Colossians 3:3 — For you have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God.
Galatians 2:20 — “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
We have considered over the last few meditations that baptism proclaims the union with Jesus Christ into which a believer is brought at conversion through the activity of the Holy Spirit. Scripture is very clear that this union has practical implications in the life of the believer, and that is what we want to focus on for the next few devotionals, because baptism not only proclaims these things but calls us to live in the light of them. It is clear, then, that this should form part of our reflections in respect of baptism.
We saw that in being joined to Christ, the believer is joined to Him in His death. Our passages above confirm this truth and encourage us therefore to consider ourselves dead to our old way of life, which we used to live before we became believers. Paul works this argument out in much greater detail in Romans 6:1-14 (emphasis added):
Romans 6:1–14 — What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; 7 for he who has died is freed from sin. 8 Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. 12 Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, 13 and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. 14 For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law but under grace.
Notice how practical this union with Christ becomes! If indeed we died to sin along with Jesus Christ, how can we keep living as we did before, when we were slaves to sin? If we have been set free from that slavery, how can we continue to live as if we were still in its grip? So, says Paul in effect, (and talking here to believers) you need to live in the light of your union with Christ in His death. That means you are to consider that your old man, the slave to sin, is dead and that it is no longer inevitable that you yield to temptation. Don't let sin reign in you any longer, because you died to sin through your union with Christ, and it no longer has the right to reign over you - He is your master now!
This realization should fundamentally affect the way we deal with temptation. Yes, we will still be tempted, and yes, we will sometimes trip and stumble and fall through our weakness. But sin is not our master, and our succumbing to sin when tempted is not a foregone conclusion any more!
All this because we are joined to Christ and when He died to sin, we died to sin in Him. And we should be reminded of this if we are believers each time we reflect on our own baptism and each time we witness the baptism of others. This is a reflection that should strengthen us in our ongoing struggle with the world, the flesh and the devil!
