Romans 6:12

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires.

The problem is that many Christians want forgiveness, but they don’t want holiness. Picture a man praying, “Lord, make me a better man. But it’s all right if You don’t, because I really like the way I am.” It may sound funny, but that is precisely the feeling of many Christians. They are perfectly happy being forgiven but not holy. They are perfectly happy being accepted, but not righteous, forgiven but not sanctified. But Paul does not consider that to even be a possibility in the Christian life. God doesn’t just save us by forgiveness; He delivers us from sin’s bondage.

And so Paul commands a second thing: be who you are. “Do not let the sin nature reign in your bodies, because that would cause you to obey the evil desires of the flesh.” There are two things to note in v12. First, it really is true that sin does not reign over us as believers. Second, believers still really do struggle with sin. Paul wouldn’t have to be saying not to let sin reign if his audience wasn’t struggling with it. Think about that. If Christians were sinless, would Paul have had to tell them “Do not let sin reign in your body”? No. So the very fact that he says that lets us know that believers struggle with sin. Since we are no longer controlled by the desires of sin, we have new desires for righteousness. And there is conflict.

Being a Christian is not making a new start in life; it’s receiving a new life to start with. One of the first ways that we know that God is doing a work of grace in our lives is that we no longer desire to live a life of sin. We desire to live a life of godliness. We desire to be like the Lord. We desire to see those things that are good and pure and beautiful. We desire after godliness. We can say with the psalmist, “How I love Your law, O Lord.” Paul is saying that one of the evidences of sin’s reign is that your desires are totally captive to sin. But when grace comes, you are liberated from that captivity to sin. New life brings a decisive break with the desires of sin, and it brings an advent of new desires for righteousness. Now we don’t always follow the new desires consistently. But thank God we don’t always follow the old desires consistently either. And that’s the evidence of God’s grace. Sin is not king any more, Paul says. Grace is.

A person will always do that which is in accordance with his greatest desire. And our desires are determined by our natures. Prior to being reborn and indwelled by the Holy Spirit, we were captive to the sin nature, and thus our desires and, therefore, our deeds were sinful. Remember, everything done without faith is sin. But now, there is a battle, and we’ll see more of it in chapter 7. The battle is between the still-present sin nature and the newly present Spirit-filled nature. Thus we have conflicting desires. But notice that we have been freed from the bondage to the sin nature. Therefore, both natures inside us have laid claim to the thrones of our hearts. And we give-in to each at times. But Paul urges us to strive, by grace, to avoid yielding the thrones of our hearts to the evil desires. They cannot reign; they have been defeated by Christ. So do not obey them; instead, obey the Spirit-filled desires, which lead to righteousness. GALATIANS 5:17

Desires which were given by God to serve us—like desire for food, drink, sex, rest, friends, and approval—are attacked by sin and captured and corrupted and turned into betrayers—Judas-desires, Delilah-desires. Then these desires—now in the service of sin instead of God—lure us to obey them. When that happens we hand over our members—eyes, ears, tongue, hands, feet, sexual organs, voices—to serve these desires and their master, sin, and our members become weapons of unrighteousness. 1 Peter 2:11 says, “Abstain from fleshly desires which wage war against the soul.” Notice that sin is attacking through desires. We are called to keep them from being our greatest desires. “Don’t let sin reign.” We are ruled by our greatest desires. Don’t present your eyes and tongue to fulfill sinful desires. Don’t choose sin. But what is this choosing? It is preferring. To choose is essentially to prefer one thing over another thing. If God is to get glory in our choosing against sin, it must be because we regard God and what He promises as preferable. So you can describe the battle at this point in negative terms: You are dead to sin and its desires; they are no longer always preferable. Or you can describe the battle positively: You are alive to God and His ways; they are now prefer-able (able to be preferred whereas before they were not), having ended sin’s reign.