The Call to be Baptized
OPENING PRAYER:
God, thank you for the opportunity to reflect and learn more about steps of faithfulness in our lives.
“We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 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.” Romans 6:2b-4 (NIV)
REFLECT:
As we saw yesterday, the gift of being baptized by the Holy Spirit is a promise fulfilled by Jesus after his death and resurrection. By putting himself in our place and conquering death on our behalf, Jesus removed sin’s power to separate us from God. Without this, the Spirit would not be able to dwell in us.
As Robert Mounce says, “Sin continues in force in its attempt to dominate the life and conduct of the believer. But the believer has been baptized into Christ, and that means to have been baptized into Christ’s death as well. Christ’s death for sin becomes our death to sin. Sin lies on the other side of the grave for those who have, in Christ, died to it.”
APPLY:
What does this mean for us – especially in the call to be baptized? It means that water baptism is an outward representation of what has happened already, but it is not what saves us. If the Spirit is moving you to be baptized in water, it is to reflect its presence in your life as a result of Jesus’s sacrifice on our behalf.
CLOSING PRAYER:
Thank you, Jesus, for bringing about the death of sin and bringing us to the other side and into the full presence of God. Amen
WORSHIP: