Active righteousness

If God forgives us every sin, why not carry on sinning? After all, the more I sin, the more it highlights God's kindness and the more he is glorified! That's the question at the beginning of Romans 6.
We, of course, would never dream of deliberately sinning so that God's grace would be magnified! Rather, we'd agree with what Paul says in Romans 6:11-13(a):

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 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,

We don't want sin to reign in us, we try to avoid sin. But I wonder if we conveniently forget the second half of Romans 6:13,

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.

Paul says that we all have two possibilities in the way we live our lives. We can either use our lives as 'instruments of wickedness' or as 'instruments of righteousness'.
Mankind has invented some amazing things, which can either be used for evil or for good. The same instruments which can be used to save lives in the hospital theatre or give shelter by building houses or haul life-giving water from a well, can also be used to maim and kill in the torture chamber.
So it is with our lives. We either put them to serving wickedness or to serving righteousness. And yet, all too often, we think that not doing evil is the same as doing righteousness. It's not. It's no use if a surgeon leaves his instruments in a drawer. They must be used to treat and to heal. It's no use a builder leaving his tools in the van. He must use them to repair and to build. It's no use leaving a bucket, rope and pulleys in a heap on the floor, they must be used to pull water from the ground.
So with our lives. Too often we leave our lives in the drawer, in the van, in a heap on the floor, avoiding evil, perhaps, but certainly not actively doing good. We're ready to count ourselves 'dead to sin' but not to be 'alive to God in Christ Jesus'.


(Elsewhere in the NT, this word for 'instruments' is translated 'weapons', and perhaps this more vividly creates the image of activity. So we could say that we can either use our lives as weapons for wickedness or weapons for righteousness).