What spiritual reality does baptism picture? Following last week’s message on why Christians should be baptised, we turn to Romans 6 to understand what going down into the water and coming up again declares.
Paul shows us two great realities: our union with Christ in His death and burial, and our resurrection with Him to new life. Baptism pictures a changed relationship to sin and the new nature that enables believers to walk in newness of life.
The water itself does not save us. We are saved by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. Baptism is the outward sign of the spiritual reality already ours through faith in the crucified and risen Saviour.
Our baptism therefore declares both what has happened to us and how we are now called to live. As Paul says, we are to consider ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.