Knowing, Reckoning, Yielding

Jeffrey Brett

In Romans 6:1, the Apostle Paul asks the question, ‘Shall we continue in sin?’, and in verse 2 he answers it: ‘God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?’ This makes it clear that a believer should not continue to live as he or she did before they came to know the Lord Jesus as their Saviour. Then he says, ‘So many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death’ (v. 3). He assumes those he is writing to have all been baptised. Dear Christian, have you been baptised? The apostle states what is normal for a Christian. Not to be baptised is abnormal.

Peter tells us that it is the ‘demand … of a good conscience’ (1 Pet. 3:21). I should feel that as God in Christ has done so much for me, should I not then answer to that by yielding my life to Him?

Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:14–15: ‘if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.’

Knowing

In Romans 6:6, we read: ‘knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with him.’ In the cross of our Lord Jesus, God has finished with all that we were as born of Adam. The ‘old man’ — what I am according to the flesh — has been terminated, as it is impossible for it to please God. Even Paul said, ‘For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh, good does not dwell’ (7:18).

If I know that God has finished with my old life, the question then is, have I finished with it? In being baptised I am saying that I have accepted the judgment of God on all that I am according to the flesh.

Reckoning

So Paul goes on in verse 11, ‘Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ’. The Holy Spirit gives me the power to say ‘NO’ to sin. Before I was converted, sin reigned in my life and controlled what I did. That power has been broken: ‘For sin shall not have dominion over you’ (v. 14).

So, not only has God in the death of Christ put away what I am in the flesh, but He has also given me the Holy Spirit that I might live unto Him.

Yielding

So we come to our last word, ‘yield’. Verse 13 says, ‘Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God.’ My hands, my feet, my eyes, my ears and my voice — once they were used to satisfy myself, doing sinful things. Now I can yield them to God, ‘as instruments of righteousness’. As Paul says in Galatians 2:20: ‘I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.’

Appeared in: Toward The Mark (2002) vol. 1 no. 2 p. 19.

From: Truth and Testimony, 2023