ROMANS 6:4
We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.
TO PONDER
What do we understand by baptism in the Christian Church? For some it is an initiation ceremony for becoming a member of the Christian Church – a public ceremony where people sort of sign up (mostly verbally) to the articles of the Christian faith, usually expressed through the Apostles creed. They also usually reject any previous allegiance to the Devil that they might have had, either consciously or unconsciously. By the way, when we commit ourselves to act in a way that is in contravention with Jesus’s commandment to love others as he has loved us, we are in a way acting in a way that the Devil wants us to act. So, when we renounce allegiance to the Devil and his ways, we are also renouncing our commitment to live in selfish, self‑centred ways.
But there is a much deeper meaning, and that is dying, sharing with Jesus in His death on the cross. We understand that Jesus died for every single person on this earth who has ever lived or will ever live. Since Jesus lived a perfect relationship with His Heavenly Father while here on earth and then took on Himself all the consequences of each of us not getting anywhere near living that same perfect relationship, Jesus has attributed to each of us all that He achieved on our behalf. His death on the cross then becomes our death. This is symbolised by our “drowning” when immersed in the waters of baptism. Our old selfish, self‑centred selves and ways of life die in the waters of baptism.
But Jesus didn’t stay dead. He came back to life, and this new life is also given to us as a gift. We are reborn as children of the Heavenly Family. This is symbolised in us coming up out of the waters of baptism. Now I know that most of us were not baptised by full immersion and also many of us were baptised as children. So, we may not have had have the experience of (and/or don’t remember) this act of new birth granted to us in our baptism. But that doesn’t make it invalid, for baptism is an act of God in His love for us, not something we do to gain God’s acceptance.
So, we now live in this sort of dual existence, one part of us the perfect sinless children of the Heavenly Family, living out the commandment to love others in the same way God loves us, and the other part where we still inhabit our sin‑infected bodies with our selfish and self‑centred desires.
Our baptism is not the magic once‑off act that changes us from our old selfish and self‑centred selves into a Christian saint, but the beginning of a new life where we daily surrender all we are and have into God’s plans and purposes for us and let Him make our baptismal death of our old selves more real, and teach us how to live our new lives with Him.
Sometimes we become discouraged when our old self keeps raising its head and we find ourselves saying and doing things we know are not reflections of God’s love. It is not a matter of trying harder to live God’s purposes for us, but spending time with our Heavenly Family so that the characteristics of the Heavenly Family rub off on us and we gain insights from Holy Spirit in living our new life. In a sense, as we spend more time with the Heavenly Family, we starve the old self of attention, causing it to wither and die.
By the way, the reason we are baptised into the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit is because we become children of our Heavenly Father, through what His Son as achieved for us and we are given Holy Spirit to live in us to teach us how to live our new resurrected life.
Prayer: Heavenly Family, thank You to You all for all you are daily doing in my life to grow me in living this new resurrected life, graciously given to me as a gift. I surrender to You all that I am and have for You to feed and nourish my new resurrected self so that it grows and keeps me so focused on You that my old selfish, self‑centred self gets starved of its influence on me. Amen
Today's devotion written by Charles Bertelsmeier, LifeWay Epping