September 26, 2019 BURIED WITH HIM
Romans 6:3-4 “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism through death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
These verses brings to the forefront a central truth of the gospel-a truth that is a must be grasped if we are to live the Christian life that God has made available to us. There is no doubt that this truth I am referring to can easily become a stumbling block to our spiritual well-being. The gospel is a call for us to die to self; however, if there is one thing our self does not want to do, it is to die. So, what do we do? How do we die and yet live? Water baptism is a picture of one who has confessed Christ as Savior, being buried in a watery grave and then being raised up in newness-a new person. The gospel does not call us to clean up, improve, or refurbish our human nature-it calls us to die to it. The good news is that when we are born again, God gives us a new nature and this new nature reflects the ways of God. God does not annihilate or eradicate our old human nature; He calls us to lay aside the old self and to walk according to the Spirit. Ephesians 4:22. Dying to self is something we do daily, even hourly; we choose to not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit-according to our new identity in Christ. “So I say. Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.” Galatians 5:16. “and put on the new self, which in the likeness of God has been created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.” Ephesians 4:24. If we view our old sin nature as alive and well and we find ourselves yielding to the desires of our flesh-our old nature-then we have not died to the old self. The antidote to struggling with sin is found in Romans 6:11 where we are told “Even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.” Do we ‘consider’ ourselves dead to sin, or alive to God-that’s the all-important question. In essence, dying to self, or being buried with Him, is a matter of choosing to walk according to the Spirit, and not according to the flesh. We can make this choice only because God has made us new creations-our new self is a creation of God-and He has given us His Holy Spirit and has set us free from the power of sin. Let us continually be laying aside our old self-who we use to be- and let us continually putting on the new self that God has given us.”
Romans 6:4 “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.”
Ephesians 4:22 “in reference to your former manner of life, you lay aside the old self, which is being corrupted in accordance with the lust of deceit, and that you be renewed in the spirit of your mind.”
Blessings,
Buddy
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