Rom 6:3 Or are you ignorant that whoever are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death?
Rom 6:4 We, then, were entombed together with Him through baptism into death, that, even as Christ was roused from among the dead through the glory of the Father, thus we also should be walking in newness of life.”
Rom 6:5 For if we have become planted together in the likeness of His death, nevertheless we shall be of the resurrection also,
There are some things which make Christianity isolated from every other religion in the world.
Who, or what, is a Christian?
I marvel when I hear people “loosely claim” to be Christians, and yet live with no Christ likeness in their lives.
If you are a Christian, you become transformed, or metamorphosized, to be like Christ.
I shudder at those who claim to be Christians and yet support wholesale abortion.
Christ, who is the author of life, is a contradiction to death. There is something malevolent with this “so called” Christianity.
Accepting Christ is not a state of mind. Believing, is not a mental ascent. You don’t say I believe in Christ, and then have little or nothing to do with Him. That is hypocrisy.
To accept Christ is surrender, encounter, and a way of life. There is acknowledgment that you need God in your life. You invite Jesus to take over, possess you, and become the loving master and guide of your life.
John 3:5 Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
The process of inviting Jesus in our lives is called to become “born again.”
More accurately, it is the procedure of baptism.
Rom 6:3 Or are you ignorant that whoever are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death?
Biblical baptism, is unlike to our Western act of immersing someone, or sprinkling him with water.
The old process of transforming a cucumber into a pickle was called baptism. This is the true baptism of the Bible.
The cucumber was “baptized” INTO a vinegar solution. The vinegar then effectually worked back THROUGH the cucumber to “pickle it” or alter it into a pickle. The cucumber was converted into something that it was not. This is the implication of what it means to be a Christian.
When a person accepts Jesus Christ, he becomes baptized into Christ. The arriving Holy Spirit immerses, or “pickles” the person INTO everything who Christ is, and all that He went through. When Christ died, you died, when He resurrected you resurrected, by virtue that you are “pickled” or baptized INTO Him.
Because you are submerged INTO Him, or His world, Christ then effectively works back THROUGH you, and pickles you with Himself.
Rom 6:3 Or are you ignorant that whoever are baptized into Christ Jesus, are baptized into His death?
Rom 6:4 We, then, were entombed together with Him through baptism into death, that, even as Christ was roused from among the dead through the glory of the Father, thus we also should be walking in newness of life.”
You became a cadaver just like Him. Let’s reflect on the state of a corpse. A dead man is the most liberated of all human beings. He has no sin. He does not curse, he is not hooked on drugs, nor is he embittered with anger. A corpse has no disease.
Spiritually, a corpse has no trace of life in him. Every smidgeon of life departed him, at the moment that he expired. You, dear Christian, have been baptized or pickled INTO the corpse of Christ, as well as the death process that brought Him to the point of death.
You are free from sin, because you are a corpse. You enjoy the total freedom which a corpse relishes. I reiterate, that when a corpse dies, every trace of life leaves his body. Your old life; your life of brokenness, rejection, disease, and pain, every hurt, and every aching memory is no more. It has left forever!
Rom 6:5 For if we have become planted together in the likeness of His death, nevertheless we shall be of the resurrection also,
Being a corpse is not the final stage for the Christian. For those who experience the death of Christ, they will also experience His powerful resurrection life. They have being pickled into His resurrection and are presently resurrected. We must learn to live from resurrection power through the revelation of the Word of God.
Rom 6:4 We, then, were entombed together with Him through baptism into death, that, even as Christ was roused from among the dead through the glory of the Father, thus we also should be walking in newness of life.”
Then we were entombed or co buried with Christ. We are pickled into Christ’s burial. A buried cadaver is no longer seen, or remembered, and rots away. Our old identity is no more.
By being pickled into Christ’s death and burial, we have lost both our sin filled broken life, our old identity, and the memories of who we were. We are now something that we have never been before.
This old life left our body, and the eternal life of Christ Himself entered our body.
Christian there is nothing in you of what you used to be! When a cadaver goes to a morgue, he has his blood drained, and gets filled with formaldehyde. Your life and blood and everything that personified who you were, is GONE, GONE, GONE!
You are now pickled with the powerful eternal, incorruptible and glorious resurrection life.
We have a life that we never had. We have an identity that we never were. As I prayed, God disclosed to me that this is now part of my identity.
Daniel 10:4 And in the four and twentieth day of the first month, as I was by the side of the great river, which is Hiddekel;
5 Then I lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold a certain man clothed in linen, whose loins were girded with fine gold of Uphaz:
6 His body also was like the beryl, and his face as the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of fire, and his arms and his feet like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice of a multitude.
Daniel describes what we are now pickled into.
Truly we have become a new creation in Christ. This is called metamorphosis, the crux of the Christian faith. What other so called faith claims this? Where else can you get pickled?
Jose and Mary Alvarez 