Over and over, God comes alongside us in moments of temptation and invites us to imagine what we are really facing. What is really happening when you walk past a woman and are tempted to look back? Or when you stand in front of a mirror and feel insecurity rising? Or when fantasies of a better life begin to fill your mind?

Many of us fail to overcome temptation because we refuse to use our imagination. The dragon of deceitful desires creeps in to kill, and we lay down our sword.

Over and over, God comes alongside us in moments of temptation and invites us to imagine what we are really facing. What is really happening when you walk past a woman and are tempted to look back? Or when you stand in front of a mirror and feel insecurity rising? Or when fantasies of a better life begin to fill your mind?

We are not merely “being tempted” in these moments. Wild beasts are attacking (Genesis 4:7). Idols are bidding us to bow down (Ezekiel 14:3). An adulteress is waving us into her door (Proverbs 9:13–18). A gangrenous disease is threatening to spread (2 Timothy 2:16–17). Why does God soak our imagination with those awful images? Because we react differently to the vague idea of “temptation” than we do to a wolf at our door. The one can be entertained, even coddled; the other needs to die.

In Romans 6:15–23, Paul calls us to look behind today’s temptations and imagine spiritual reality. Behind every temptation is a master, merciless and cruel. He holds out life, honor, and happiness with one hand, and hides death and hell behind his back. Whenever we disobey God, we place ourselves in the service of this master.

Two Masters

Do you not know that if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6:16)

To be human is to be a servant — if not to the true God, then to something else. Here, Paul places every alternative under a single banner: sin. Either we swear allegiance to God, our Creator and Redeemer, or to sin, the master of Satan’s miserable army.

On our own, we are prone to see our options differently. We might, like Adam and Eve, think that the alternative to serving God is becoming our own god (Genesis 3:4–5). We reach for the fruit of forbidden desire and imagine we are exercising our freedom. But if spiritual reality were to become visible, we would see ourselves in chains, bound and led at every step.

Though God’s people have been decisively freed from slavery to sin (Romans 6:17), Paul assumes that Christians must continue to answer the question “Whom will you serve?” every day (Romans 6:19). With every rise of sinful desire, we have a choice: either follow Jesus into newness of life, or revert to our old slave master. One of them commands us to take up our cross now, only to raise us from the dead; the other promises an easy life now, only to kill us in the end.

Read More