Romans 6:1b-11 (NRSV)
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Chapter 6What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? Verse 2By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Verse 3Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Verse 4Therefore 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. Verse 5For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Verse 6We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. Verse 7For whoever has died is freed from sin. Verse 8But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. Verse 9We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. Verse 10The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. Verse 11So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Devotion
The journey of life is made between two realities – the present and the future. Our future is unknown in detail. Death is certain. But as Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15, because Christ has been raised as the first fruits of the dying, we too have the promise of resurrection.
But what of the present? Paul uses baptism to explain. In baptism we died with Christ to the old self and are raised to Christ’s risen life. That is the new reality.
Thus baptism has consequences for the present. The gift of baptism becomes a challenge to walk in Christ’s way, a walk unfinished in our lifetimes. An old prayer puts it this way: “Lord, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I want to be, and I am not what I will be. But Lord I thank you that I am not what I was.”
Prayer
O God of mercy and transforming power, help us to walk in newness of life. Enable us to die to the worst in ourselves and rise anew to the glory of Christ. Amen.