[Sidenote: Ver. 12.] =Therefore do not let sin reign[90] in your mortal body,= mortal, because not yet fully emancipated, though your Lord has "cancelled" for you its character as "the body of sin," the seat and vehicle of conquering temptation. Do not let sin reign there, =so that you should obey the lusts of it,[91]= of the body. Observe the implied instruction. The body, "_cancelled_" as "the body of sin," still has its "_lusts_," its desires; or rather desires are still occasioned by it to the man, desires which potentially, if not actually, are desires away from God. And the man, justified through the Lord's death and united to the Lord's life, is not therefore to mistake a _laissez-faire_ for faith. He is to _use_ his divine possessions, with a real energy of will. It is _for him_, in a sense most practical, to see that his wealth is put to use, that his wonderful freedom is realized in act and habit. "_Cancelled_" does not mean annihilated. The body exists, and sin exists, and "_desires_" exist. It is for you, O man in Christ, to say to the enemy, defeated yet present, "Thou shalt not reign; I veto thee in the name of my King." [Sidenote: Ver. 13.] =And do not present[92] your limbs,= your bodies in the detail of their faculties, =as implements (ὅπλα) of unrighteousness, to sin,= to sin regarded as the holder and employer of the implements. =But present[93] yourselves,= your whole being, centre and circle, =to God, as men living after death,= in His Son's risen life, =and your limbs,= hand, foot, and head, with all their faculties, =as implements of righteousness for God.= * * * * * "O blissful self-surrender!" The idea of it, sometimes cloudy, sometimes radiant, has floated before the human soul in every age of history. The spiritual fact that the creature, as such, can never find its true centre in itself, but only in the Creator, has expressed itself in many various forms of aspiration and endeavour, now nearly touching the glorious truth of the matter, now wandering into cravings after a blank loss of personality, or however an eternal _coma_ of absorption into an Infinite practically impersonal; or again, affecting a submission which terminates in itself, an _islam_, a self-surrender into whose void no blessing falls from the God who receives it. Far different is the "self-presentation" of the Gospel. It is done in the fulness of personal consciousness and choice. It is done with revealed reasons of infinite truth and beauty to warrant its rightness. And it is a placing of the surrendered self into Hands which will both foster its true development as only its Maker can, as He fills it with His presence, and will use it, in the bliss of an eternal serviceableness, for His beloved will. [84] Not that the imagery of the limb appears here, explicitly. But it does appear below, xii. 5, and in the contemporary passage 1 Cor. vi. 15; and more fully in the Epistles of the First Captivity.