Does your baptism have any effect on who you are or what you do today?

Church Family:
This Sunday evening at the beach we will be baptizing fifteen brothers and sisters in Christ. Five of these are children and ten are adults. Praise the Lord! Did you know that as you read the New Testament you will not find any unbaptized Christians? Baptism is very important to God, so much so that Jesus, the Son of God, commanded and ordained it to be practiced until He returns. That is why baptism has been universally practiced and administered by Christians in every generation since Jesus' own baptism. Baptism is a big deal.

Baptism is meant to forever change your identity and morality shaping you through a self-conscious understanding of what God has done to you and His promises to you in Jesus Christ. So, how about you, was your baptism just an experience many years ago with no long-lasting significance or was it a life-altering event that impacts your day moment by moment?

God instituted baptism so that you could understand more clearly the promises of the gospel. Baptism is meant to bring Christ’s death and resurrection into your daily reality. Seeing other’s baptism and remembering your own is to physically reenact the drama of the gospel story. Baptism reminds you that you have been united with Christ, buried with Him under the waters of baptism before rising again out of the water to a new life (Rom. 6:3-4). We are all called to reenact the story of baptism, not just to remember it but to make it our own (Mat. 28:19-20). By remembering, you make the benefits of Christ’s death your own. The past becomes a present reality and you are assured of the forgiveness of your sins. Baptism is meant to imprint God’s promises on your heart and confirm that you have been given endless grace in salvation through Jesus Christ. Martin Luther once said, “A Christian life is nothing else than a daily baptism.” Meaning that baptism is a template for Christian living – daily dying to self, daily being resurrected new to Christ.

Church, let your baptism remind you and inform you of who you are. You are in Christ, taken out of the world and placed into the family of God. You have died in the death of Christ to the dominion of sin and have been raised in the resurrection of Christ by the power of God to walk in newness of life – that is who you are.

See you Sunday, baptized in Christ: Steve