#DailyDevotion If You’re Baptized You Need Not Fear Death. You Already Died.

January 15th

Read Rom 6:1–23

Rom 6:3-11  Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  (4)  We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.  (5)  For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.  (6)  We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin.  (7)  For one who has died has been set free from sin.  (8)  Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.  (9)  We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him.  (10)  For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God.  (11)  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

 

This time of year we celebrate the baptism of Jesus.  Here in Romans we understand what Jesus’ baptism means to us.  It is the correlative to what happens to us here in Romans 6.  Here in Romans 6 we are identified and made one with Christ in Baptism.  We are actually and in fact baptized into Christ Jesus.  We are made one with Jesus.  In baptism we are crucified with Jesus.  We died with Jesus.  We were buried with Jesus.  We were raised to a new life in Jesus.

 

Dead to sin.  We are dead in Christ in baptism.  Sin has no meaning for us anymore.  It is not our ruler.  It is not our captor.  Being dead sin has no more effect on us.  It can no longer accuse us.  How can you accuse someone of sinning if they are dead.  So even if we do sin it is no longer us that sins but sin itself. (Rom. 7)

 

We have a new life in Christ through baptism is a new lease on life to live in the life of Christ every day.  We don’t have to keep doing the same old stuff.  Our baptism sanctifies us.  Not all at once.  Like the Israelites who were kept in the wilderness lest they fear the occupants of the land and run away, we are kept as sinners who are kept humble though our shortcomings and failings.   We still live diseased and painful lives.  But we have the promise of a resurrection to a new heavens and a new earth.

 

Jesus in his baptism has united himself with us.  He is united with our sin, our guilt, our shame, our disease, our darkness, our captivity, our death and whatever else in ourselves and our lives which is plain bad.  He is joined to it there and he is joined to it now.

 

Lord Jesus Christ, through our being baptized into you let us not live in sin any longer but let our lives be living our life for you and the Father.  Amen.