Paul says that in baptism we are buried with Christ in His death and raised with Him in His resurrection. He says we are raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God. If God is powerful enough to raise Christ from the dead, then He is powerful enough to raise us up to new life.
We’ve learned that baptism is an outward sign of an inward work and that it serves as a testimony to the world of what God has done in your life, but baptism is also important because it can serve to strengthen your faith. Read Colossians 2:12.
"Having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead."
Paul says that in baptism we are buried with Christ in His death and raised with Him in His resurrection. He says we are raised with Him through faith in the powerful working of God. If God is powerful enough to raise Christ from the dead, then He is powerful enough to raise us up to new life.
You might still be struggling with certain temptations and addictions. Satan will try to tell you that you can never be fully delivered from those things. He will do his best to get you to fall back into your old ways of living and tell you that this new life in Christ isn’t possible to live. He will try to maximize your struggle and minimize God’s power in your mind.
But remember – Satan was not powerful enough to keep Jesus in the grave, and because of God’s power, Satan is not powerful enough to hold us captive in our sins. Praise God! You can’t possibly hope to overcome your sin on your own. It is only through faith in the power of God at work in your life…the same power that raised Jesus from the dead…that you can be victorious!
Why is Baptism necessary for being a Christian?
Baptized into one Body
Baptism is important to each follower of Jesus for many reasons, but baptism is also important because it unifies us with the rest of the Church…past, present, and future. This is one reason why the church has always placed value on it. Read 1 Corinthians 12:13.
"For in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves[a] or free—and all were made to drink of one Spirit."
The church doesn’t place value based on your nationality, skin color, income, or social status.
We were all baptized the same way into one body.
We are not baptized in the name of a particular church or a particular pastor. All Christians are baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
In Galatians 3:28, Paul says, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”
We are used to seeing people use things like race, social status, and gender to draw lines of division. It has been the way of the world for millennia.
God’s design is for the church to be a haven of unity
through the leadership of the Spirit, and He intends for baptism to serve as a sign of unity in the church. It doesn’t matter if you’re white, black or somewhere in between.
It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor,
if you’re male or female…
all Christians have been baptized into the church the same way.
This unity is not just born out of commonality. It is spiritually empowered unity that transcends everything else. It is unity in the Spirit. As our key verse for today says, “We were made to drink of one Spirit.”
Does baptism help my faith?
Why you should get baptized
Baptism is also important because it is an act of faith, just like when you believed in Jesus Christ and prayed for salvation. Read 1 Peter 3:18-22.
"For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, because they formerly did not obey, when God's patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him."
When Peter says, “Baptism now saves you” he doesn’t mean that the physical act of being immersed in water is what saves us. He follows that statement up with the words,
“Not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience”
In other words, it’s not simply being cleansed in baptismal waters that brings salvation. Being immersed in water just washes away dirt. It’s “an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” that saves us.
Christians are called to believe that Jesus Christ is who He says He is and that He can deliver you and save you from your sins. Then we are to take the public step of faith in baptism. Baptism is an outward example of the “clean conscience” that Jesus gives. This is one of the reasons why you and all new Christians should get baptized.
First, we appeal to God in repentance for our sins and commit to walk in new life — that’s what saves us — then we are baptized to publicly identify ourselves with Christ and publicly express our faith in Him.
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