It's Your Choice

¹²Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. ¹³Neither 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. ¹⁴For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace. ¹⁵What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. ¹⁶Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?

-Romans 6:12-16 (KJV)

I truly believe, with all my heart, that sin is a choice. When we choose to sin, we choose the suffer the consequences for that sin. I've had many people email me saying things like; "Well, a good God wouldn't send people to Hell." The fact of the matter is this, God does not, has not, and will not, send anyone to Hell. It's your choice to go to Hell, just like it's your choice to accept Jesus, live for Him and go to Heaven. In these verses of Romans 6, we see where Paul is teaching us that when we sin, it's our choice to sin. Let's look at it.

Verse 12 says, "Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof." To have something reign over you means that it has command or power over you. A king or queen rules over a country, they have the power to control the country. Sin is like that. If sin is ruling in your body, you will obey it. You will follow that sin, sin has power over you. You keep submitting to sin, choosing to obey it. We shouldn't allow sin that kind of power. Verse 13 says, "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." If sin has rule over your life, it is because of one reason. You have yielded yourself to sin. Among the definitions for the word yield, you'll find, "to give over possession of; surrender. To give up to another; concede.*" When you yield yourself to sin, you are surrendering your life to sin, you are giving possession of your life to sin, you are giving up control to sin. Therefore, sin will reign and rule over your life, and you will continue to obey sin because that is what you chose to obey. Verse 16 says, "Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" Paul is teaching us that whoever you yield ourselves to, that is who we obey. 

But, there is a flip side. If you've given your life to Christ, you've crucified that sin nature with Jesus on the cross. "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. (Romans 6:6). Verse 14 says, "For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace." For the Christian, sin doesn't have dominion over us. Why, then, do we still live in it's power? I think the reason is that we continue to yield ourselves to it. Instead, we must give up control to God. The end of verse 13 says, "but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." 

You have a choice to make. Are you going to continue to give control of your life, yield your life, to sin? Or, are you going to give control of your life, yield your life, to God? It's your choice, what are you going to do? Think About It.

*source: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/yield

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