It’s Not How You Present Yourself, but To What You Present Yourself That Matters
10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.
It’s a great scene when Megamind explains the difference between a villain and a supervillain: PRESENTATION!
We are not what we present ourselves to be, but we do tend to become like the thing to which we present ourselves. It doesn’t take long, when you’re at a high school football game, to figure out the latest shoe, shirt, or pants style. As everyone presents themselves to one another, they all tend to look reasonably the same.
Or like the hipster guy that didn’t like his picture in an article saying that all hipsters looked the same. But it wasn’t his picture. It was another hipster. Because they all look the same.*
When we didn’t know any better and lived in rebellion, we presented ourselves to sin. We gave in to sin and temptation. What did we give? Our selves
Now, we know better. We know that Jesus Christ has died on the cross for all of our sins and risen from the dead. If we are in Him, then we too died and live a new life toward God. We no longer present ourselves to sin. Instead, we offer, or present, ourselves to God.
We actually take the shape and form of the thing we present ourselves to. He continues to shape and mold us, our moods, our habits, our reactions — into His very own shape. It is continuous while we live out our lives in flesh and blood. We live and present ourselves to God and He shows off His grace in us.
So do not present yourself to sin. Present yourself to God like one brought back from the dead — because that is what you are!
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* Please laugh with me at this. I know everyone is different in their own different ways. I used to wear Doc Marten boots so I’d be different. All of my friends did. When we took off our shoes at a roller skating rink, we had a terrible time figuring out whose shoes were whose, because we all had the same kinds of shoes…to be different than other people 😀