As we prepare to celebrate water baptism at the Sunday evening service at the warehouse this weekend (February 1), I've decided to pen a few thoughts on it. Many times, people ask what it means, way we "dunk" instead of sprinkle, and what they should "think" as they watch others get baptized.
In a real way, baptism is like a living "movie," a real-life image that speaks to a couple of things that Christians fundamentally believe. And, we celebrate much in this multi-layered rite of passage into the Way of Jesus.
Here's what we'll be celebrating while people are getting water baptized:
1. The past. Jesus died for your sin. When we immerse a person in the water (by the way, we "sumberge" when we baptize because the Greek word baptizo actually means "to submerge" or "to bury" in the water. It does not mean sprinkle. And, the word is a transliteration, not a translation- meaning, we are importing a word from another language, not creating our version of it)... anyway, when we bury a person in the water, we are commemorating the fact that Jesus was buried in the tomb. However, Jesus did not stay in the tomb- He arose on the third day. As we "resurrect" the person out of the water, we celebrate this- that Jesus came out of the grave.
2. The past & the future // lines blurred. In the past, you have had relatives and friends that have died that followed Jesus. Their body is in the grave. You could go dig it up right now. Like Jesus, they have been buried in their own tomb. But, like Jesus did, they will get out of their grave in the future. As you are raised out of the water, we anticipate what the Bible tells us will happen when Jesus returns: "This we declare to you by a word from the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the voice of an archangel, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we will always be with the Lord" (1 Thessalonians 4:15-17).
3. The future. In the same manner, just in the same happening as the verses tell us above, if you die before Jesus returns, you too will get up out of your grave and go be with Him. So, as you are baptized // buried in the water- and as you come up from the water, you are celebrating that Jesus was buried and arose; that those who have followed Jesus and have been buried will one day arise; that if you die before He returns, you, too, will arise. As Paul writes, "God raised the Lord and will also raise us up by His power" (1 Corinthians 6:14).
4. The present now. We read that: "... with Christ, you died..." (Colossians 2:20). In other words, the Bible tells us that in the same way that Jesus died, an actual part of us- the old sin nature- dies when we receive the new life that Jesus died to give to us. In fact, the Bible teaches this in a lengthy passage in the middle of the Book of Romans:
"How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with Him in baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
"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. 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. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you must also consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus!" (Romans 6:2b-11).
Do you see? There is so much going on in this picture of water baptism!
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