Grace to YOU and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ... ·Being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, ·by whom: we both have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and boast about the hope of the glory of God. ·And not only so, but we also boast in the pressures, knowing that pressure produces patient-endurance; ·and patient-endurance produces tested-experience, and tested-experience produces hope. ·And hope is never put to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts—through the Holy Spirit being given to us. (Romans 1:7b; 5:1-5 PH)

Sin entered the world through one human being, and…Death spread to all humans, in that all have sinned. …·If with the stumbling of one, Death reigned through that one, how much more will those who receive the overflow of this grace, and of this gift of relational righteousness [Gr. dikaiosunee][i] reign in life through the One—Jesus Christ. …·Christ, being raised from the dead, can no longer die. Death is no longer his master [Gr. kurieuei]. ·…He died to Sin once and for all and…lives to God. ·In the same way YOU should also reckon yourselves truly dead to Sin and alive to God in Jesus Christ. …·By baptism we are buried together with him into death, so that even as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, in the same way we also should be walking in a new way of life. ·If we have come to be planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his resurrection ·assured of this: that our old humanity was crucified together with him, so that with the body linked to Sin being nullified, we of that (body) might no longer be slaves to Sin—·for the one who is dead is freed from Sin. (Rom.5:12,17; 6:9-11,4-7 PH)

Death reigned from Adam to Moses… ·Now the Law entered, so that the stumbling might be multiplied. But where the sin multiplied the grace multiplied much more, ·so that just as Sin leading to Death has reigned, even so the grace leading to Eternal Life might reign through relational righteousness—through Jesus Christ our Lord [Gr. kuriou]. …·Law[ii]…is master [Gr. kurieue] over a person only during the time he is alive… ·So YOU too, brothers and sisters, have become dead to the Law through the body of the Messiah, towards YOUR becoming (joined) to…the One raised from the dead—so that we might bear fruit to God. ·When we were ‘in the flesh’, the passions of sins, identified by the Law, were at work in our body parts, towards bearing fruit to Death. ·But now we are loosed from the Law in which we were held, so that...we should serve in the new way of the Spirit. (Rom.5:14,20-21; 7:1b,4-6 PH)

Therefore, do not let Sin reign in YOUR mortal body such that YOU obey it in its desires, ·nor… position YOUR body parts as ready instruments of unrighteousness to Sin. But present yourselves as those who are to God alive from the dead—and YOUR body parts as ready instruments of relational righteousness towards God —·and sin will not be YOUR master [Gr. kurieuse]; for YOU are not under the Law but under grace. ...·If the Spirit of him who raised up Jesus from the dead resides in YOU, he…will also give life to YOUR mortal bodies—through his residing Spirit in YOU. ·…If through the Spirit YOU put to death these practices of the body, YOU will live. ·For all those led by the Spirit of God…·…received the Spirit of placement as sons, in whom we cry, ‘Abba, Father’. ·That same Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are the sons and daughters of God. (Rom.6:12-14; 8:11-16 PH)

When the Father raised Jesus from the dead, it was an expression of his glory. A modern word for ‘glory’ might be: ‘Awesome!’ But, according to the same verse, the Father also intended to express his ‘awesomeness’ in us—as a consequence of Jesus' resurrection. So after we are first ‘planted together in the likeness of the death’ of Jesus, through faith and baptism, we then enter ‘a new way of life’ by the Spirit—in an intimate relationship with our ‘Papa’ [Heb. Abba] as his adult sons and daughters (Med.#5). Both events involve something only God could do and has done for us. Yet they also involve some things we must do in response to him—with our bodies.

What God has done for us, according to Paul, involves a cosmic regime change. The ‘reign’ of Death and the ‘reign’ of Sin have both been successfully challenged. Through Jesus' sinless life in a human body, and through his sacrificial death and resurrection, Death is no longer our ‘master’ [Gr. kurieuei]. Jesus is now Lord [Gr. kuriou]! Through him, we have received from our Father: the ‘gift of relational righteousness relationship’ towards our Father and an ‘overflow of grace’. So Sin no longer needs to be our ‘master’ [Gr. kurieuse]—either in our relationship with our Father or in our relationships with other people. And we participate in this cosmic regime change bodily—through submitting to baptism.

Jesus has defeated Sin and Death! But like schoolyard bullies, both are still hanging around and trying to intimidate us. So there is another more local regime change needed if we are going to walk in the new way of life that Jesus has won for us. By dying with Jesus we have also died to the different forms of ‘law’[i] that were once our master [Gr. kurieue]. So we must not let Sin misuse any traditional rules to put us down. This applies also to the Mosaic Law. For though it is still ‘holy’, ‘good’ and ‘spiritual’, it was only given as a ‘childhood tutor’ (Med.#4) to help people recognize what is sin (Rom.7:12-14,7). But since we share in the ‘awesomeness’ of the Father's resurrection power, grace now ‘reigns’ in place of Sin, Death and the Law. But grace only ‘reigns’ in our lives—as part of a relationship with our Father through the Spirit—if we keep on receiving it from him (1:7). For along with the grace that he gives us, we also need to take our responsibility to ‘reign’ (5:17).

To do this, we first must choose to ‘stand' in our Father's grace, against all Sin's attempts to take over again in our lives. And this battle takes place in our ‘mortal bodies’. It is quite ironic that if we are going to stand up effectively to Sin and serve our Father ‘in the new way of the Spirit’, then we need to take our bodies seriously. Our wills are the problem, not our bodies! So standing in grace begins with expressing both faith in our Father and hope that our bodies will one day be gloriously transformed like Jesus body was at his resurrection (Med.#94).

Secondly, we express our faith and hope by ‘boasting’—by worshipping our Father: both for the bodily resurrection glory that Jesus has attained for us (Med.#45), and for the ‘pressures’ our weak bodies currently experience. For these produce in us: ‘patient endurance, tested experience (or ‘character’, Rom.5:4 NIV) and unashamed hope’. It may seem more humanly logical to become anxious, fearful and disheartened because of our sufferings and temptations. But when we know who we are and who our Dad is, our worship at such times is a powerful symbol of Christ's authority in our lives over the powers of Sin, Death and Evil. Think of a pilot who suddenly finds his airplane plummeting to earth in a deathly tailspin. His feelings tell him he has to pull the stick back to get the plane to go up again. But in a tailspin, this has no effect. He must first make the ‘illogical’ move of pushing the stick forward to put the nose of the plane into a steeper dive. Only then can he regain control, straighten the plane out and pull the nose up again.

I have also learned to use my body more in my worship. In my evangelical protestant tradition, we tend to do everything in our minds, only using our voices. So from my Charismatic friends I have learned to raise my hands and to dance; and from my Muslim friends I have learned to bow with my face to the ground—like the ‘elders’ in John's heavenly vision (Rev.4 & 5). And in the Anglican Church I used to attend, we partook of the bread and the wine more often—so connecting ourselves bodily to Christ's body, and his blood shed for us.

Finally, Paul admonishes us to ‘position’ all parts of our bodies to be ‘ready instruments’ that express a ‘relational righteousness towards’ our Father, rather than an ‘unrighteous’ subservience to Sin's ‘desires’. So I now try to anticipate ways that I can avoid placing my body or ‘body parts’ (eyes, tongue, ears, hands, etc.) in positions that make it easier for Sin to manipulate my natural ‘human passions’—like hunger, frustration, fear, anger, sexuality, desire for belonging or significance, etc. As a young evangelist, Billy Graham heeded this wise advice: "Set up an organization to pay your salary (so you won't help yourself from the collection money), and never be alone behind a closed door with any woman other than your wife". What ways can you position your body and ‘body parts’, so they are ready to serve in ‘relational righteousness’[i] towards your Father and towards others, in the way of the Spirit?

In place of a Prayer from the Word, I want to share a biblically inspired hymn from my evangelical tradition. I've changed the pronouns of this testimony song about the Father's grace so it can be sung or prayed (out loud!): as worship to him. I've also modernized a few other words.

[i] Greek dikaio-sunee = ‘righteous-with’ or ‘relational righteousness’ with God, or with people, or with both (see note #2, Med.#11).

[ii] In this verse Paul speaks of ‘law’ in general (like marriage law: 7:2-3), but then connects it to the Law that ‘held us’ Jews (7:6).

[iii] Here is a link to the melody, sung with the original words to the first two verses and the chorus.