Mouths And Fingers

Brothers and sisters: Sin must not reign over your mortal bodies so that you obey their desires. And do not present the parts of your bodies to sin as weapons for wickedness, but present yourselves to God as raised from the dead to life and the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness. For sin is not to have any power over you, since you are not under the law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?  Of course not!

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? But thanks be to God that, although you were once slaves of sin, you have become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted. Freed from sin, you have become slaves of righteousness. (Romans 6:12-18)

“Present the parts of your bodies to God as weapons for righteousness,” is a point made by Paul in his letter to the Romans.  I suggest that weapon should be our mouth, and we should use it to “become obedient from the heart to the pattern of teaching to which you were entrusted.”  In other words, we are to speak the Word of God, and then have it rule our lives. 

Our mouths – the words we speak – can injure and even kill the spirit.  Moreover, our fingers hitting the keys on our phones or computers convey words that can cause our targets great pain.  These targets are the subjects of our gossip or mean-spiritedness.  

On the other hand, our mouths and fingers can spread joy and love. We must not let sin reign over our mortal bodies so that we obey our bodies’ desires.  We have been given the grace of God for which we must give thanks.  It has freed us from sin, if we let God’s grace rule our behavior and control our mouths and fingers.

Deacon David Pierce