Do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.
–Romans 6:13
A man got a job cleaning the animal stalls at the circus. On his first day, he was taken to where the elephants were kept. To his surprise, the multi-ton creatures were being held in place by a flimsy chain attached to a tiny stake in the ground. The man said to the elephant trainer, “How is it that you can stake down these huge animals with such a tiny stake and a flimsy chain? One tug and they would be up and off! Why don’t they try to get free?” The elephant trainer said, “You have to know two things about elephants: One, they are not very smart. Two, they have great memories. When these elephants are little, we tie them down with that stake and chain. They try to break loose, but they can’t, so eventually they give up. As they get larger, we still use the same stake and the same chain. Whenever they think about getting loose, they remember their experience when they were little, so they do not even try to break free.”
What a great analogy for the Christian life! Before you became a Christian, you had no choice but to sin. It did not matter how many AA meetings you went to, how many counseling sessions you went to, how many self-help books you read, how many New Year’s resolutions you made–you could never break free from sin in your life. But once you became a Christian, the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead began working in your heart to give you freedom over sin. And yet most Christians are unaware of that power they already possess. They remember how they could not break free of their addictions or patterns of sin before they were saved, so even though they have this new power inside of them, they do not try to break loose from sin.
Here is one way to remind yourself that you have been saved from the power of sin: I want you to memorize Romans 6:11-14. Paul wrote, “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.” When you are in the heat of battle and temptation is flying at you, remembering this passage could save you from sin. That is a practical way to put on the helmet of salvation. Remember that you have been saved from the power of sin.
Today’s devotion is excerpted from “The Helmet And The Sword” by Dr. Robert Jeffress, 2011.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org