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“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” That’s just what we need to hear right now. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” That’s just what we need to hear right now because more than ever it seems like sin is calling the shots, like sin is this tyrant who is taking over and destroying what’s good, like sin is this invading army that’s conquering and taking control.

We see the destructive power of sin everywhere we look right now. Pride, anger, violence, selfish ambition, hostility, and strife seem to be taking over.

It’s happening in layers. For one, there’s the civil unrest right now over race. Acts of unjust violence have been done against African Americans. And some people have responded with anger, and outrage, and violence, which in turn has been answered with further hate and discord. People are angry with each other, and this anger is starting to take on a life of its own. It’s a little frightening how consuming it’s becoming.

And then there’s the pandemic. We’ve been dealing with this in our country for four months now. At first, we mostly agreed on what needed to be done. We’re all in this together, was the motto. But now that we’ve been at this for a while and it hasn’t just gone away, there’s this growing divide over how to respond to the pandemic—w hether to maintain social distancing or whether to open up and go back to life as usual. And more and more lately, each side tends to see the other side as wrong-headed, misguided, and just plain dumb. More and more, we’re starting to think that the virus isn’t the problem as much as those people over there on the other side who think differently about it than I do.

And then there’s politics. It used to be that politics was important, but not everything. People could have their opinions about political candidates and policies, and you could still get along in the rest of life. You could at least see that the other side has a point, even if you don’t agree with it. But now politics is everything. And if you belong to one political party, you can’t help but see the other political party as, at best, dumb and, at worst, evil. I don’t know how this started, but you definitely see this at work in the government. Each side sees the other as less than human and isn’t even willing to work together on basic legislation. And that hostility and strife spills over into just about everything.

We see the destructive power of sin everywhere we look right now. Pride, anger, violence, selfish ambition, hostility, and strife seem to be taking over.

And here’s the thing: when we see all that’s wrong with the world right now, it’s really tempting to respond by giving in to our passions. When we see pride, anger, violence, selfish ambition, hostility, and strife everywhere we look, it’s easy to respond with pride, anger, violence, selfish ambition, hostility, and strife. It’s easy to stew over how dumb and ignorant those people are on the other side. It’s easy to lash out with angry comments or to let people have it. It’s easy to lose our patience with people we think are wrong-headed and bad.

Now when we give into our passions and respond with pride, anger, violence, selfish ambition, hostility and strife, it probably seems like we’re in charge, like we’re taking the bull by the horns, asserting ourselves, and taking some control of the situation. But nothing could be farther from the truth. In reality, it’s sin that taking control of us.

As Paul says, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions.” When you follow your sinful passions, you aren’t taking control of the situation. Sin is taking control of you, leading you around like an ox with a ring in your nose. When you follow your sinful passions, you are obeying sin. Sin says, “you should stew and rant and complain over how dumb that person is,” and you say, “Yes sir!” Or sin says, “You should lash out at that person and give them a piece of your mind,” and you say, “Right away, master!” Or sin says, “that person isn’t worth the time of day, why would you put up with them,” and you say, “I will do what you command, LORD.”

And what’s worse, when we give into our passions and respond with pride, anger, violence, selfish ambition, hostility and strife, we’re not taking control of the situation, we’re making it worse. Paul says, “Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness.” The Greek word Paul uses there for instruments is more like weaponry or armor. And the idea is this: when you give in to your sinful passions, you’re giving your body over to sin to use as a weapon in the battle. Not only has sin taken you over, but now sins uses you to spread it’s havoc and destruction and to increase its rule. Sin enlists you into its army so that now you’re fighting for the very side that you deplored in the first place. You become the very enemy you hated.

Now, of all people on earth, why would we do that? We don’t belong to sin. We belong to God!

You see, you already have a Lord, and it isn’t sin. Jesus suffered the consequences of your anger. He suffered the consequences of your pride. He bore all of your violence. Jesus suffered the consequences of your selfish ambition, your hostility, and your strife. He bore your sin in His body, not repaying evil for evil, but meeting the worst of your sin with the fullness of God’s love, and dying with a prayer on his lips. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Jesus took on our sin and the worst that it could do, so that we would know more than sin and death—so that we would belong to God’s love. As Paul says in Romans chapter 5, “For while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

Jesus suffered all that our sin could dish out so that we might belong to God and live in the light of his love. God has delivered us from our bondage to sin, by taking all our sin into himself and in exchange giving us his forgiveness. God has rescued us from sin by his steadfast and undeserved love.

So why would we give ourselves over to sin, to obey its passions and serve in its army? We have been set free from sin’s bondage, and we belong to another—the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who loves us even when we were unlovable. So as Paul says, “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 as instruments for righteousness.”

How do we do that exactly? How do we present our bodies to God as instruments for righteousness?

We repent. When we see all that’s wrong with the world right now, we’re going to have the passions of the flesh. We still live in this body of death. But the question is what to do with them. Sin wants to use those passions as an opportunity to advance its cause, and to get us to act on them. But we’ve been given another way. Repentance. It’s pretty easy in all of this to notice other people’s faults and point the accusing finger at them. But that only blinds us to our own faults and gives sin the advantage. Instead, the way to hand our members over to God as instruments for righteousness is to recognize that we are the ones who have sinned against God in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. To own up to the fact that we have not loved God with our whole heart, and we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. In all that is going on in the world and in our lives, the way to hand our members over to God as instruments for righteousness  is to not seek to be the people who are in the right and have it all figured out, but instead to be the people who live in the light of God’s love and who are forgiven for Jesus’s sake.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

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Today’s Reading…

Romans 6.12-23

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.

¹⁵ What then? Are we to sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! ¹⁶ 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? ¹⁷ But thanks be to God, that you who were once slaves of sin have become obedient from the heart to the standard of teaching to which you were committed, ¹⁸ and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. ¹⁹ I am speaking in human terms, because of your natural limitations. For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification.

²⁰ For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. ²¹ But what fruit were you getting at that time from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. ²² But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves of God, the fruit you get leads to sanctification and its end, eternal life. ²³ For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.