Here we see a beautiful description of what most evangelical churches use as a model for baptism.  In many churches, as a person being baptized is lowered into the water and raised back out, the person conducting the baptism with say, “Buried with Christ, and raised to walk in the newness of life”...this is a root for that.  This chapter describes the true essence of this kind of baptism.  Now, I recognize that stands in contrast to the type of baptism where a baby is sprinkled with water, or something like that...but I am not going to get into the different methods and thoughts on baptism here.  I am just pointing out that this chapter really illustrates the imagery associated with the type of baptism that is typically referred to as ‘immersion’.  And this gives us a real sense of what it looks like to accept Christ as our Savior, as our ‘stand-in’ for the punishment we deserve but won’t have to serve.  We become dead to the ULTIMATE effect of sin - which is death.  But, we aren’t immune from the effects of sin in life, which is still ‘death’, but it is death of relationships, death of our body in that we can’t live forever...sin causes death and destruction.  That’s why we are taught, by Jesus, that when we sin, we are to go to THE PERSON to see restoration.  Yes we should pray to God, but we should always seek restoration to the people who our sin affects...because there are always (in some fashion) other people being hurt.  We are already good with God.  We don’t need to sacrifice to Him anymore...we need to sacrifice to each other, which calls for humility, grace, patience, kindness, unconditional love...you know, the hard stuff.

Paul then goes on to teach us the same idea, but from a different angle.  here that we aren’t slaves to righteousness...meaning, we don’t have to rely on our own goodness to be right with God.  And thank God for that!  That is what the Law was all about, in the Old Testament...we mess up, and then we do things to get right with God - sacrifices, rituals, etc.  Well, not anymore.  Now we are right with God simply by faith...faith in the fact that Jesus was the sacrifice, Jesus takes place of the rituals.

And, the last thing I will say for today is that right at the beginning of the chapter today, Paul points out the flaw in one of the most typical responses we all have thought or that we think of at some point, which is, “Well, why behave then?!?”.  And we’ve talked about this - but ‘behaving’ is really not at issue...the question is really whether or not any particular behavior is helpful or not.  And how do we determine if it is helpful or not?  Well, does it make us better?  Does it further our influence with others?  Does it help us in achieving the mission for which we were created by God?  If the answer is ‘no’, then it shouldn’t be a part of our life.  It’s that simple.  But we don’t like that, because there are some of us that really just like to play at the boundaries...but that goes back to control, and being willing to submit to God’s will rather than our own will for our lives.  ...and, as you can see, we can go in circles with all of this, which is why there are 27 manuscripts in the New Testament; this needs a lot of thought!  HAHA

For today though, my prayer is that I would lean into that baptism idea, that I would feel the freedom of choice, and that I would have the courage to take the steps that God puts before me, to understand and to grow into my purpose.