Romans 6:19, 22
I am using an example from everyday life because of your human limitations. Just as you used to offer yourselves as slaves to impurity and to ever-increasing wickedness, so now offer yourselves as slaves to righteousness leading to holiness But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life.
Scripture Insights
Paul’s choice to use the word “offering” to describe the pathway to holiness isn’t accidental. Paul uses the language of the temple, worship, and surrender. We don’t drift into holiness; we offer ourselves to it.
Before Christ, we offered ourselves to sin—our bodies, our minds, and our desires. We gave our attention, activity, and energy to things that promised fulfillment but left us empty. But now, Paul says, offer those same faculties—our thoughts, our imaginations, and our will—to righteousness because righteousness leads to holiness and holiness leads to life, not just eternal life, but life to the fullest, right here, right now.
Holiness isn’t just a gift that God gives us; it’s something God forms in us as we walk in submission to the Spirit, offering ourselves to right living and being, day after day.
The beauty of offering ourselves as slaves to God is that, unlike our former master, sin, this new Master doesn’t drain us; he restores us. He doesn’t enslave us; he sanctifies us.
Today’s Prayer
Gracious God, help us to offer ourselves to you fully. Sanctify us by your Spirit as we offer all of ourselves—body, mind, and imagination—to your righteous activity in the world.
—Dale Schaeffer
