Baptism IV — Spiritual Growth for New Believers

II. The Meaning of Baptism

Everyone who has been baptized should look back and ask, "I have been baptized—what does this mean?" You need to reflect on this for ten years, twenty years. Always remember this verse: "Or do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?" (Romans 6:3). Romans 6 is about looking backward, not forward.

Mark 16, Acts 10, Acts 22, and 1 Peter 3 all speak of baptism before it happens. However, Romans 6 and Colossians 2 speak about baptism after it has occurred—they are for those who have already been baptized. God informs them of something: "Do you not know that when you were baptized, you were baptized into the Lord’s death? Do you not know that when you were baptized, you were buried with Him? Do you not know that when you were baptized, you were raised with Him?"

Romans 6 emphasizes death and burial, though it also mentions resurrection. Colossians 2 emphasizes burial and resurrection. Colossians is more progressive, focusing on resurrection, whereas Romans focuses on death. "Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?"—the emphasis here is death. We should die with Him. Death and burial are the matters of Romans 6; burial and resurrection are the matters of Colossians 2.

This water signifies the grave. Today, when we bring you to the water and immerse you, it is as if you are being buried in the ground. When we lift you out of the water, it is as if you are rising from the tomb. Before being buried, you must surely be dead—you cannot bury a person who is still alive. Likewise, after burial, to rise is surely to be resurrected. The first part of this truth is spoken of in Romans; the second part, in Colossians.

1) My Death Is a Great Gospel

Just as the Lord Jesus was nailed to the cross, He brought us to the cross with Him—we were crucified too. Before God, He resolved our person. What about you today? You should realize: "Oh! I am truly unmanageable!" Those who do not know themselves do not realize how difficult they are. Those who know God and know themselves will say, "I am impossible to manage."

When you realize how heavy your sins are, hearing that the Lord Jesus died is good news. When you see how utterly corrupt and hopeless you are, and then hear that you have already died, that too is good news. Thank God—that is the gospel! The Lord’s death included you; you died too. That is a great gospel! Just as the Lord’s death is a joyful event, so is our death. If you hear that the Lord died, your first thought should be like Joseph’s—go and bury Him. Similarly, upon hearing that your old self has died, your first action should be to bury it. Death is not the end; once you have died in Christ, the first thing is to conduct a burial.

2) I Am a Person Who Has Died and Been Resurrected

So, brothers, when you walk into the water for baptism—or even years later, looking back—you must remember: you are a person who has died. Only because you believed in the reality of death did you allow someone to bury you. If your heart was still beating and you were still breathing, you could not be buried. Burial presupposes death.

When the Lord Jesus was crucified, you were crucified with Him. Because you believe you have died, you allow yourself to be buried in the water. Because the Lord Jesus rose again and placed His resurrection power within you, you are regenerated by that power. His resurrection power works in you so that you rise again—you come up from the water as a resurrected person, no longer the person you once were. We need to keep looking back to this fact: When I went down into the water, I believed I had died and therefore was buried; when I came up out of the water, I had the likeness of new life. On that side was death; on this side is resurrection.

3) I Am in Christ

I once read a news article titled: "One Person, Three Lives." It reported that a pregnant woman had been murdered, and later it was discovered she was carrying twins. Thus, the newspaper said, "one person, three lives." Notice: the murderer did not directly kill the two unborn babies—he killed the mother. But because the children were inside the mother, when the mother died, they died too. Similarly, today, we are in Christ; so when Christ died, we died in Him.

God placed us into Christ Jesus, as 1 Corinthians 1:30 says: "It is because of Him that you are in Christ Jesus." Christ died, and so we all died. Our death with Christ is based on our being in Christ. If you do not understand what it means to be "in Christ," you cannot understand what it means to die with Him. How could an unborn child die with its mother? Because it was inside her. Spiritually speaking, our union with Christ is even more real than that. God joined us to Christ, so when Christ died, we also died.

When this gospel is preached to you, you must learn to know before God that you have already died in Christ, because you believe this to be a fact. You were buried under the water, and then you came up out of the water. You can say, "Now I am on the side of the grave—this is resurrection!" Romans 6 speaks of "reckoning"—that is, you must reckon yourselves dead in Christ Jesus, and likewise reckon yourselves alive in Him.

I hope, brothers and sisters, that as soon as you are saved, you are brought onto this path. Here there are two stages: one before baptism, one after baptism. After baptism, because you see that you have died, you are buried into the water. After baptism, because you see that you have been resurrected, you now live to serve God.