yourself to serve sin with becoming servants to God. These are two deeply important lines of thought: the first developed in verses 1-14, the last in verses 15-23.
Paul is not inventing an unlikely opponent. He is answering the mind that hears God's kindness and calculates an advantage from it.
This further truth of practical righteousness comes in with the question, "Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace?" Here the Apostle answers in advance the reasoning of the flesh. The flesh is always ready to abuse the goodness of God and pervert the word of God. If God says, "You are not under law but under grace", the flesh says, Then we are set free to do what we like.
Some fear that telling people they are not under law will send them straight into sin. That fear misreads what grace does:
Sin, then, is not to have dominion over us, for the very reason that we are not under the law but under grace. Some tell us that if we tell people they are no longer under the rule of law, they are sure to plunge into sin. Here is the divine answer to them. The fact is that nothing so subdues the heart and promotes holiness as the grace of God.
Another writer calls this question, and the one in verse 1, the natural doubts of unbelief. To let sin run free "would be thorough despising of grace rather than understanding and appreciation of it." (L. M. Grant)
The objection assumes that law is what keeps sin down. In fact law does the opposite:
The law is the strength of sin; for by its restraint and prohibition it can only provoke the flesh. It never gives power for holiness, any more than it gives life. Grace, not law, gives life, saves, and strengthens. If believers could be under law, sin must have dominion over them.
Paul's reply is not a rule but a question about ownership. There is no neutral space where a person sins without belonging to sin.
He proves that the question shows entire ignorance of the terrible result of yielding to sin. "Do you not know", says the Apostle, "that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey?" Yield to sin and we become the slaves of sin. Every fresh act of sin forges another link in the chain that holds us in bondage. This is an intensely solemn thought, whether for a sinner living in sin or for a saint who turns aside to trifle with sin.
Freedom is not release to do as we please. It is service under a new Master, and that changes what "doing right" means:
But grace uses this liberty to make us all the more His slaves, free from sin to serve the Lord Christ… The Christian's righteousness is never doing things because they are right — that is pride, independence, or making a god of self. We do them because they are God's will for us. We must obey to have practical righteousness.
Those who raise this objection reveal what they have never known:
No doubt, dear young believer, many will tell you that such teaching will lead you to sin as your old nature likes… Those who talk like that have never known what the grace of God is. They have never known what true liberty is — not liberty to sin, but liberty from sin… God has given you a new life, and that His free gift. He has now placed you in His own unchanging, boundless grace.
- Two questions. Verse 1 asks about the sphere you live in. Verse 15 asks about the acts you do. The chapter answers the first in verses 1-14 and the second in verses 15-23.
- Flesh's logic. The objection is the reasoning of the flesh, always ready to hear "not under law" as permission to do as it likes.
- Grace's power. Nothing subdues the heart and leads to holiness like grace. Law only stirs up the flesh and gives no power to be holy.
- Sin's chain. Whoever you obey owns you. Every act of sin forges another link in the chain — a solemn warning to anyone living in sin, and to any Christian playing with it.
- True liberty. Grace does not free you to sin; it frees you from sin, into obedience that does right because it is God's will.
Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves bondmen for obedience, ye are bondmen to him whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?
Paul points to a fact from ordinary life: whoever you obey owns you. Only two masters are on offer. One road ends in death, the other in righteousness.
The verse opens with a question, not a doctrine. It rests on something anyone can check from daily life.
He appeals to that practical knowledge which is common to us all. We all know that if we obey anyone, we are their servant in practice, even if no one calls us their servant. That is the case also in spiritual things, whether it be serving sin or God. Judged by this standard, we were without question once the slaves of sin.
The verse offers only two options. It never lists a third, in which a person belongs to himself.
Any creature is wise to admit openly that he is under authority. Even the most rebellious, degraded wretch in the world is under authority. So is the most proud, respectable, reputable member of society, however independent and self-sufficient he thinks he is. Their natural characters may be very different. Yet both are without Christ, and both have yielded themselves to the authority of sin. A man may hate the word "yield." But it is in his very nature to yield. No creature can do anything else. If he does not yield to God, he is plainly yielding to sin.
Trying to rule yourself does not bring freedom. It brings a worse owner.
Man is not enough for himself. He is only a creature, and so he must depend on God. If he seeks to be his own master, if he claims to be independent, he only falls further under Satan. Instead of obeying God, he becomes the slave of sin.
The verse says you present yourself. That one word decides where the blame falls.
In this life people buy and sell slaves, and the slave gets no voice in the matter. The slavery spoken of here is not like that, whether it is slavery to sin or to righteousness… Men are sinners by birth through Adam's disobedience. They become slaves of sin by yielding to it. This declares and upholds man's responsibility. He is not responsible for being a sinner, or for having an evil nature. He is responsible for giving in to what that nature demands… He was born a sinner, a child of wrath by nature. He was not born the bondslave of sin. He became that by the exercise of his will — yielding himself to it.
The two halves of the verse do not mirror each other. Sin leads to death, but obedience leads to righteousness — not to life.
Death was the natural and appointed wages of sin, and it came as the judgment of God. We could not say obedience leads to life. If we obey, we are already alive to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. But obedience bears the fruit of practical righteousness. And notice the character of what stands against sin here. It is not righteousness in itself — doing right as conscience or law knows it — but obedience. We are alive to God, and that is, and must always be, obedience. We cannot live to God in any other way than in obedience. So Christ lived. He was the obedient Man — He came to do God's will.
The verse sets obedience against sin. So the standard is not a person's own sense of what is right.
Grace uses this freedom to make him all the more Christ's slave, free from sin to serve the Lord Christ. It was exactly what He did here on earth, always the true and perfect servant… The Christian's righteousness is never doing things because they are right. That is pride, independence, or making a god of self. We do them because they are God's will for us. We must obey to have practical righteousness.
Freedom does not lower the stakes for a Christian. It raises them.
God has called us to freedom, and He equips us with power. That makes the service of sin now deeply solemn. On man's part it is clearly the choice of evil. It is man's will rejecting the grace of God.
- Obedience reveals ownership. Not what you claim, but whom you actually obey, tells you whose servant you are.
- No third master. Self-rule is an illusion; refusing to yield to God is simply yielding to sin.
- You hand yourself over. People are born sinners. They become slaves of sin by their own yielding, and that is why they answer for it.
- The opposite of sin is obedience. Not doing right because it seems right, but doing it because it is God's will, with Christ as the pattern.
- Two wages, two ends. One road runs to death; the other bears its fruit in practical righteousness now.
But thanks [be] to God, that ye were bondmen of sin, but have obeyed from the heart the form of teaching into which ye were instructed.
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
Now, having got your freedom from sin, ye have become bondmen to righteousness.
Paul has just thanked God that his readers obeyed the teaching handed to them. Now he states what that obedience produced: a change of owner. Two questions follow. What does freedom from sin mean when sin is still at work in us? And why does that freedom hand us straight to a new master?
The word "sin" here is not a list of wrong acts but a power that held people. One writer draws the distinction that unlocks the whole chapter.
Take note of the closing words of verse 6. They show us plainly how this chapter looks at sin. Sin is a master, a slave-owner, and we had fallen under its power. The chapter is not discussing the presence of sin in us but the power of sin over us. We have got our discharge from sin.
That distinction matters. The verse never says that sin has left the believer.
We know from God's word and bitter experience that as believers we are still able to sin. But Christian liberty means we no longer have to sin. This is a great liberty.
Paul says in the next verse that he is speaking in human terms. He uses a picture from ordinary life so his point is clear. (Some quotes on this page use older wording for the verse.)
"Being now made free from sin." (Rom. 6:18, 22.) The apostle tells his readers that he speaks to them "after the manner of men, because of the weakness of their flesh." He uses the term "made free" in contrast to a state of slavery. To mark that contrast, he adds that they have become servants to God. It is a simple picture of slaves and freed slaves, and the apostle uses it to make himself better understood. Moreover, the condition spoken of is that of all Christians, without exception.
The freedom did not come by effort or resolve. It came by a death: the believer's death with Christ. That is the argument running through the earlier part of the chapter.
Yes, this is how you changed masters: through death, from sin to righteousness. And all this in perfect grace. Once you were under sin and free from righteousness. Now you are servants of righteousness and free from the slavery of sin. Yes, this chapter looks at sin and righteousness as two masters. The Christian is perfectly free from the old tyrant.
Many people try to serve God so they can get free. Paul puts it the other way round, and the order of his words matters.
So every Christian is made free from sin: "Being then made free from sin, you became the servants of righteousness." (Ver. 18.) It does not say, You became the servants of righteousness, and then you were made free from sin. There can be no true fruit to holiness until we are made free from sin.
Notice that the verse does not end with liberty. It ends with a second slavery, and for a creature there is no other option.
Man is not enough on his own. He is only a creature, and so he must depend on God. If he seeks to be his own master, if he chases independence, he only falls more completely under Satan. Instead of obeying God, he becomes the slave of sin. Redemption sets the believer free from this slavery. But it frees him only to bind him with all his heart to do as the Christian form of teaching instructs us — all the more because he is under grace, not law.
The new master needs defining too. Righteousness is not a standard we set for ourselves.
A Christian's righteousness is never doing things because they are right. That is pride, independence, or making a god of self. It is doing them because they are God's will for us. We must obey to reach practical righteousness.
The verse makes no demand. The demand comes in the next verse, and the difference matters.
Verse 18 deals with actual fact: verse 19 with practical character. This is easy to see, above all in the New Translation, which puts verse 18 more strongly: "Now, having got your freedom from sin, you have become bondmen to righteousness." Verse 19, by contrast, urges us to "now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness."
- Master — This chapter treats sin as an owner, not a habit. The issue is its power over us, not its presence in us.
- Discharge — Freedom came through death with Christ, and all in grace. The old tyrant lost his hold on us.
- Order — Freedom comes first, then service. No one serves righteousness to become free.
- Owner — Liberty is not self-rule. Chasing independence lands a creature back under sin. Redemption frees us to bind us to God's will.
- Practice — Verse 18 says what you are. The next verse says what to do with your body. The fact stands; the yielding is daily.