“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
“If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So, you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.” [1]
The message I seek to deliver this day is intended for those individuals who follow Christ as Master of life. For any who are outside the precincts of grace, the message does not apply directly. It is not that I am unconcerned for those who do not follow Christ—I am tremendously concerned that all who are outside of Christ should be saved. Any who are not following Christ are lost; they are under divine condemnation now. Walking with Christ is an impossibility until such are born from above and into the Family of God.
Christ-followers struggle with sin. I don’t mean that they look for opportunities to sin; I mean that they are conscious that they do sin, and the knowledge disturbs them. The ongoing struggle is prominently displayed when the Apostle writes in his Letter to the believers in Rome, “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death” [ROMANS 7:15-24]?
When we turn again to actions identified with our sordid past, we are digging up what is buried and out of sight, hauling a stinking, rotted corpse into the light of day where it is again displayed for all to see. The idea of zombies, commonly identified as “the walking dead,” has been popularised in this day. Popular television shows promote the concept of zombies. Movies are filmed that focus on the possibility of a zombie apocalypse. Even ammunition is marketed for “the zombie apocalypse.” [2] While zombies are not real, I do know that there are a lot of “walking dead” among the churches. These are people who were buried with Christ, and they now walk among us, living as the dead creatures they were when the Lord found them. They were dead with Christ, and now, they seemingly want to live as they once lived. There is no sin in the cemetery, but they have dug up what was dead, and sin now is on full display again.
TESTIFYING OF OUR CALL TO LIFE — Our Master testified, “I came that [people] may have life and have it abundantly” [JOHN 10:10b]. Our Lord is very clear that He came to give life. I understand that people may raise an eyebrow at this. “Hey, we are alive,” people may argue with considerable amusement. “We eat, we reproduce, we work, we play. We do all the things that prove we are alive.” However, most are not alive to God. Perhaps they are aware there is a God, but few can say that they know God, or more important still, few can say that they are known by God. They conduct their lives as though the Living God is nonexistent.
The Apostle to the Gentiles testified to the Churches of Galatia, “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” [GALATIANS 2:20]. The Faith of Christ the Lord is a living Faith—the Faith has meaning only for those individuals who have been made alive in Him. Outsiders are able to see only the ritual, failing to see the reality that lies behind the rites, behind the liturgy. Thus, this business of being alive to God is likely more important than we might otherwise imagine.
God created man in His image. In the Word, God reveals Himself as a triunity—one God in three Persons. Reflecting the image of God, man is a tripartite being. We possess a body, we are a living soul and we have a spirit. Tragically, as result of the fall of our first parents, our spirit is dead, our soul is under condemnation and our body is born dying. If we are to speak of salvation, we must recognise that the saving must be complete—body, soul and spirit. If salvation does not extend to the whole individual, it is incomplete.
That man is a tripartite being becomes evident as we read the Apostle’s prayer for the saints in Thessalonica. Paul penned a moving prayer for the Thessalonian Christians, and consequently, a prayer for all believers in the Risen Saviour, when he wrote, “May the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ” [1 THESSALONIANS 5:23]. In this prayer, the Apostle carefully denotes the tripartite character of man.
I acknowledge that it is impossible for mere mortals to divide soul and spirit, but what we cannot do, the Word of God does. The writer of the Letter to Hebrew Christians has observed, “The word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart” [HEBREWS 4:12]. We don’t have a problem recognising the distinction between the physical and the spiritual aspects of our being, but the writer observes that the Word of God is able to divide the spiritual aspects of our being into separate components—soul and spirit.
Because man is a tripartite being, and because man is utterly ruined by the fall of our first parents, of necessity, salvation must have an impact on every facet of our being; every part of our being must be transformed, or this cannot be salvation. To be saved means we are rescued from the sentence of death under which we have lived. To be saved means that we are now alive to God, alive in Christ the Lord. Previously, though we may have known about God, when one has been saved, that one knows God. We’ve been brought into His Family and He is our Father.
When God saves an individual, He redeems the soul, He rescues the individual from eternal death, delivers that one from the curse of separation from the Living God. God also gives the twice-born individual a new spirit. That Spirit God gives is, in fact, the Holy Spirit of God Who takes up residence in the life of the individual. And God gives the saved person the promise of a new body which is no longer subject to death. So, the redeemed individual is alive in Christ—more alive than she or he has ever been since that person was first conceived.
I say this to encourage God’s people to recognise what He has done and to alert those who are lost to what awaits them when they turn to Christ in faith. This is a point of struggle for many people. The lost are dead, and the redeemed are alive. Writing in the encyclical we have received as Ephesians, the Apostle compels those of us who believe to look back on the condition in which we existed before Christ found us. He wrote, “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” [EPHESIANS 2:1-3].
When we received the Risen Saviour as Master over our life, God saved us. Therefore, the Apostle continues, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” [EPHESIANS 2:4-10].
Quoting the Prophet Isaiah, the Apostle has exulted in God’s majestic plan for those whom He has redeemed:
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”
[1 CORINTHIANS 2:9]
The relationship into which we are now born is but a beginning. The Lord Christ has begun a process for the redeemed that will eventuate in full transformation into His image. This is the promise of God which has been delivered through the Apostle to the Gentiles when he wrote, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” [1 CORINTHIANS 15:49].
This message is echoed when he writes, “Our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself” [PHILIPPIANS 3:20-21].
You will no doubt remember that John delivers this same promise to followers of the Christ, when he writes, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure” [1 JOHN 3:1-3].
The transformation of life is real; the one who believes the Son of God is transformed. And the transformation that is witnessed continues throughout the days of this walk in the flesh, coming to completion only at the return of the Master. Baptism is a testimony to what has taken place and what yet lies in the future. Baptism does not “save” a person, it is a testimony to the salvation that the individual has already received. Let’s look at what is declared.
In baptism, the one who is baptised is immersed into water—submerged and then raised up out of the water. The act is symbolic of burial, which is why the Scriptures speak of baptism rather than speaking of something else. The Greek word baptízo is transliterated in the New Testament as “baptise,” and the word báptisma is transliterated “baptism.” What you should know is that the words are not translated, they are merely brought into English untranslated. Bapto is “to dip.” It speaks of immersing cucumbers into brine to make pickles. It speaks of being drowned in the sea. It speaks of being immersed in grief. Consequently, the word was employed to picture a particular event in the life of the saved individual. Paul writes, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” [ROMANS 6:4].
The reason this is important is that Paul is presenting an argument for righteous living. When we were baptised, the old self was buried. We confessed that our old nature was dead, and we had buried that old self through a conscious act of faith. The declaration we made looked back to the burial of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we declared that when He was buried in the tomb, we were buried with Him because He had taken on Himself our sin and carried it to the grave. We were also looking forward to the day when this broken humanity would at last be set aside, either through death or through metamorphosis at the Rapture when the Master calls us home. Thus, our baptism is a burial.
However, baptism requires that we be raised up out of the water in which we are buried. Though we confessed that the old self was dead and that we buried that old self in the grave, we also confessed that we were now committed to walking “in newness of life.” We who were baptised agreed that we were to live as those who are made alive through faith in the Son of God. Jesus conquered death, rising from the dead. When He broke the bonds of death, He came out of the grave, and in rising from the dead, He brought life and immortality to light. We have been made alive in Him, the Risen Lord of Glory. And just as we confess that we shall set aside this flesh, so we testify to our faith that we shall be like Him at His return. Baptism, then, pictures a death, a burial and a resurrection.
Since baptism does not save an individual, we must not baptise our infants as do some. We are confident that our babies are kept safe in Christ; and, like us, they must choose to believe Him when they become conscious of their sinful condition. They must be born from above just as we were born from above. Then, when they are born again, they will be encouraged to confess the transformation that has taken place through receiving baptism. Since baptism does not save, the idea promoted in some communions that it is “washing” doesn’t wash. A little water applied to the forehead cannot wash away sin, but immersion in a watery grave and being raised up out of the water does picture what has occurred by faith in the Son of God.
Here is the sum of what we’ve seen thus far—Christians who are walking in obedience to Christ’s commands have been baptised. In their baptism, they openly confessed that they counted their old nature dead and buried with Christ in His tomb. At the same time, they confessed that they had been raised up to a new type of life through faith in the Son of God. Baptism is the testimony of those who are redeemed. Underscore this truth in your mind—baptism is the testimony of those who are redeemed. We are not baptised in order to be redeemed, we are baptised because we are redeemed.
Here, then, is the question for each listener: Have you been baptised since you believed? If not, why not? And if you have never believed, will you not do so now? God invites you, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” [ACTS 16:31].
THE BELIEVER’S TESTIMONY AND LIFE — Christ calls those who have believed to identify with Him through receiving baptism. I have already said, and I must again stress—we are baptised because we are redeemed. We are not baptised in order to be redeemed. We have no business baptising our babies, whether we do so by immersion or by some other means; baptism is a conscious act of one who has believed that Jesus is the Christ.
When the congregation in Jerusalem experienced the persecution unleashed by the martyrdom of Stephen, one of the deacons of the congregation, Philip, had gone down to a city in Samaria. There, he proclaimed the Good News of Christ. Look carefully at the impact of their decision to believe the Good News as recorded in the Book of Acts. “When they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” [ACTS 8:12]. They believed, and then they were baptised.
This order is in agreement with the charge Jesus gave His disciples as He prepared to ascend into the glory. Jesus commanded those who would follow Him, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” [MATTHEW 28:19-20a]. Thus, baptism is the first open evidence that one has entered into discipleship.
The pattern is witnessed again on the occasion when Paul and Silas had been beaten and jailed in Philippi. You no doubt recall how they were praying and singing hymns at midnight, when God used a great earthquake to shake the foundations of the prison. When the jailer awoke and realised that the prison doors were open, he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. He knew that the sentence for a prisoner escaping was that the one who was to guard was to take the place of the prisoner. So, he drew his sword and was prepared to kill himself. However, Paul and Silas shouted out, “Do not harm yourself, for we are all here” [ACTS 16:28b].
The jailer, perhaps with a heart of gratitude, called for lights and rushed in to verify for himself that none of those imprisoned had escaped. Then, he asked the question that all should ask, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” Paul and Silas spoke the glorious words of the Gospel, “Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household” [ACTS 16:31].
Take special note of the verses that follow. “They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night and washed their wounds; and he was baptized at once, he and all his family. Then he brought them up into his house and set food before them. And he rejoiced along with his entire household that he had believed in God” [ACTS 16:32-34]. He believed and was baptised. The entire household likewise believed this message of life in the Risen Saviour, and all were also baptised. The pattern is consistent—those who believed identified with the One in whom they have believed by receiving baptism, picturing the Faith they have just embraced.
In Corinth, the missionaries declared the message of life in the Risen Son of God. Though most of the Jews to whom they went at first refused to hear them, the missionaries went to the house of a Gentile who was a worshipper of God. This man, Titius Justus, lived next door to the ruler of the synagogue, and that synagogue ruler, named Crispus, believed in the Lord Jesus. Unsurprisingly, he was influential in leading his entire family to faith. Here is the verse that deserves our focus: “Crispus, the ruler of the synagogue, believed in the Lord, together with his entire household. And many of the Corinthians hearing Paul believed and were baptized” [ACTS 18:8]. Notice, it was when they believed that they were baptised.
So, baptism is the first testimony of the salvation we have received. The immersion we received is, if nothing else, a testimony of new life. We confessed that our old nature was dead; we counted it as such! We admitted publicly that the way in which we lived previously was because we were dead! Aspects of that previous life are not merely unseemly, they are antithetical to the life we claim to have in Christ the Lord.
Therefore, we read in Scripture, “Sexual immorality and all impurity or covetousness must not even be named among you, as is proper among saints. Let there be no filthiness nor foolish talk nor crude joking, which are out of place, but instead let there be thanksgiving. For you may be sure of this, that everyone who is sexually immoral or impure, or who is covetous (that is, an idolater), has no inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not become partners with them; for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true) and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord. Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of the things that they do in secret” [EPHESIANS 5:3-12].
Again, we read the admonition of the Apostle as he writes, “Put to death therefore what is earthly in you: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and covetousness, which is idolatry. On account of these the wrath of God is coming. In these you too once walked, when you were living in them. But now you must put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and obscene talk from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator” [COLOSSIANS 3:5-10].
Iterating what I have already said—the life we lived when we were lost is not merely unseemly for one who follows the Master, it denies what we claim to have taken place. We testified that we were made new in Christ when we were baptised. However, when we live as we once did, we deny the very thing we said happened. I understand there are people who want to argue that they have freedom in Christ—and we do! However, it is freedom to be godly, freedom to be holy, freedom to be righteous, not freedom to surrender to ungodliness.
Again, I understand that there are people who want to distort the doctrine of eternal security that is meant to comfort God’s redeemed people. “Well, I’m saved, so it doesn’t matter how I live,” they argue. However, an attitude such as that neglects the truth that though we are safe in Christ, because we are in Him, we have been transformed. If there is no evidence of a transformed life, why would we think that life is redeemed? Jesus said, “No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit, for each tree is known by its own fruit. For figs are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. The good person out of the good treasure of his heart produces good, and the evil person out of his evil treasure produces evil, for out of the abundance of the heart his mouth speaks” [LUKE 6:43-45].
Do you remember the words that followed this teaching? The Saviour warned, “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great” [LUKE 6:46-49].
In that FORTY-FIFTH VERSE, the Master challenged those who listened to consider what resides in the heart of an individual. Elsewhere, he invested somewhat greater emphasis to caution against drawing unwarranted conclusions. Jesus taught those who would receive it, “‘Hear me, all of you, and understand: There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.’ And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. And he said to them, ‘Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?’ (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, ‘What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person’” [MARK 7:14-23].
Take a serious look at that dark catalogue of actions that the Saviour identified as wicked—evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolish! Every one of these wicked actions originate in the heart, giving evidence of failure to be transformed. It is not the fault of the Master if I give no evidence of having been transformed; for if I have believed Him, I shall be changed. Though the redeemed individual can anticipate an immediate change, that child of God will not be instantaneously changed into a sinless being. Rather, the transformation will begin immediately and increasing evidence of true transformation will become apparent as the redeemed individual grows in the Faith and as that follower walks with the Master. Underscore in your mind the truth that a definite transformation will be observed in the life of the redeemed individual. If there is no evidence of transformation, we have a responsibility to question the reality of the claimed salvation of that individual. Salvation brings change!
I caution against falling into the devil’s trap of attempting to look for something that isn’t there. Each follower of the Master has grappled at one point or another with the dark thought, “If I was a real Christian, I wouldn’t…” You can fill in whatever action or attitude you want to put in there. However, such thinking is a gross distortion of reality. You may be redeemed, but you have not yet been perfected. The old nature is still part of our existence, and we must conquer it. Peter would lie and deny the Lord, though there is no question but that he was saved. What needs to be seen is that he was immediately grieved because he recognised his sinful denial! Just so, because you are a child of God, you cannot long enjoy sin.
If you didn’t feel a sense of grief because of your sin, you would have reason to doubt your confession. However, the fact that you are miserable when you sin is strong evidence that you are on the right track! Allow the Spirit of God, the Spirit Who is convicting you when you sin, to guide you back into the way of righteousness. A dear friend who was also a colleague, used to say, “A sheep may fall into the mud. But a sheep will never lie down in the mud and enjoy it.” That comforting thought is absolutely correct. If you don’t enjoy your sin, if your sin makes you uncomfortable, it is evidence that God has not given up on you.
The individual who is born from above has entered into relationship with the Living God. Because this twice-born individual is now alive to God, the Lord will not permit His child to disgrace himself by living in sin; God will discipline His child. I urge each one to recall the words concerning divine discipline that have been recorded in the Letter to Hebrew Christians. “Have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons?
‘My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord,
nor be weary when reproved by him.
For the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
and chastises every son whom he receives.’
“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are left without discipline, in which all have participated, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Besides this, we have had earthly fathers who disciplined us, and we respected them. Shall we not much more be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time as it seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness. For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it” [HEBREWS 12:5-11].
Listen to the EIGHTH VERSE again: “If you are without any discipline, in which all sons share, then you are illegitimate and not God’s sons” [HEBREWS 12:8 ISV]. I caution each one listening to the message this day: if you are a twice-born individual, if you are a follower of the Risen Saviour, the Father will not permit you to dishonour Him without holding you to account. The Living God who is Father of all who have been born from above, will step in to arrest His child when they attempt to engage in self-destructive acts. God will discipline His own child. His discipline, though painful, reveals His love for His own children. God does not spank the devil’s kids; but He does discipline those He loves.
In this context, recall the stern warning that was delivered to the Church in Laodicea. “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent” [REVELATION 3:19]. The Saviour does reprove and discipline, but only those whom He loves receive this divine attention. If you are never disciplined by the Living God, you are a mere pretender. Those who are never disciplined by the Lord God are labouring under a delusion—they are already marked by death.
DEAD WITH CHRIST; ALIVE IN HIM — The one who is baptised not only confesses the death of the old nature, that one testifies that he or she is now alive in Christ the Lord. All who witness the burial of that individual when she or he was plunged beneath the watery grave will have understood that the one baptised planted the old self. This was pictured when they were plunged under the water. What is depicted in baptism is a picture of what has taken place in the life of the individual who has put faith in Christ as Master over life. Underscore this thought—Baptism is a portrayal of the transformation that has taken place in the life of the one baptised.
As lost sinners, before we were born from above, we were dead, buried in the graveyard, so to speak. This is the declaration of the Apostle in the Ephesian encyclical. “You were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” [EPHESIANS 2:1-3].
The Good News that we declare is that when anyone has placed faith in Christ as Master over life, God has raised that one from the dead and seated him or her with Himself in the heavenly places. Paul describes what occurred when we believed in his declaration in the Ephesian Letter. There, he has written, “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus” [EPHESIANS 2:4-6].
This is the message of hope that is the heritage of each follower of the Christ. We are now raised up with Him and seated with God in the heavenly places! Let the magnificence of that truth settle into your soul. The Lord God has done this, not because of our own effort, this is the grace of God extended to all who believe. We now possess eternal life, and that is because of God’s mercy and grace. Eternal life is not something that awaits us beyond this moment we call now—eternal life is the present possession of those who are born from above!
In order for one who has been redeemed to now live in sin, the corpse that was buried must be dug up and that putrid, rotting corpse must be given power. That dead body representing the past, has no power over the follower of the Christ unless that woman or that man gives the corpse power. This is a true zombie apocalypse that should terrify all believers. This is not only terrifying, it is disgusting, appalling. For the child of God, it is unthinkable that we would dig up the rotting corpse which has been buried. Yet, it is precisely such a tragic phenomenon that characterises those occupying so many of the churches of this day.
Years ago, the esteemed Charles Spurgeon made mention of this very phenomenon as he declared the Gospel of grace. “Have ye ever read Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner? I dare say you have thought it one of the strongest imaginations ever put together, especially that part where the old mariner represents the corpses of all the dead men rising up,—all of them dead, yet rising up to manage the ship; dead men pulling the ropes, dead men steering, dead men spreading the sails. I thought what a strange idea that was. But do you know I have lived to see that true: I have seen it done. I have gone into churches and I have seen a dead man in the pulpit, and a dead man as a deacon, and a dead man holding the plate at the door, and dead men sitting to hear. You say, ‘Strange!’ but I have. I have gone into societies, and I have seen it all going on so regularly. These dead men, you know, never overstep the bounds of prudence,—not, they: they have not life enough to do that. They always pull the rope orderly, ‘as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.’ And the dead man in the pulpit, is he not most regular and precise? He systematically draws his handkerchief from his pocket, and uses it at the at the regular period, in the middle of the sermon. He would not think of violating a single rubric that has been laid down by his old-fashioned church. Well, I have seen these churches—I know where to point them out—and have seen dead men doing everything. ‘No,’ says one, ‘you can’t mean it?’ Yes, I do, the men were spiritually dead. I have seen the minister preaching, without a particle of life, a sermon, which is only fresh in the sense in which a fish is fresh when it has been packed in ice. I have seen the people sit, and they have listened as if they had been a group of statues—the chiselled marble would have been as much affected by the sermon as they. I have seen the deacons go about their business just as orderly, and with as much precision as if they had been mere automatons, and not men with hearts and souls at all. Do you think God will ever bless a church that is like that? Are we ever to take the kingdom of heaven with a troop of dead men?” [3] How graphic! How dreadfully true is that vivid description of yielding to sin.
Here is the issue that must be addressed. When you were baptised, you confessed that you agreed with God that your old nature was dead and buried with Christ in the tomb. You confessed by that sacred rite that you had been raised up through faith in the Risen Son of God to walk in a newness of life. Obviously, I’m not speaking to those who never made that conscious choice; if what you call “baptism” was something that took place because a parent made the decision for you, there was no confession. Though perhaps you are saved through faith in the Son of God, and I trust that is the case, you have never been baptised!
For the remainder of you who have voluntarily, deliberately, identified with the Saviour through receiving baptism, remember that you made a statement—a powerful statement that was witnessed by those present at that time. Now, when you begin to trifle with sin, you have dug up that corpse, giving it power over yourself. Stop it! Quit doing that! You died with Christ and were raised with Him through faith in Him. You need to hear the admonition of the Word that follows this vivid description of baptism. “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace” [ROMANS 6:12-14].
Doctor R. G. Lee was long pastor of Bellevue Baptist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. I was privileged to hear Doctor Lee as he addressed the Southern Baptist Pastor’s Conference some years ago. Later, I was honoured to address that great church during a Wednesday prayer service during the pastorate of Doctor Adrian Rogers. I recall one of many stories Doctor Lee related during his days of ministry. Doctor Lee had led a tour group to the Holy Land. At one point, the group went to the site that is said to have been Golgotha, the hill on which Jesus was crucified. As Doctor Lee stood at the base of that hill, peering pensively toward the top of the hill, a young boy spoke up, “Sir, you look as if you’ve been here before.”
Doctor Lee responded, “Yes. Yes I have.”
“When was that?” the boy questioned.
“About two thousand years ago,” the godly pastor responded.
Have you received the grace of God in Christ? Have you believed Him? And if you have believed Him, have you identified with Him in baptism as He commanded those who would follow Him? There are among us some who are believers in this Risen Saviour, and yet, you have never been baptised as Jesus commands. You accepted that your parents said you were baptised as an infant, but the choice was never yours. You made no statement, and you have not confessed Him as He commands since you came to faith. The call today is for you to openly take up the mantle of the Faith, being baptised today. Amen.
[*] The title for this message was suggested by a sermon delivered by Pastor Ralph Douglas West. The message can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jT_i4Ao4NIQ, accessed 18 April 2018
[1] Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. Wheaton: Standard Bible Society, 2016. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQWb-5nblx4, accessed 26 December 2018
[3] C. H. Spurgeon, “Holy Violence,” in The New Park Street Pulpit Sermons, vol. 5 (Passmore & Alabaster, London 1859) 219
