Romans 6:3,4 ESV
Last time, we looked at the beginning of verse 3 and what it means to be baptized into Jesus Christ - which is to enter into a union with Christ that produces a change in us. Every believer experiences this spiritual baptism, it is what makes us God's children...it is the adoption process!
At the end of verse three and into the following verses, Paul will go into greater detail, explaining the different facets of this spiritual baptism and how God has revealed both Himself and His promises through this baptism, this union that has taken place between us and Christ.
...were baptized into His death? We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death
As believers baptized into Jesus Christ, Paul tells us we were also baptized into his death. This is what we looked at in the last post concerning baptism:
'When Greek writers used the word baptizo, they meant that the object would be completely overcome by the substance it was being baptized into, and that the substance would cause a change to the object.'
First, Paul explained that we were baptized into Christ...we were immersed into, overwhelmed by, united with Christ, we were and are completely overcome by Him, to the point that we have become a changed people - now Paul goes into greater detail about how this baptism into Christ actually changes us.
A part of being baptized into Christ is being baptized into His death...immersed into, overwhelmed by, united through, and completely overcome by this death - to the point that it changes who we are.
As Christ experienced death, so do we. Chris died to emerge victorious over sin and death. Through His victory, we die to sin and enter into eternal life.
This death is very important, it reveals that regeneration has taken place, that a person has truly experienced a transfer from darkness to light, from eternal condemnation to eternal salvation . Without being completely immersed into this death, we can never be set free from the condemnation brought on because of our sinfulness. The best we can hope for apart from this baptism into death is to live a 'good' life according to our standards and spend eternity in hell once this physical body has run it's course. 'Good' according to our standards does nothing to restore a relationship with a perfectly holy and righteous God.
Many of us, as lost sinners, tried and tried to become 'better' people apart from giving our lives to Christ, only to fall back into the same routines again and again.
- and a crucial part of that baptism includes a death of the old self and it's desire to run from God.
It takes more than just trying hard to become a child of God, in fact it takes more than we could even begin to fathom. It takes pure, selfless love. It takes pure grace. It takes pure mercy. It takes a perfect sacrifice. It takes victory over sin and death. We are capable of none of these...but we can be baptized into them!
- and a crucial part of that baptism includes a death of the old self and it's desire to run from God.
The beauty of this is that we can't even do anything to make this baptism into death happen, it's a part of becoming a true believer - God causes it! Paul is telling us here that since God baptized, united us with His Son, we ought to run from sin - it's not who we are anymore!
Next time, we will look deeper into what happens as a result of this baptism into death. Keeping in mind that the reason Paul is explaining this is to encourage us as believers to pursue a life of holiness - to the glory of God!
