"Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies, so that you obey their desires. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace." (Romans 6:12-14)
There's a reason that I don't typically pay attention to legal changes in Poland, or Uzbekistan, or Papua New Guinea: simply put, I do not live under their jurisdiction. I don't keep track of who has been elected to Parliament in the UK most of the time, and I don't really have a finger on the pulse of who is next in line of succession for the throne of Monaco--again, because I do not live under their reign.
I do, however, care about whose jurisdiction I am under, and to whose dominion I belong. So, if I am going to be an informed good citizen about the place I live, I would do well to pay attention to what is, or is not, the law, and I would even rightly voice my input and opinions on what the law should be. That seems pretty straightforward, I hope.
So it makes sense then that the apostle Paul uses a similar train of thought to speak to the Christian community in Rome, as many of us heard in this passage this past Sunday. Notice how many times he speaks in the language of who or what has rightful authority over us: "Do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies..." "Sin will have no dominion over you..." "You are not under law but under grace." These are questions of jurisdiction. It's a question of whose "reign" we live within--whose kingdom we belong to, so to speak. And Paul's point here is to say, "If you know that you don't have to obey the decrees of the Supreme Leader of North Korea because you are not under his jurisdiction, then you also should know that you don't have to obey the impulses of sin in your life, either, because you do not have to live under sin's authority any longer." And with that, Paul offers stunning clarity to how we live our lives: we are freed from having to comply with every sinful whim, every crooked notion, and every rotten impulse in our lives, because we do not have to let ourselves be ruled by sin any longer. We belong to God's Reign, and we are shaped by God's design for our lives rather than in the mold of greed, apathy, bigotry, spite, and violence. In other words, more and more we will find ourselves being formed in the likeness of Christ, and less and less in the pattern of sin's distortions.
So often, we don't even realize we have the capacity to say "no" to the pull of sin in our lives. We so easily just give in to every impulse, every mean thought, every self-centered action that we don't stop to think, "Wait a minute--this is not the kingdom I belong to! I don't have to go along with this! I don't have to comply with the dictates of sin! I am free from living under its authority!" That doesn't mean we'll always get it right, or that we'll always be able to properly rebel against the tyranny of sin's decrees. But when we stop and ask these questions, at least we will hopefully remember whose reign we really belong to... and that can free us to make different choices.
It's also interesting here that Paul says sin no longer has dominion over us because "you are not under law but under grace." That is to say, living under God's Reign also means that we live under the jurisdiction of grace, rather than fearfully worrying all the time whether we measure up to the law's demands. That's important, because Paul wants us to understand that living within God's Reign isn't like suffering under a dictatorship, but a life that is beautifully free and good. God's way of ruling isn't like the decrees of Caesar or the hegemony of an empire. God doesn't resort to governmental fiat or coercive threats, like nation-states and monarchs do, either. God's Reign doesn't demand that all citizens of a country must pray so many times a day or require mandatory Bible reading as signs of compliance. That's not how God operates, Paul says. Rather, by grace God invites--but does not coerce. It is a different kind of kingdom, because we have a different kind of ruler.
All of this is good news for us: because we do not live under sin's dominion, we don't have to succumb to its impulses in our lives. And because we do not live under the intimidating threat of "law" but rather under the dominion of grace, we don't have to resort to the empire's tactics to enforce Christianity on anybody, either. We live under the Reign of God as we have met this God in Christ, and Christ has freed us both from the old order of the Empire and the ancient tyranny of sin. All of this is what it means to belong to the Reign of God. We are free, precisely because we are "under" the lordship of Jesus. We are liberated, exactly because we have been dedicated to the way of Christ.
In those times when we struggle to know what to do or whose demands to obey, it's worth remembering this question: whose jurisdiction do I live under? And whose kingdom do I belong to?
Lord Jesus, enable us to live in your way and in your reign, free from the demands of other empires and the impulses of sin.
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