Today is the anniversary of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, which occurred in A.D. 79, where the plume went 21 miles high. It pulverized the pumice at a rate of 1.5 million tons per second, and ultimately released a hundred thousand times the thermal energy of Hiroshima. Pompeii, Herculaneum, Oplontis, and Stabae were covered in the roar of the mountain.
Historians believe that this powerful eruption was preceded by a powerful earthquake that hit the region 17 years prior to the eruption. They also indicate that there was a smaller eruption in A.D. 64, when the emperor Nero – who had Christians martyred (including the Apostles Paul and Peter), was performing for the first time in the public theater.
When Vesuvius blew its top and poured over this region, many stayed in shelters and because they didn’t leave ahead of time, they were molded in their death pose, covered in ash and preserved unto this day. We saw a traveling exhibit on the effects of Pompeii and you could see people in molded death with their arms around one another, mothers cradling their babies, the faces contorted in shrieks. They are preserved in death.
Likewise, Romans 6:12-14 tells us that we are dead. We are born dead – dead without Christ, because sin came down from Adam and only a second Adam could redeem or buy us back. That second Adam is Jesus Christ.
Like the 1968 cult film “Night of the Living Dead”, these bad actors with terrible makeup on, presented themselves as the dead walking the earth getting revenge. Romans tells us that without surrendering our members, bodies to Christ, we are the living dead – walking with no purpose, peace, or presence of God.
Verse 12 tells us not to “let sin reign in our members”. “Reign” is the Greek word “basileuo”, which means “to be king, rule, reign over”. It’s like the big Basilicas, where there is all image but no living presence. Do not let sin rule in your mortal bodies. “Mortal” is the Greek word “thnetus”, which means “subject to death, mortality, liable to die”. We are all mortal physically, which is why we need to be alive spiritually.
We are to not allow sin to rule in and over us because we should be “obeying” Christ, and that word “obey” is the Greek word “hupakouo”, meaning “listen, attend to”. It means to be under someone and hear what they are saying. The word “acoustics” comes from this Greek word and reminds us to hear what God says, instead of the world’s ideas bouncing off of everything, as acoustics tend to do.
Verse 13 tells us also “not to yield our members” to sing. “Members” is the Greek word “melos”, and means “the limb of the body – member belonging to the whole”. Our hands should be used for praising God and helping others; our eyes should be used for seeing others in need, etc. We are not to yield – to present ourselves to anyone or anything other than our Savior, for He’s the only one who presented Himself to us as the sacrifice for sin.
We are born dead, which is why we must be born again to new life (John Chapter 3).
I trust my pose in life reveals peace, hope, and true faith in the living Lord, Jesus himself.