Present every member

In my Sunday school class on Sunday, I got through about one third of the lesson I prepared. This was for the best possible reason, which is the class conversation took off and we learned from one another asked questions, considered how we could apply the challenges. It should really come as no surprise, given the passages we are in.

Romans chapter six is this powerful portion of the letter Paul wrote to the believers in Rome. He has spent the first five chapters explaining who they are and what God had done for them. He has told them about the importance, value and necessity of the death and resurrection. Lovely, complex, uplifting and thoughtful insights. We have seen the power of his intellect, felt the full strength of his exhortation. But this chapter is a threshold. Here, Paul builds on the foundation and begins laying out the work to be done.

I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. Romans 6:19

My class dwelled for a long time on this verse. Think about it, what does it mean to present a part of you body as a slave to righteousness? It is so easy to mess this up. We look at our eyes and think, if my eyes are a slave to righteousness, I will not look at sinful thing, I will not see controversies for me to jump in, I will not see.... Wrong. Paul already addressed this as a past tense. "once presented your members as slaves to impurity". His charge goes way beyond what we will not do.

The weak view of this is to think righteousness is the simple opposite of impurity, but it is not. It is greater than that. I learned from my class that committed eyes are looking for opportunities to serve, looking to the path God has laid out, looking for patches of ground to lay seeds in. If you are looking with those kind of eyes, impurity is not even on the same spectrum. Let the righteousness you are called to push out the natural impurity, rather than hoping it will fill the vacuum left behind when you try to stop.

What does it mean if you present your mind?

What does it mean if you present your tongue?

What does it mean if you present your hands and feet?