What Is Baptism?

Colossians 2: 12

Having been buried with Him in Baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead. 

Romans 6: 4

Therefore we have been buried with Him through Baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. 

We who have died with Christ in letting Him die in our place, are also raised with Him as He was Resurrected with a new kind of Life, so we ought also to display in our lives that newness. 

Baptism is a picture that we act out to publicly declare what has already happened in our lives. Water Baptism is nothing more. 

II Peter 3: 21

Comparing Baptism with Noah's Deluge, Peter tells us that, Baptism now saves you (not by being put into the water that removes dirt from your body), but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

The "Baptism" that saves us is the "placing into" the Body of Christ, that God performs in us with the New Birth. A miracle every time. 

We submit to water Baptism to publicly demonstrate and declare that we have died with Jesus, were buried under the water as He was buried in the tomb, and are now raised out of the water as He was resurrected to a New Life.

Paul wrote the Christians in Rome, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin [addiction]; for he who has died is freed from sin (6:7). 

Therefore, we need to be living our lives differently from before we were saved. We now have New Life in God's Holy Spirit that now lives in us, making our dead spirits alive, in addition to the human life we had before.

Now we have the power and authority to break the cycles of addictions that plagued us before, when we had no other choice than to fall into the sin again. 

We have been set free, to have another choice, to choose to do what is right instead. And to continue to do what is right, even in the face of temptation and adversity. 

We have been set free with true Liberty, to have the power to do what is right.

Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under Law but under Grace (Romans 6: 12-14). 

O my Father, please help Your children who are still caught up in the traps You have freed them from. Let them know they have the power to resist the devil, as they run from the temptations that try to enslave them again. 

Father, You have given us New Life, to live now, today, according to Your ways. Let us think Your thoughts, Father, and feel Your feelings, have Your attitudes and "opinions" which are True. Let not any of Your children be deceived any longer with even the least "white lie" that twists Your beautiful Truth. 

And lead us in Your paths of righteousness, Father. We want to follow You, even into valleys of death, if that is where our path goes, knowing that we need fear no evil because You are there with us. And we trust You to guide us out the other side, into Your glorious Day!

Even so, come, Lord Jesus!