What does it mean to present our members as instruments of righteousness (Romans 6:13)?

Nor is this all. The apostle pushes the matter farther. "Neither yield your members instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but yield yourselves to God as alive from out of dead [men], and your members instruments of righteousness to God." (Ver. 13.) 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. It is not a gradual improvement of the nature or the will as men speak, but the giving up of ourselves in a single and complete act to God as alive from among the dead, and our members as instruments of righteousness to God.

This yielding is a very practical thing, as verse 13 makes plain. It affects all the members of our bodies. Formerly every member was in some way enlisted in the service of sin and so became an instrument of unrighteousness. Is it not a wonderful thing that every member may now be enlisted in the service of God? Our feet may run His errands. Our hands may do His work. Our tongues may speak forth His praise. In order that this may be so we are to yield ourselves to God.

(V. 13). A second result of the reckoning is that, being set free from sin, the members of the body are no longer to be yielded to sin but to God. If these different members are governed by self-will it must mean that they become instruments to work unrighteousness. Being set free from the dominion of sin we are to yield ourselves — spirit, soul, and body — and our members in particular, to God.

"Keep thy heart with all diligence", says the wise man; "put away from thee a froward mouth, and perverse lips put far from thee. Let thine eyes look right on … ponder the path of thy feet" (Prov. 4:23-27). What is this but the Old Testament way of expressing the New Testament exhortation "to yield yourselves to God as alive from among the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God". We may well challenge ourselves as to what we allow in our hearts; are we imagining evil against our brother? What about our lips; do we use them to speak evil of others? What of our eyes; are they used to look upon scenes that would stir up lust and excite the flesh? What of our feet; do we allow them to carry us into places where no Christian should be found? If these, and other members, are used for such purposes they are being used for unrighteousness under the power of sin — or self-will — rather then being used for righteousness and the pleasure of God.

The connection between Romans 12:1 and these verses is evident. The members of our bodies are instruments which as long as we live are in use, bringing forth details of conduct that give evidence of subjection to some master. But let us remark that in yielding to God, it is not merely the details of conduct mentioned; not merely our members, it is rather first, “yield yourselves unto God,” and afterwards “your members.” Blessed, profitable instruction here! Let it not escape our wholehearted obedience and meditation. For it is one thing to seek to make my conduct conformable to God's desires: it is another to yield myself to Him. Yet then indeed, after once having fully, unreservedly yielded myself, let my members become consistently “instruments of righteousness unto God.”

So we are to reckon ourselves (our old man being crucified with Him) dead to sin, and alive to God through Him. It was a new and free life; for the believer was entitled to reckon himself dead unto sin; it was his condition and place as a believer to do so. If we are alive, we are alive to God, not through Adam at all, but through Jesus Christ our Lord. Thus it was wholly new, and, reckoning ourselves dead to sin, entirely free - able to yield himself to God. Compare Romans 12:2; and read "intelligent" for "reasonable." It is not that sin in the flesh has not its lusts; but the believer as such does not let it reign in the body to obey it in its lusts, seeing he is free in the power of a new life; for so the believer is accounted free to walk in the power and after the things which belong to this new life. He holds the reins, and does not allow sin to use the body for its lusts - the lusts of sin. Nor does this freeman give up his members to be instruments of righteousness unto sin - that evil thing to which he was once a slave. He yields himself to God as one alive from the dead, for, as to his life born of Adam, he had died to sin, but now lives, and yields himself and his members as instruments of righteousness to God.

As pointed out in a note to this verse in the New Translation, there is a difference in the two words rendered "yield." The first is in the present, and the second is in the past (aorist) tense; that is, when the apostle says, as here translated, "Yield yourselves unto God," the meaning is, Let it have been done, done as an accomplished act; but when he says, "Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin," it is that this is never to be done, because believers, "as those that are alive from the dead," have been "made free from sin," and have "become servants to God." (v. 22.) They belong therefore to Him, and thus His claims having been acknowledged, they are to hold themselves (their members) daily and hourly at His disposal as instruments of righteousness unto God. All this follows from the truth contained in the first part of the chapter. The way of deliverance from the power of sin is there given. We are seen to be dead to sin in the death of Christ, unto which we were baptized. "Our old man is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed [annulled], that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin." Then, inasmuch as in that Christ died, He died unto sin once, and in that He liveth, He liveth unto God, we are to reckon ourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.

Finally we come to the third of our three dominant verbs. We are exhorted to YIELD our members as “instruments of righteousness to God” (v. 13). This is what TO KNOW and TO RECKON leads to: viz., to YIELD. The members of our bodies, our tongues, our hands, our feet, our minds, are all to be yielded to God. No longer is the body to be the vehicle of our own wills, our own desires, whether they take the form of the refined and intellectual or of what is too common alas! and where least expected—the coarse and the sensual.

The apostle says he uses the word "slave" to explain, speaking after the manner of men. We are to walk and speak now as those who are to be judged by the perfect law of liberty. We are bought with a price: we belong to God. And we have, as those who have died and are alive, the privilege to give ourselves to God and to yield our members as instruments of righteousness unto God. As delivered by death from the power of sin, we have a life to yield. To whom, then, are we going to live? To God; and all our members, which were once yielded to sin, are now to be yielded as instruments of righteousness to God.

Here comes in the second point of the chapter. To whom am I going to yield myself, if thus free in life - to sin again? God forbid. I am a slave, to use a human figure, says the apostle, to Him to whom I give myself up, not therefore surely to sin, but to God; and my members as instruments of righteousness to God. The law I am not under; that comes requiring, and really addresses itself to me as alive in the flesh. But the absence of legal requirement does not lead me to sin, my freedom is to serve God, to be obedient. Such is life through Christ.

Rom. 6:10. The obedience of Christ was put to the proof up to the end, till there rested no more than death; and He preferred to die rather than fail in obedience, which would have been yielding to sin. Far from yielding, He died; He completed His obedience in death; and by it He has done with sin in every way. He has only to do with God. We, too, should appropriate this by faith (Rom. 6:11), and reckon ourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Hence the clear and solemn exhortations of Rom. 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." But mark well that the source of practical power (and that is the question) is in grace: "sin shall not have dominion over you, FOR you are not [under law but] under grace." If God and sin are in question, doubtless God is found the strongest!