THE MEANING OF BAPTISM
Romans 6:3-5 “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.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his”.
It’s a perfect type or picture of Salvation. It talks about being baptized unto His death. It’s a perfect picture, when the person goes underwater, of death and when he comes up from under the, water a picture of renewed life. So it’s a wonderful picture of what Salvation is to us. We, as the Bible says, are dead in transgressions and sins”, we who do not know Christ are not alive, we are dead in sins, we are slaves to sin. We can’t do anything about sin and even the good things we do before God cannot please Him, because we have rejected His Son and so it’s a pretty picture of our lives before Salvation. We were dead, we were under the water, and we were dead in our sins but as to the Resurrection of Christ and the trusting of you in Christ did for us through His Resurrection, we have eternal life with him, so it’s a beautiful picture of Salvation.
It is a picture of Christ's on Death and Resurrection. When Christ died, there was a Reality, this is not a Story that we just tell on Easter but it’s a Reality that Jesus Christ came to this World, He was rejected by His own, and cruel men put Him on a Cross and they were very cruel to Him; one of the most cruel deaths a person can die and it reveals that Christ did died. Christ did not just swoon on the Cross or faint and then the coolness of the cave woke him. The Bible is very clear, He died and His Baptism is a picture of that, under the water, where there’s no life or men, and He died and He rose again and as he came out of the grave, and as we picture that in the Baptism, as we bring a person out of the water they begin a beautiful picture of their Resurrection in Christ.
It is a picture of our Death to our Sin. Again, after we know Christ as our personal Savior. Before, we were dead to sin, but in Christ now we are saved and know Christ as our personal Savior. God wants us to continue to be dead to sin. We are not to go back and live the lives we had before, we are to display Jesus Christ and His Spirit that now lives in us, again this Baptism displays, if we put a person under the water, it’s a picture now that I want to be dead to sins personally and I want to come out of that water and I want to walk in newness of life. I want a new walk with Christ, I want my life to be different than it was before so that we have a beautiful picture there.
It is also God’s appointed way to be identified with Christ. God wants us to identify with Him. We can call ourselves Christians and that’s one way to identify with Him. We can be in God’s House, that’s one way to identify with Him. We can be around God’s people, that’s a great way to identify with Him. But God commands this very special way to identify with Him to a person who has a wedding ring. I wear this ring. I didn’t get it out of the gambling machine and put in on. There was a wedding and my wife placed it on my finger. The reason that I wear a wedding ring is because I want to be identified with my wife, I want to let people know that I am married. I’m not ashamed of that and I wear that ring to identify with my wife and my family, the same way Baptism is just a way that God has commanded for us to be identified with Him, in His death, in His Resurrection. Now you know what a beautiful picture that is.
Based Upon a Sermon Preached by
Steve Anglea
Pastor of Grace Baptist Church
Plymouth, New Hampshire