Baptized--We are Made New

Week 5 Lenten Devotions

Lent Day 29: Monday March 22

Theme for the Week: Holy Baptism--Baptized We Live

Passage for the Day: Romans 6:3-4

³ Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

Reflection:

This is a tough passage because many of us find it difficult to associate baptism and death. How many people who are bringing their infants for baptism want to hear about death? It may be a little bit easier to think about baptism as implying the death of our old sinful selves. Martin Luther refers to this as the death of the “old Adam or old Eve” in us. When I am baptized in Jesus’ name, my old self is drowned in the water, just as Christ was killed on the cross. My old self is the part of me that just finds it so easy to do the wrong things—the part of me that walks away from God and the part of me that keeps slipping into behavior that hurts the people around me. Following baptism, a new person rises from the waters of baptism. In other words, with baptism I are made new, and I leave all that sinful stuff behind. The old sinful person, figuratively, is peeled off of me and I am all new, shiny and sin-free. However, because I am human, it is easy for me to slip into doing the wrongs things again. But not to worry, because baptism is for life, once I have been baptized, each day, I again can figuratively leave all the junk behind me in the waters of baptism and each day I am again made new in Jesus.

Prayer Themes:

Thank God for the cleansing action of the waters of baptism. Thank God that I have been freed from the power of sin in baptism. Thank God that each day, I am again made new. Pray for all who are preparing for that plunge into baptismal waters and pray that their new persons will rise from the waters of baptism.