Roommates Part 2: A Lesson in Greek

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.

Romans 6:13

I had every intention of diving right into this verse today. But with help from Biblehub.com, I realized there are some things that need to be understood first.

The word offer is a transitive verb. Since most of us have been out of school for a while, that simply means it's an action verb that requires some type of direct object. In this case, what would be offered is ourself. However, what is translated as offer in the NIV, is the transliterated (how 'we' would spell and say it) Greek word paristemi which means yield. We are not to yield ourself to sin but instead to righteousness.

Sin is the transliterated Greek word hamartia and means missing the mark. However, we need to accept that this brand of sin emphasizes its self-originated nature. Let that sink in for a minute.

The word instrument is the transliterated Greek word hoplon which means weapon to wage war. It also needs to be noted that God gives us all the resources we need to to prevail in every form of spiritual warfare. Keep track. This is fast becoming a difficult verse to accept about what we do.

Wickedness is the transliterated Greek word adikia which means a violation of God's standard while righteousness in the transliterated Greek word dikaiosune and means what God approves.

Finally, the word part is the transliterated Greek word melos which means a member belonging to the whole and, figuratively, any function of human personality.

In essence, according the JIV, this verse means:

Do not yield your heart, mind, mouth, hands and feet, soul, or anything about your characteristics (humorous nature, quick witt, intelligence, etc) to anything that causes strife, disunity, or friction that is coming from you because of your own evil intentions not anything that anyone else has done and you are doing in response; instead, yield all of those things to God as if you were made a new person because of the blood of Christ that has given you a new life in him, and use each and every aspect of your body and who you are to do what God approves of.

We need to get this before we take the 'body parts' into consideration and who our unwelcomed roommmates are, because unless we can wrap our minds around the fact that more often than we should, we are choosing to do things (self-originated sin), we will have a greater difficulty submitting ourselves to using things the way God wants us to use them.