1/4/18
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.
The Christian confesses that his life of sin is buried and dead. It’s in that order, too. While we generally think that you die first, then you are buried, in baptism, according to Romans chapter six, we die when we are buried in baptism. We live again afterward. It is a strong picture of Christ’s death and resurrection.
The life we live as Christians, then, as baptized people, is a life governed by Jesus’ resurrection. It’s a life of immortality, here and now. While this doesn’t mean that we will not become old, sick, injured, or otherwise brought to death, we receive the promise that in Christ we will live on. The slavery to sin and death has ben broken.
Why does the apostle remind us of this? It only takes a little thought to make sense of that. It’s because we are so very good at forgetting our identity. We may be dead to sin, but our sinful “old man” seems to have trouble getting the message. Martin Luther famously taught that we remember our baptism every day because, even though the our sinful nature has been drowned in the water of baptism, it still seems able to swim.
Eventually, as we look to Christ’s resurrection, we do start to find our identity. And it is a glorious identity. It’s the identity of Jesus, the Second Adam, the one without sin, the one who will live forever in glory. May the Lord continue making this plain in us.
If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.
Many churches throughout the world use a Bible reading schedule called a "lectionary." It's just a fancy word meaning "selected readings." Posts like this reflect on the readings for an upcoming Sunday or other Church holiday, as found in the three-year lectionary.
The Christian confesses that his life of sin is buried and dead. It’s in that order, too. While we generally think that you die first, then you are buried, in baptism, according to Romans chapter six, we die when we are buried in baptism. We live again afterward. It is a strong picture of Christ’s death and resurrection.
The life we live as Christians, then, as baptized people, is a life governed by Jesus’ resurrection. It’s a life of immortality, here and now. While this doesn’t mean that we will not become old, sick, injured, or otherwise brought to death, we receive the promise that in Christ we will live on. The slavery to sin and death has ben broken.
Why does the apostle remind us of this? It only takes a little thought to make sense of that. It’s because we are so very good at forgetting our identity. We may be dead to sin, but our sinful “old man” seems to have trouble getting the message. Martin Luther famously taught that we remember our baptism every day because, even though the our sinful nature has been drowned in the water of baptism, it still seems able to swim.
Eventually, as we look to Christ’s resurrection, we do start to find our identity. And it is a glorious identity. It’s the identity of Jesus, the Second Adam, the one without sin, the one who will live forever in glory. May the Lord continue making this plain in us.
If this brief meditation was helpful to you, I hope you will check out the other materials on our website at www.WittenbergCoMo.com and consider supporting us.
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