The Discipleship Dare Day Twenty Five - Water Baptism

When you see the golden arches what do you think of? McDonalds. The golden arches are a symbol of fast food. You know what you are going to get no matter where you are in the world when you see those arches. They identify the place as McDonalds.

So, in baptism we are identified with Christ’s death and resurrection. Baptism is symbolic. It tells the world that we have decided to follow Jesus. We are His. It reminds us that we are dead to the power of sin and alive to the Spirit of God living within us. Baptism symbolizes to us that the same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us. Praise God!! What power!

Baptism gives us a new identity – we are “in Christ.” Just read the epistles and see how many times you see these words describing us as in Christ. This is a position in which we have been placed as disciples – a place of security, responsibility and power.

Before Christ’s baptism, baptism was an initiation into the community. If people from other nations or religions wanted to join the Jewish community they had to be baptized to signify their cleansing from their old affiliation and their belonging to the Jewish faith. So, water baptism is an initiation into the body of Christ and the Kingdom of God. While the spiritual birth into the body of Christ happened at salvation, the baptism is an outward sign that this has happened. We belong to one another as believers.

Baptism is a sign. Just as circumcision was a sign in the Old Testament that a person was a Jew, so water baptism is a sign that we are participating in the New Covenant of Christ’s grace.

While we were redeemed, adopted, justified, sanctified, and reborn at the moment of committing our life to Christ, baptism is a sign, symbol, identification and initiation into a life of ongoing transformation into the likeness of Christ.

Few of us truly understand the significance water baptism had in the first century and should have in our lives today. It is a radical first step of obedience for the disciple. What is keeping you from being Baptized?