“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin” (1st John 2:1).
In our last visit we began looking at what Paul says in Romans about sanctification. That is, the process of becoming more like Jesus Christ once we have been saved by trusting in Him. He starts by asking in Romans 6:2, “We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?”
With that rhetorical question asked he takes the Christian back to his baptism. He is not teaching about the need to be baptized. He is presuming they were baptized and refers to what their baptism signified. It seems to me he is referring to their baptism by immersion. Listen to verse 3, “Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” Then he adds in verse 4, “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.”
The picture is death, burial and resurrection. When you die and are buried you are put into a hole in the ground and covered. You are in a grave. The reason you are buried this way is so that the living might not smell the stench of a decaying body. That is the picture Paul wants us to have here.
Baptism of the believer pictures identification with Christ in His death and burial when the person is immersed in the water. It is saying, “I died to the old way of life, the way of sin, and I don’t want even the stench of the old way of life to be present any more. I want it all buried, over with.” Then when you are brought up out of the water, you are saying, “I am now going to live my life relying upon the power of Christ’s resurrection.”
That’s what the process of sanctification is all about.
Have you been baptized? If you were, did you understand that what you were saying in being baptized is that you died with Christ, were buried with Christ, and have been raised with Christ to live in the power of His resurrection? That’s what sanctification is all about.
