Sin Shall Not Have Dominion Over You - (Rom 6:12-14), Part 1/4

Sin feels stubborn for a reason: it does not vanish at conversion, but it also does not get to wear the crown anymore. We open Romans 6:12–14 and follow Paul’s logic from union with Christ to daily sanctification, where the command is clear: do not let sin reign, do not offer your members as instruments for unrighteousness, and yield yourself to God. The big relief is that Paul is not asking us to achieve death to sin through our own strength. He is calling us to live consistently with what God has already accomplished through Jesus. 

We also tackle a hard question that sits under a lot of modern Christian anxiety: does salvation begin with our free will, our intelligence, or our “right moment,” or is it a sovereign work of grace from start to finish? From there, we describe sin as a dethroned tyrant, still fighting to reclaim authority through temptation, weakness, and the tactics of spiritual warfare. That framing explains why the struggle can be intense while the outcome is secure. The fight is real, but dominion is broken. 

Then we slow down on Paul’s phrase “mortal body.” We clarify what it means to say the body is not sinful in itself, while still being the place where inward corruption expresses itself through appetites, habits, and old patterns. The conversation moves into resurrection and “flesh,” distinguishing physical flesh from “flesh” as the sinful principle, and why Christian hope is not escaping a body but receiving a glorified one like Christ’s. 

If you want a more grounded, Bible-shaped view of temptation, assurance, and Christian growth under grace, listen through and share it with someone who feels stuck. Subscribe, leave a review, and tell us what line from Romans 6 challenges you most.

Transcript

Reading Romans 6:12-14

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Romans chapter 6, and we're going to pick up where we left off in Romans chapter 6, beginning at verse 12, and I'm going to read through verse 14, and I will I plan on spending the entirety of the exposition tonight on these three verses. So Romans chapter 6, verses 12 through 14, and I'll read all three verses, and then we'll get into the exposition. So it says, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lusts thereof. 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 righteous of righteousness unto God. For sin shall not have dominion over you, because you are under the law. You are not under the law, but under grace. So now we're talking about sin no longer reigning over the believer. It no longer reigns over the believer, it no longer rules or governs the believer. And so what we're talking about here now is the anatomy of the new life that is in Christ, having been planted together with him, as we discussed yesterday in chapter 6, verse 5. So Paul, having established that believers have been united to Christ in his death and in his resurrection, and that the old man has been crucified with Christ, Paul now turns from the doctrine to the duty. He turns from the doctrine to the duty of the Christian. What are we supposed to do? He's already explained what our position is, and now he's going to start speaking about the duty of those who have been brought into unity with Christ, having been transformed into the realm of righteousness and into the kingdom of God, taken out of the kingdom of darkness from under the tyranny of sin. So this is what we're dealing with. And the verses that we just finished yesterday or a couple days ago, they showed, they showed what God has accomplished in Christ. But these next three verses, 12 through 14, these verses are going to show the practical consequences of the accomplishment in the daily life of the believer. So we're dealing with the practical applications of what we read from the beginning of Romans 6 up until

Doctrine Becomes Daily Duty

SPEAKER_01 3:15

now. And so the command here that Paul offers, it does not call Christians to achieve their death to sin through their own efforts, but to live consistently with a death to sin that has already been accomplished through the union of Christ. This is important because so many people believe that what Christ did was died for their sins and made sin available so that if when they get in the right mood or if they have the intellectual capacity, they will then come to Christ. But this is not what Paul is saying. He is proving and showing unequivocally that salvation has nothing to do with any exertion or will on the part of the believer who is saved, but that the whole work of dying and living in Christ is a work of God solely and not a work on the part of men. And so we need to understand that salvation is that which God has done and accomplished in us through Christ. And that's what's important. We do not achieve anything. But Christ is the one through whom all of our blessings flow. And he is the first cause of our salvation in every aspect. And it is because of him that we are able to live consistently with a death to sin that has already been accomplished through and by our union with Christ. This is important. You see, the unbeliever would have this conversation be boring. This does not interest the unbeliever. It does not interest the unbelieving Christian. But for the real true Christian, the real elect of God, discussing these things and being reassured, reassured of these things provides the best hope and the best confidence that a Christian can have to be assured that their salvation is secure in Christ and in what he has done and what he yet continues to do and what he will do. So the exhortation that Paul makes here rests entirely upon the reality of the redemption that has been fully and completely accomplished in Christ and in him alone. And what he has pointed out is that because believers have died and risen with Christ, they are no longer obligated. They're no longer obligated to serve sin in any capacity. Which means now, after having come to Christ, we are no longer under the tyranny of sin. Now we can serve God and be obedient unto the things that pertain to righteousness. Nor are we as believers, nor are we able or required to permit sin to occupy the throne of our lives. In other words, sin has no more dominion over us. It has no more. Look at what he says again in verse twelve. He says, Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that you should obey it in the lust thereof. He tells us to do something, assuming that what he has said, the contrary position, is what we were in. In other words, when he says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, this presupposes that before we came to Christ and before we were brought to him in faith and benefited from his death and was raised into the newness of life, before that took place, we had no capacity to not let sin reign. But now that we have been saved, we are in the position to have impact over the reigning of sin in our lives, the ruling and reigning of sin in our lives. We have been given an ability that we did not have prior to our salvation, which begs the question, which begs the question, is it true that a Christian comes to Christ through exercising, through the exercise of their own free will or intellectual conclusion? Is it their IQ that brings them to faith? Is that what it is? No. Is it their esteem or heightened allocation of academic acumen? Is it that? No. Is it a birthright? No. Is it based on who or where you live? Is it your cultural environment? No. It has nothing to do with any of those things. It is a sovereign work of the Lord. And the choice of those who are saved is made specifically in by Christ Himself, having been given those to redeem that his Father gave to him to redeem. These are words that many unbelieving Christians, most of them, do not accept in belief. Many men today that claim to be Christians believe that their salvation starts with them. That Christ's salvation simply made a provision to be saved, but not the actual salvation itself. Listen to the command again that Paul says.

Sin As A Dethroned Tyrant

SPEAKER_01 10:18

He says, Do not let sin in verse 12, do not let sin reign in your mortal body. This presents sin as a dethroned tyrant that nevertheless seeks to recover its formal, his former authority and glory over the control of you. Sin used to control you. It used to govern you. It used to be your king. It regulated you and me. It reigned over us. But what Paul is saying is that as a result of what we now have in Christ, it no longer reigns. It is not gone. It hasn't disappeared. The significance that he is making is that we are not to let sin reign. And now we have the ability, because of the work of God in us and the Holy Spirit that works in us, sin can no longer rule us and govern us. We no longer have the desires of being in submission to sin. This is what we need to understand. Paul does not say that sin no longer exists within the believer, for the continued need for vigilance proves that it is still here. We struggle, all of the struggles generally that we have. All of the struggles in sin that we still have is evident of the fact that sin still exists. But here's the important piece. Whatever we do that is congruent with sin, we do because we give in. But what we are doing is acknowledging that we are not compliant from a spiritual standpoint. We sin today and we despise the sin that we do. Sin continually wants to rule and govern, and it continues to try every craft, every crafty move, and every while of Satan to get us to succumb. And sometimes we fall, but we don't stay down. And we don't stay down because it is the Lord who lifts us up. It is he who comes out and retrieves us and makes us aware. And this is how he does it by making us cognizant of what these things are and how they've happened. And so we are not ignorant of Satan's devices. And this is what is important for us to understand. So before conversion, before we were converted, sin ruled us, governed us, was a master over us, and sin dealt with us as a monarch. A monarch whose authority over us is unquestioned. It's unquestioned. In every faculty of the soul and body, it served the interest of sin. And the thing is, we loved it. When we were unconverted, we loved it. Sin was our master, and we were a willing slave unto it. But we are no longer this way. Because after we have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit of God, there was a decisive transfer of authority that occurred. And we were transferred from the authority of sin, from under the authority and tyranny of sin, and we were translated into the kingdom of God's dear son to live under the authority and government of the kingdom of righteousness. We are now in the kingdom of righteousness, not in the kingdom of sin and darkness, but now we have been transferred into the kingdom of God's dear son, living and governed by righteousness. And we'll see more about this when we get to Romans chapter 14 and verse 17. But now we as believers we belong to another king. We have another king. But even though we have this new king, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, but we know that the remnant of corruption still remains, always and constantly attempting to regain control, a control which it will never, ever, ever have again. Ever. The Christian life involves a continual resistance against the usurping attempts of the sin that still indwells us. And the reason that we need faith is because it is the faith that we have that we were given that enables us to have our souls to remain fortified against the tyranny of sin that still wants to take back what it once had and owned. But it will never win. It will never win. He goes on in verse twelve to say, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies.

Why Paul Mentions The Body

SPEAKER_01 17:06

Another important statement: let not sin reign where? In your mortal body. This is significant. And listen, we need to understand something here. The body itself, our human bodies itself, is not sinful. The body itself is not sinful in and of itself. Nor is Paul teaching that evil resides exclusively in our physical existence. But what he is showing is this what he's emphasizing is that the body, because it is through the body that inward corruption expresses itself. It's a tool. It's a tool that sin uses, that Satan uses to try to bring about an expressive means of the sin that dwells within us. The body remains mortal, bearing the marks of the fall and awaiting final redemption. This is why we still look forward to resurrection. Because when we receive a body that is consistent in purity with the soul that has been made purified by the redemption in Christ, these two will be joined together, the glorified body with the glorified soul, and we are able to go into glory without any imperfections whatsoever. So until glorification happens, which will take place when Christ returns, believers will continue to inhabit bodies that are subject to weakness, that are subject to temptation, that are subject to decay, and that remain impervious to the influence of sin. Or I got that backwards. They remain in a position to constantly be influenced by the temptation to sin. And so we have to always be vigilant and to guard ourselves. And we need to understand that being transferred into this kingdom that we're in right now, we've always heard the expression that the church is militant. We are always at war with principalities and darkness, and principalities in high places and darkness. And this is what he's talking about. It's not just the outward war with the non-believer, it is a war that continues to persist within our members, as Paul will later show to us. We have this warring that takes place within our members. And so we need to understand this. Because sin always wants to exploit these weaknesses, it always wants to exploit these weaknesses and to cause us to fall. And so we need to be prepared against the very ends that it is trying to do. It uses the appetites that we have. And there's a varying degree of appetites amongst all people. Appetites, desires, evil inclinations, particular types of proclivities that we used to love to do, that we no longer desire or love anymore. And these inclinations have avenues through which sin may exert influence if we are not careful. And so the Christian must therefore always be watchful. Recognizing both the dignity and the vulnerability of the bodily existence. We have to always watch.

Listener Reflections And Clarifications

SPEAKER_01 21:37

Sister Terry. Good evening, sister. What are your opening thoughts?

SPEAKER_03 21:45

That's a lot there, huh? I'm groaning. All creation is groaning for the sons of God to be revealed.

SPEAKER_00 21:56

That's right.

SPEAKER_03 21:58

That's what I'm thinking.

SPEAKER_00 22:00

All right. Anything else? But you are right. You are right. It's enough for now.

SPEAKER_01 22:09

Sister Mariah, what do you think? Your opening thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

Well, I always thought that sin still, like, you know, Paul will say later on that the body will die because of sin. So I guess when you say that our bodies aren't sinful, kind of threw me for a loop, but I I guess I think I I know what you're saying when you said that.

SPEAKER_01 22:36

Right. Well, the the whole idea is that the body becomes sort of like the means through which sin is put on exhibit. The way sin it comes out. So I mean, uh, think about this way. When we vacate our bodies, this the body just becomes this inanimate, this inanimate framework, right? In other words, we leave. But it's it's the it's the it's what it's what is inside that governs what the body does. So the body responds to what is in what is in us. This is why Christ was always trying to get people to understand that he is concerned about the heart. Remember, he said it's not what goes, it's not what goes into the mouth that defiles a man, but what comes out. So it so what comes out of his mouth, like remember he talked about the the mouth, the tongue is like a a helm of a ship, a little small steering device that governs the whole ship. In other words, what comes out of his mouth governs his whole body. But if you take what governs the body out of the man or out of the body, the body is nothing. So the body just becomes a host.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

Correct, like a vessel.

SPEAKER_01 24:04

Like a vessel.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

That's right. And like we'll see soon, an instrument that is used for that's right.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

And I'm gonna I'm gonna ask, I'm gonna I'm gonna show this in a minute, but once I get through everybody's opening remarks, but I'm gonna show, I'm gonna show, I'm gonna I'm gonna try to illustrate exactly what I mean by that. Cause I I knew that that would be that would be something for people to want to ask about. Uh, Sister Vanessa, what do you think so far?

SPEAKER_04 24:31

Good evening.

SPEAKER_01 24:32

Good evening.

SPEAKER_04 24:33

I think that uh we rail against the things of the world. And because Jesus lives within us, we do not sin inside.

SPEAKER_00 24:50

Right.

SPEAKER_04 24:51

But our flesh sins, and we will that's why there will be no flesh in heaven. Because we have no choice. It was given to us by Adam. So, and Eve, don't get me wrong.

SPEAKER_01 25:05

I'm just saying, what do you what do you what do you mean when you say there's no flesh in heaven? What do you mean by that?

SPEAKER_04 25:14

Because we're gonna have celestial bodies, and the word says there will be no flesh in heaven.

SPEAKER_00 25:20

You know that okay, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 25:23

And so I'm just saying we're not gonna be like we are today. And sin reigns in this old body of flesh.

SPEAKER_01 25:31

So so when so when Christ resurrected, was his body celestial or was it terrestrial? We ain't Christ. Christ said we're gonna be he said we're gonna be just like him, and he's called the first fruits.

SPEAKER_04 25:45

Yeah, but not on earth.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Really? Are you sure about that?

SPEAKER_04 25:50

Yeah, I think we're because we live in his kingdom.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

So what do you think? So what do you think? So what do you think? So let me ask you this question. This is let me I'm gonna stop here.

What Resurrection Means For Bodies

SPEAKER_04 25:59

So go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 26:01

All right, so let me ask you this question. Okay What what is resurrection to mean to you?

SPEAKER_04 26:08

The holy significance that we will reign with Christ. I mean, he already reigned in us, but we will reign with him. So what do you think? Our bodies are gonna resurrect just like he did.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

So what so you but you said we're not gonna have a body.

SPEAKER_04 26:24

I'm not gonna have a fleshly body. Are you sure about that? Yeah, that's what it says. Where does it say that? It says we'll have a celestial body when we leave this world.

SPEAKER_01 26:35

But it says, okay, so let me ask you this question. What is the point of raising this body?

SPEAKER_04 26:43

Because we have to be the same as Christ was.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

No, but here's what I'm asking you. What is the point? What is the here's a I'm I'm stick with you for a minute. I'm not, I'm just gonna I gotta pick on you, and that's your turn tonight.

SPEAKER_04 26:54

That's all right. I don't mind.

SPEAKER_01 26:56

All right. So resurrection, it literally means to stand up. This is important. And this is what this is why I'm stopping. This is important. I mean, so this body that we are in right now, no matter what happens to it, it can be set on fire, burned up in ashes, and spread all over the earth. But Christ said it is this very body that we're in right now that is going to be raised. Yes. When Jesus Christ went into that tomb, when you went into that, when they went into the tomb, his body was gone. And his body was resurrected. That same body that was in that tomb is the same body that came out, but it was changed. And it was given, and it was given, that same body was given properties that it did not have before, but it was the same body, but the body made perfect, made incorruptible, made flawless, made able to do the things that Christ can do right now.

SPEAKER_04 28:13

But wasn't he that way anyway? I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 28:18

No, what were you asking? Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 28:19

He was perfect anyway, so that's that was my we're not. When Christ's all I was saying.

SPEAKER_01 28:26

No, no, this is no, this is important because that because this is really important because it's not what you're saying. We know we're gonna have a body that has the ability to survive in the celestial realm.

unknown 28:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 28:41

And keep in mind, the celestial realm is a physical realm. It's a physical realm. It is outside of the atmosphere that we live in now, right? Yeah. It is outside of the atmosphere we live in now, above the firmament, the third heaven, whatever that, whatever that is, where angels exist. We are going to be in physical glorified bodies, which are glorious and notice this. We're going to receive glorified bodies. Not it, not a new body in the sense that it is not what we are in right now. It is this body that we live in right now that is going to be glorified. And this is important to understand because this is the central theme to be believed as Christians. This body will resurrect just the same way Christ's body resurrected, the same exact body. And when Thomas, who doubted that it was Christ who resurrected, he asked for evidence. Did he not? Yes. Okay, he asked for evidence. And what did Christ say to him? Oh my gosh. I know. Come on, come on with it. Come on.

SPEAKER_04 30:01

I'm just, man, Jonathan, you have no idea. But anyway.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

If you don't want to answer, I can I'll just talk about it.

SPEAKER_04 30:07

No, I do. He seen my flesh and he had to touch it, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

Now, but what did you say?

SPEAKER_04 30:16

Do you believe because you but you doubted because but you believe because you see.

SPEAKER_01 30:21

We skipped a part. What did what did Christ show him?

SPEAKER_04 30:27

His wound in his hands and in his side. Yes. Yeah, I know he still had the flesh. I know what you're saying, but I'm just like that was his body. Yeah, I know that was his body, and I know we will be resurrected. But I the way I read it, and I'm sorry if I'm wrong, but the way I read it, it was I thought that our bodies would be changed because we can't have there because the Bible does say there'll be no flesh in heaven. Because it's sinful. But I know we're gonna get resurrected and be different. I know that.

SPEAKER_01 30:58

So we we need to understand this. This this needs this needs to be clear, and I'll give us I'm gonna say a few more things about it, and then then you and me will talk tomorrow. Now, here's the thing.

Two Meanings Of Flesh

SPEAKER_01 31:13

We need to distinguish when we talk about the word, when we use the word flesh, we're talking about two different aspects of it. There's the physical aspect of it, the sin, I mean the the skin, the flesh. Okay, that's one thing. There's another aspect of flesh, which is what we talk about when we talk about the sinful part of man, the fleshly part. In other words, when we talk about sin, when we talk about flesh in that regard, what we're talking about is a flesh that is moved and motivated by sinful desire.

SPEAKER_04 31:52

Yeah, and that's the heart.

SPEAKER_01 31:55

That's the evil.