Before baptism can occur, we must be dead unto sin.
Christ’s burial and resurrection symbolizes baptism. Just as Christ was able to overcome physical
death and live again, through baptism we overcome spiritual death and our
renewed with our sins forgiven. This is why we are baptized by immersion as opposed
to other methods like sprinkling. For us
to be fully renewed and cleansed, we need to be completely immersed, or buried
in the water. In Paul’s epistle to the
Romans, he counsels that for the people to maintain the ‘newness of life’
obtained through baptism, they need to continually cast off sin and follow the
counsels of God. Ideally, the ‘natural
man’ part of us would die at baptism.
After baptism, we should strive to be the servants of
God. We know that we are serving God
when we are being obedient to his commandments. We are servants of sin when our lives are
free from righteousness and we are disobedient.
When we are righteous, are lives are free from sin. That
is the true source of freedom.
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