Like light and darkness, death and life are contrary to each other, and cannot coexist. Where death reigns, life is not there. But if we reign in life, death cannot bother us any more.

For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ (Rom 5:17).

In order to understand this truth, we need to realize, first, that all the struggles we are going through in our life are struggles against death. “Death” in the above scripture doses not merely mean physical death—cessation of our life on earth. No, “death” in the Bible is spiritual, and it includes all kinds of other effects, both mental and physical, that this death brings. Sin is one type of such effects, and sickness is another. The above scripture says, “death reigned through that one man.” If so, how did it reign?

The story of Cain and Abel in Gen 4 is a good one to learn how death began to reign over humanity. Keep in mind that this took place after the fall of man in chapter 3. Cain came to have jealousy toward his brother Abel because his offering was not accepted by God while his brother’s offering was. So, God said to him:

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it (Gen 4:7).

Meditate upon these words, and try to understand what the Bible means by “sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you.” When we think of “reigning,” we normally picture someone like a king who reigns or rules over his kingdom. Yes, it is correct and it means so in the Bible. But when death reigns, it does so in a very sneaky way. Death is not a king, nor is sin. It reigned over Cain by desiring to have him. And he could not resist that, which indicates that he lost that resistance power against Satan. Note that God still said to Cain, “you must master it.” That means God still expected him to master it like a king.

Now, let us compare this with reigning in life. First of all, we need to realize that life in the Bible does not merely mean physical life—life we have on earth. It neither means life we live with various activities we do on earth as used in the English expression “our daily life.” Life in the Bible is special life that comes only from God, which is expressed as “eternal life.” Since God is love, there is always a strong connection between love and life. Where there is God’s love, there is life of God. Look at the following scriptures, for instance:

Give me life according to your love, so that I keep the testimony (laws) of your mouth (Ps 119:88, translation mine).

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life (John 3:16).