Ruling Like Christ

headship from the inside out

God made us to be rulers. But what exactly are we to rule over? We can rule in many ways. We can rule over a classroom of students. We can rule over our families. We can rule over a country, state, or city. We can rule over a business or plot of land or a menagerie of exotic animals.

However, ever since Adam and Eve broke off humanity’s relationship with their creator, we have been pathetically inept at ruling our hearts. Sin rules there instead. Sin has made us slaves to our passions, desires, wills, and thoughts, and because we are slaves, we don’t really rule in any of the other areas of our lives either.

We rule our children out of selfish and fearful hearts. We rule our earth with dominating and greedy thoughts. We rule our city-states with arrogant and proud passions. We rule our possessions with stubborn and jealous wills. While outwardly we may call ourselves rulers, inwardly we are slaves, like skeletons wearing crowns.

Then Christ came and made it possible for us to be free from this inner slavery. His death and resurrection played out the drama that is now possible in our hearts. Now our old insides may die and resurrect as well. When we surrender to God, Jesus gives us his spirit that jumpstarts our dead hearts. Now we have a new heart, one that can rule our passions, desires, wills, and thoughts.

Where before we were slaves and just acting like rulers, now we can actually rule. This does not always look like we might imagine it to look. It may look like submitting to those who are still ruling skeletons, and it might look like calling those ruling skeletons, a brood of vipers. It might look like sending spiritual devils back to the abyss or it might look like laying hands on a sick girl.

Where once we play-acted rulership, strutting across the stage wearing royal robes over our skeletal frames, now, with beating hearts, we are learning how to don the wardrobe that Christ wore. It may not be velvet cloaks and golden trinkets, but Christ’s clothes far outshine any costly decorations made by man.

Photo by Adam Gonzales on Unsplash