“Make Your Body An Instrument Of Righteousness!”

“Make Your Body An Instrument Of Righteousness!”(Rom.12:12-14).
Back in the days, I remember when I came back from a burial, and my late mother insisted that I should take a bath before eating. She told me it was important to do a ritual cleansing after being close to a corpse.
My mother was introducing me to an important aspect of religion: ceremonial spiritual cleansing.
Ceremonial ritual purification was an important aspect of Jewish religion. This practice has been abandoned by Christians but embraced by Muslims. Christ cleansed us once, and for all. We do not need any ceremonial cleansing. At the wedding feast in Cana, Christ’s first miracle was to transform the containers that held ceremonial cleansing water into containers to contain good wine for the wedding guests.
Ceremonial cleansing includes washing your eyes, ears, feet, hands, and rinse your mouth. You wash your eyes because they may have seen things that lead to sin. Your ears may have heard evil things, your feet may have led you to do evil, and your hands may have done something bad. You rinse your mouth because you may have spoken evil words, etc.
This kind of ceremonial cleansing does not cleanse the place where evil emanates; the heart. The Lord Jesus Christ said it is not what goes into a person that makes the person unclean. It is what cones out of the person because out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. “Ceremonial cleansing does not purify the heart!
Today Paul is reminding us that we do not need any ablution. He writes: “Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master because you are not under the law, but under grace.”
The death of Christ is our ablution. By his death, we were cleansed once and for all.
Let us now offer every part of our bodies to God “as an instrument of righteousness.” We ought to be new creations now that we are in Christ. We can be what God wants us to be!
Prayer: Holy Spirit, abide with us so that we can offer ourselves to God as instruments of righteousness. Amen!
Have a blessed day! Peace be with you!
Rev. Babila Fochang.
05/08/2025.