I hope you all had a great Easter Weekend celebrating the death, burial, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I am sitting here this morning wondering if you realize how critical these events are linked to your own recovery?
I can imagine some of us might have been sitting in the services and instead of truly rejoicing that Jesus rose from the dead your heart was still heavy because of your secret sin. Some of you might have even used this weekend as a time to abstain from sexual sin.
However, there is a truth that you might not be aware of in regard to what Jesus went through and our battle with all of our sins. I hope you believe that all of our sins were placed on Jesus and He paid the penalty for the sins of the world. But there was more going on there than we could understand unless God reveals it to us in Romans 6:3 where Paul writes;
“…do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”
Now you might be scratching your head thinking;
“I didn’t know that I was baptized into Jesus Christ
or that I have been baptized into His death.”
Part of the problem is that when we read the word “baptized” we think of something that is a physical and visible event which happens in church. Some churches baptize babies and others only those who have accepted Jesus. Some sprinkle and some dunk and regardless of the method a church uses we call it “baptism.”
This verse says that we have been baptized into Christ and into His death. Literally, the word means to immerse. It is a word from the cloth dying process and when someone was going to change the color or a cloth say from white to red, they would take the white cloth and immerse it into the vat of red dye, literally pushing it under and completely into the dye.
So, that is the physical act of baptism … and immersing or placing into the dye a piece of cloth so as to change the color or the cloth. Now when that happens, and the white cloth is brought out of the red dye it has now become the same red color as the dye and in a sense, it has become united with the dye.
Having said that we have been “baptized into His death” we learn something very important about how our being baptized into His death is related to our spiritual life. In verse 5 Paul uses a different word than baptism when talking about the same events that happened on Easter weekend. He writes;
“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 …”
Now let me simplify this for you. You and I were “in” Christ because God chose us to be His children. Jesus came to earth to die and be resurrected for all of our sins. So, when He died, and we were in Him … we died. When He was buried … we were buried. Therefore, when He rose from the dead … we rose from the dead. And here is the most important thing …
Because He is alive, we have been made spiritually alive in Christ.
“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.”
That is a key and foundational truth we all need to know. Because we were in Christ when Christ was resurrected from the dead … now … for us … we have the possibility of walking in “newness of life.”
What has happened to all of us is God, through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ has NOW made it possible for us to live a new life. Because we have died to sin through Jesus, we can now live a new life in Him.
But wait … you might be thinking; “John, I am not living this new life. No matter how hard I try I cannot stop looking at porn or sexually sinning!!!
What this passage is teaching us is that we all now have the possibility of living a new life. The monopoly that our sin nature had on us has been broken and we now have a choice whether we sin or not. We may feel like we are still locked into this prison of sexual sin, but we are there by our choice. The lock on the door is broken and we, through Christ’s death and resurrection, have the choice who our master will be.
I know this can be a hard concept to grasp but it is an important one. When we are feeling like there is no hope for us because we have become addicted to sexual sin … we need to tell ourselves that is a lie. The truth is we have, through Christ, been crucified, buried and resurrected with Him and we now have the choice who our master will be.
We know what the master of sin wants to do to us. Sin wants to destroy our lives. Jesus wants to heal us. Sin wants us to live in isolation and fear. Jesus wants us in community with one another to love and support one another in our new lives.
Yes, a new life is really possible. Christ has done everything through His death, burial, and resurrection to give us new life. We are the ones who must choose every day to offer our bodies to God, to be filled with and walking in the Spirit, and putting on the full armor of God.