Chapters 6 and 7 in Romans spell out a good deal about our mortal condition. To fully understand this odd place it is useful to look forward to a chapter we will not reach for some time: 2 Nephi 2. There we are told how the Lord carefully balanced the forces of opposition - grace and sin, the atonement and the fall, the law and temptation - to give us freedom. Within that context, Paul tells us how that drama of agency plays out.
First of all, it is not simply a situation of being enabled to make a straightforward choice between good and evil. Our fallen natures complicate that choice immensely - "the good that I would I do not: but the evil that I would not, that I do" (7:14-24). The choice isn't so much between good and evil as it is between sin and grace. Our way out isn't so much to try to strengthen by our own exertions the good side of our warring nature, but to accept the atonement "through Jesus Christ our Lord" who can "deliver me from the body of this death" which I, strive though I might, cannot do.
Within THAT context, we have an ongoing daily choice between Grace and Sin (Chapter 6).
On the one hand we can
"continue in sin" (v. 1)
"live therein" (v. 2)
"serve sin" (v. 6)
"let sin reign in our mortal body" (v. 12)
"obey it in the lusts thereof" (v. 12)
"yield our members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin" (v. 13)
"yield our members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity" (v. 19)
On the other hand we can
be "dead to sin" (v. 2)
"walk in newness of life" (v. 4)
"reckon ourselves to be dead unto sin but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord" (v. 11)
(this one is done by dwelling on the significance of the symbol of the ordinance of baptism)
"yield ourselves unto God and our members as instruments of righteousness unto God" (v. 13)
"obey doctrine from the heart" (v. 17)
"be made free from sin" (v. 18)
" become a servant of righteousness" (v. 18)
"yield our members servants to righteousness unto holiness" (v. 19)
In both cases it is a matter of surrender. As Bob Dylan once sang, "everybody's gotta serve someone." We yield our body to be used by God or to be used by sin. One or the other will have Dominion over us (v. 14). "Know ye not that to who ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness" (v. 16).
No matter what some of our Protestant brethren say, you can't come to know Christ once, and then be automatically delivered for eternity from sin. Coming unto Christ opens a door through which daily grace can enable us to choose to yield ourselves to God and become obedient through the power of the atonement. After that door is opened we can still (Paul warns us) choose in our daily walk to yield ourselves to sin and be not deceived, if we continue on that road (he warns) , the wages of sin ARE death (v. 16, 23).
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