Fellow-Redeemed,
When is your birthday? I suspect all of us except our very little ones know the date off the top of our heads. When did God adopt you into his family of faith through the sacrament of Holy Baptism? I also suspect the majority of you would have to look that date up. Please, do that. This date is eternally the more significant of the two.
God gave you life the instant he conceived you in your mother’s womb. God gave you spiritual life through Holy Baptism. He gave you eternal life then as well. We encourage parents to have their child’s baptism in the divine service, or have a Public Recognition of a Private Baptism to remind us what a great miracle Jesus gave the church in this sacrament.
The Apostle Paul states the meaning of baptism in our daily life in Romans 6. Join me in looking at his words that assure us we are Baptized Into A New Life. Dead to sin; free from sin’s power; alive with God in Christ.
A friend posted on FB last week “One of the greatest joys in the public ministry is being able to perform a baptism.” I agree with Mike 100%. Who would not be joyful performing a miracle? That is what Holy Baptism is, a miracle.
The Word of Christ connected to simple water creates saving faith. It endows eternal life. God works this miracle entirely on his own without any cooperation from the baptized. I am but the recipient of God’s pledge of a good conscience toward him because he has saved me by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ’s resurrection is the basis for, and assurance of Holy Baptism’s benefits.
In Holy Baptism, the Holy Spirit united us to Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. We did those things with him. We died with Christ and now count ourselves “dead to sin.” Paul wrote, “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with.”
It is my body, the sinful flesh with its sinful nature, which Jesus Christ killed with his death. Through Holy Baptism, I am dead to my flesh and Old Adam. When one person tells another person, “You are dead to me,” it means I am not going to have anything to do with you. You have no rights or privileges with me, or claim on me. As far as I am concerned, you do not exist.
That is what Christ has done to our flesh and sinful nature through Holy Baptism. They are dead to us. They have no rights or privileges with us. They do not exist, not as a denial of their presence, but as a rejection of their claims on us. To God it is as if they never existed.
God has in our connection to Christ by Holy Baptism expunged, erased, forgotten the entire body of work that is my sin; not only in the past but also in the present and the future. So we say daily to our Old Adam, “You are dead to me.”
Baptized into a new life we are dead to sin. We enjoy that new life also free from sin’s power.
Holy Baptism crucified our old self “that we should no longer be slaves to sin.” Think of a former slave now standing as a free man before that master. No longer must he obey. No longer must he fear being sold or fear death. The master might continue to command him, and threaten him. But the free man ignores those commands and threats secure in the knowledge of his freedom. His freedom gives him power over his former master rather than the other way around.
This is our power through Holy Baptism. We still must stand in the presence of sin in our lives. It commands us to disobey, and then threatens us with hell when we do. But we are free because we are buried with Christ and as the Father raised Jesus from the dead he has given us new life. Our new spiritual life is possible because of Jesus’ resurrection.
Our new life is freedom and power over our sin, our former master. “Because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.” Jesus was bearing our sins when he died. When he rose, he left our sins and their guilt and punishment behind in his grave which is our grave. We left the baptismal font free men and women with power over sin because Christ rendered sin powerless by his death. Jesus rose from the dead through the Father’s glory to show this victory is complete.
When I reflect daily on my Holy Baptism, I drown the Old Adam and put to death its evil deeds and desires. I use the power I have in my connection to Christ’s death and resurrection. There is only one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. Yet that one baptism is my daily power over sin in life and my daily assurance of the forgiveness of my sins when I foolishly listen to the devil, the world, and my own sinful flesh.
God has baptized me into a new life of hatred for sin and power over sin. He has baptized me into a new life that means I am alive to God in Christ. “Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him…the death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
Being alive to God means that I do not let sin reign over me. We do not offer the parts of our bodies to sin but in service to God in righteousness. It is the life I live in the body by faith in the Son of God. I live no longer for self but for Jesus who loved me and gave himself for me.
Holy Baptism is a miracle. It is a means of grace. I daily remember that as a baptized child of God no sin excludes me from God’s family, and as a member of God’s family, I want to commit no sin. For me, that miracle took place on May 2, 1948. On what day were you “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 may life a new life?” Amen. <SDG>