There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.
– Ephesians 4:4-6
It’s the gospel proclaimed all over again.
It’s Easter morning and life pushing up out of the dead ground. Baptism not only commemorates the death of all that is old in our lives, it celebrates the eternal life God gives us in Christ Jesus.
Baptism is the outward symbol of an inward transformation when a person is brought up out of the old life in the resurrection power of God. In this simple, yet gigantic step of obedience, baptism becomes a powerful witness to the magnitude of God’s work in us.
At the baptism of every new believer, you can hear the low rumble of a stone being rolled away from another tomb.
Once again, the earth shakes before the unstoppable power of a life that can never be quenched.
The power of Jesus’ resurrection, in destroying death “from the inside out,” as one songwriter put it, shook the very foundations of the world. The spiritual tsunami it created two thousand years ago has circled the earth and rises up again in all its power every time another person bursts forth out of the watery grave and takes a first deep breath in the new air of God’s holy presence.
This Easter, we will once again visit an empty tomb and rejoice in God’s victory over death. We will remember how Christ’s resurrection sealed for eternity all He gained on the cross.
We who follow Him to the cross will live with Him forever. We who trust in Him can no more be held by death than He was.
We will rise again. We are eternal in our dying, victorious in our surrender.
Death, burial, resurrection: Every spring shouts the miracle. Every baptism declares it.
Have you been baptized?
Photo courtesy Erik Thorson (2016)
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