THE BAPTIZED CHRISTIAN
‘We are buried with Him by baptism into death.’
Baptism marks the formal acceptance and public profession of Christ.
I. The believer is formally united to Christ in baptism.—He is then called by Christ’s name, and the vows of the Lord are upon him. He accepts Christ as his representative before God, and Christ accepts him as His representative among men. He is to be henceforth a living epistle of Christ, to be known and read of men.
II. The believer dies with Christ in baptism.—As Christ died on the cross for sin, a man who surrenders himself to Christ (baptism being the seal of this surrender) dies to sin. He thereby declares that holiness, not sin, is the great end of his life.
III. The believer rises with Christ in baptism.—‘Even so we also should walk in newness of life.’ As he who disappeared for a moment in the flowing stream seemed to rise with his impurities carried away from him by the unresting current, so the child of God in the baptism of the Spirit, of which baptism by water is the type, rises in the pure air with his sins washed away, not only from his conscience but from his heart’s desires.
IV. The believer becomes with Christ a sharer in Divine strength in baptism.—As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so the believer walks by Divine strength in ‘newness of life’; as the Spirit descended and abode in Christ at His baptism, so does the Spirit strengthen and uphold and guide those who sincerely take upon them the name of Christ.
Illustrations
(1) ‘As Arthur’s knights rose from their inauguration with the image of Arthur himself lighting up their features, and his purpose filling their hearts, so the man who gives himself unreservedly to Christ has henceforth His image stamped on his heart and life, and looks abroad on life with new eyes, and walks abroad with other and higher and purer aims. “Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” ’
(2) ‘A child, seeing how helplessly and inertly his father’s ship lies, or is pulled from berth to berth, in the dock, might well wonder how she is to carry father thousands of miles away and bring him back again; but when he sees her out on the free sea with her sails spread, and the wind swelling them and speeding her on, he begins to understand how different a ship is when moored to the quay from what she is on the ocean with its billows under her and its fresh breeze bearing her on its wings.’