Yielded to God

Paul said:

“Do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting your members 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 6:12–13, NASB)

We have been set free. Sin must not control our hands, our feet, or our tongues. On the contrary, Paul said, we should yield ourselves to God and our members as instruments of righteousness to God. There’s a double yielding.

First, we yield our wills to God by saying, “Not my will, but Yours, be done.” In the Lord’s Prayer, the second petition is, “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). When we pray “Your will be done,” it begins with the will of the one who is praying—one who wills for God’s will to be done.

Once we have yielded our wills, we then yield our physical members to God as instruments of righteousness. In Greek, the word “instruments” literally means “weapons,” implying spiritual conflict. These are not just any instruments, like a hoe or plow—they are fighting instruments, like a sword.

The baptism in the Holy Spirit is key because in that experience we first yield our wills to God; we then yield the one unruly member that we are powerless to control: the tongue. When we are baptized in the Holy Spirit, we actually fulfill the instruction to yield our members to God as instruments (weapons) of righteousness. Certainly, when the tongue has been yielded to God and taken over by the Holy Spirit, it becomes a weapon: in prayer, in testimony, and in preaching.