pImagine if you were married and your husband/wife didn’t want to go out in public with you. Like, ‘I’ll eat dinner with you, just as long as it’s at home, sweetie.’ Or, ‘Sure I’ll wear a wedding ring! Except outside.’ Never mind how self-conscious you’d get, it’s just kind of a bit… odd. You’d wonder how much the marriage actually meant to them. The public bit really is important. And, that tells us a bit about baptism. Just like a ring makes your marriage a public thing, a baptism is the way to publicly say that you believe in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus and you’ve put your trust in Him. It’s like putting on a wedding ring and going ‘hey, I’m now about this person, forever’. But let’s go a step further. There’s something more going on in baptism. ‘Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life … Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him’ (vv. 4-8 NKJV). What’s this saying? It’s saying that baptism isn’t just symbolic. Baptism is a way of taking part in the death of Jesus. It’s a small Easter Saturday moment… for you. As you take part in the death of Jesus, you’re dead to your old life, and start a new life out the other side, with Jesus. Baptism’s a constant reminder: when you’re tempted to go back to your old ways, it says, ‘You’re no longer that person, you’re a new creation in Christ with a new set of values, attitudes, actions, and destiny.’ /p
pWhat now?br /
Every time you eat your favourite circular cereal this week, dunk it under your milk, and remind yourself of baptism and wedding rings./p