Epistle 0702 Reflection

The Epistle

Romans 6:12-23

Do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, 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.What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means! 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? But thanks be to God that you, having once been slaves of sin, have become obedient from the heart to the form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and that you, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness. 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 greater and greater iniquity, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification. When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. So what advantage did you then get from the things of which you now are ashamed? The end of those things is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and enslaved to God, the advantage you get is sanctification. The end is eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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This Epistle reading brings to mind for me a passage near the end of Joshua.  The successor to Moses who brought Israel to their promised land, the inheritance foretold of God by Moses, poses a selection before the people as he prepares to die.  He asks them whom they shall serve.  And in asking the question, he proclaims that he and his house will serve the Lord, the God who has fulfilled the promises made through Moses, the great prophet.

Today, as we hear this, we would do well to remember, as Paul says elsewhere, that we all have a master whom we serve.  Daily we confirm our selection of who shall be our master.  Shall we walk in righteousness, or shall we walk in unfaithfulness and sin?  Shall we serve God, or reject God and go our own way?  We make that choice daily, even multiple times in a day.  To assist us in that choice, Paul speaks of righteousness as the way of life that leads to eternal life.  He speaks of the intervention in our lives that has been made by God who desires us and wishes for us to be in relationship with our God all our days, both in this life, and in the life of the world to come.  When we choose life, we do so with a spirit of thanksgiving for what God has done in us to transform us and set us on the path of righteousness, a path that we could not find ourselves, and on which we cannot continue without the help of God.  Thankfully he have that help, for God is always faithful, even when we are not.

Father Tim+