Surrender...to What or Whom?

We can now liberate the energy in atoms by “splitting” them. (I am told there is enough energy in a raisin to supply power to New York City for an entire day.)

And as such “members” he lists “fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desires, and covetousness, which” he says, “is idolatry.” What does this mean, “members which are upon the earth”? It means those parts of a life lived entirely in terms of the natural powers of the embodied self. You need no help from supernatural sources to engage in fornication, the many sexual pollutions—“short of intercourse,” we now say—indulgences in passions and desires for what is evil, or greed to possess what belongs to others. Just follow the inclinations now built into your bodily existence and they will all happen. Just let the demands of your “members” guide your life. These are the “parts” of our life that are “upon the earth,” in the sense that they do not come “from heaven” or God. Because of them, human beings become “children of disobedience.” Their basic nature becomes disobedience or rebellion. They are inherently at war with God and therefore subject to God’s wrath (Colossians 3:6-7).

However, Paul actually regarded all this “nice flesh” as loss, and even as feces, compared to the real treasure of the resurrection life of Christ moving in him (verses 3-11).

Now we must emphasize that the grace in question is not merely a judicial action, though it involves that too. It is above all a presence and power in life, which provides an alternative to the merely natural forces (flesh) accessible to the individual in and through the body without any specific divine intervention from above.

But because we are now in the grip of grace it is up to us—though never on our own—to “not let sin have dominion in our death-bound (mortal) body to obey Sin’s desires” (verse 12, PAR). And this we do by refusing to surrender our body parts to sin as weapons of wickedness. Instead, having been invaded by a life beyond death, and hence by one that is not of the body or flesh, we “present our body parts (members) to him as weapons of righteousness” (verse 13, PAR).

Because we are in the grip of grace, sin does not exercise control over us except insofar as we allow it.

pp.161-165, SOURCE