Latest / The Daily Word / May 24 – Reigning In Life
Transcript
- Cory Barnes: Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good wee hours of the night. Whatever time you are joining us, welcome to the daily word podcast from Lake shore Christian fellowship. My name is Corey Barnes. It is my privilege to pastor our Katapa campus and I am excited to be sitting down with you two days in a row on the daily word Today going be doing a devotion out of Romans chapter 5, so let's jump right on into it. Paul is continuing in this chapter to unpack the theme of righteousness in this letter to the Romans. Just yesterday we talked about the fact that Paul was pointing to righteousness coming by faith in the finished work of Jesus. Remember Abraham believed and it was accounted to him as righteousness and that it works the same way in our lives today. And now when Romans chapter five, ⁓ Paul begins showing us this ⁓ righteousness is actually a to us. ⁓ And beginning down in 12, he starts unpacking some of the effects ⁓ of that gift of Now, just so we're on the same page, let's hit our definition of righteousness again. ⁓ Righteousness in the book Romans and in the new Testament in general. is God's gift of restoring people into a right relationship with himself through faith in Jesus Christ, resulting both in our being declared to be in right standing before God and giving us a new transformed way of living our lives by the Spirit. Righteousness is both right standing with God through Jesus and right living by the power of the Holy Spirit. So beginning around Romans 5 12, Paul starts comparing Adam to Jesus. Now through Adam's sin, death entered humanity and began reigning over mankind and death became the ruling power because of sin. humanity became subject to death. And one of the effects, of the gift of righteousness, we see in verse 17 reading the King James, Paul is continuing in his comparison of Jesus to Adam here ⁓ for if by the one man's offense, ⁓ Adam, Adam's offense, death reigned through the one much more. Those who received abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Christ Jesus. what Paul's saying here that just like death came to rain humanity through ⁓ the sin of Adam, ⁓ It's through the sacrifice of Jesus that now instead of death reigning over us, we actually now rain in life through Jesus. Now Paul uses the word rain here and in the Greek that word means to reign, be king, to rule. It refers to the activity of one exercising dominion over an individual or people. So here, what we are seeing is that it's like a king exercising his authority over things. Paul's point is that through Jesus, the believer is no longer under the rule and dominion of death through the finished work. the power of death has been broken over us and instead of death reigning over us we actually reign over death now it doesn't mean that we have to pretend that that we don't face hardship and we never butt up against opposition but what it does mean is that death and the enemy are no longer our masters we're no longer supposed to live under the rule of death and all that it brings it's fear and hopelessness defeat. The enemy is no longer the final authority over our lives. Instead, through Jesus, we have been given authority. Jesus reflects on this and Luke chapter 10 verse 19, when he says, behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy and nothing shall by any means hurt. you. So when we begin seeing the effects of death in our life, we have to make sure that we're not simply surrendering to those things like they have the final say. We have to remember that Jesus accomplished through his death, through his burial, through his resurrection, he accomplished the defeat of death and we began ruling and reigning alongside him. to make sure that we come into agreement with what Jesus wants and not what death is trying to produce. Now, how do we do this? How do we begin partnering with God and ruling and reigning with him? Well, kings rule through their words. The king's word is law. ⁓ So when we begin ruling and reigning, we it. The same thing we exercise our authority, our reign through our words. So when we began to encounter things in our lives or things in the lives of friends, family members, loved ones that stand in opposition to what Jesus paid for, we began declaring what Christ has accomplished over that thing instead of just accepting defeat. So let's talk about application and what that looks like in our lives. Let's say that we start to notice that there's some sickness, some symptoms are coming in to our lives. See what, what death wants to happen is for us to just bow down. Death wants us to get in fear of, the sickness and what it's going to wreak havoc in our lives and all it's trying to do. It tries to bring in hopelessness and it tries to drain us. What we have to do is when we recognize that sickness, instead of giving in to what death wants to happen, what the enemy wants to happen in our lives through that sickness, we have to recognize that all of those things are actually in opposition to what Jesus did for us. And we have to take up our place of authority and we have to reign in our life through what Jesus did for us. So we begin declaring over that sickness that Jesus has already won. You are defeated by the finished work of Jesus. You have no authority here. You do not have the final word in this thing. The life of Jesus, the healing of Jesus, the victory of Jesus, that is what has authority. in my life in this situation with these symptoms that I'm fighting. So Paul's point in Romans 5 17 is that through Jesus, believers are no longer passive victims, but instead we rule and we reign through life. So are there any areas in your life where you see the effects of death operating? You see sickness in your life or the people you love. And when you can recognize some of those things, because they're happening in all of our lives, death never stops trying to knock on our door. The enemy never stops attacking. But when you start recognizing those things, have you taken the time to make sure that instead of operating out of fear, you're operating out of faith and you're declaring the finished work of Jesus over those things. And if you've done that before, are you continuing to do that until you see those things come to pass? us. Because even when we don't see immediate breakthrough, we continue standing in faith and remembering that Jesus has settled this through his finished work. We continue to declare victory. And we remember we're not fighting for victory. We're fighting from victory in every area of life. Let's pray. Father God, just thank you for who you are. I thank you for your hand being upon us, for strengthening us, for loving us. I thank you that every time we come to your word, you have things that you want to tell us. You have things you want to show us. We thank you for the victory that you purchased through the finished work of Christ on the cross. And we thank you that we get to rule and reign in life through what Jesus did. And we do not have to bow down to the power of the enemy. where the power of death operating in our lives. We thank you Jesus for strengthening us and powering us through the Holy Spirit to live life righteously according to your precepts. We praise you and we thank you. Amen.