LENT DAY 11: The Power of His Resurrection

 

Day 11 Monday - Mar 6, 2023; Feb 26, 2024; Mar 17, 2025

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ -1 Peter 3:21

Back on Ash Wednesday, we saw how baptism’s cleansing is no mere outward thing, rather it is “an appeal to God for a good conscience”. We can dare to believe that God gives us a good conscience. No matter how deep our corruption runs, God’s cleansing runs just as deep. You can be forgiven and your conscience can be made clean.

Now we remember the second part: it is through the resurrection of Jesus Christ that we receive this good conscience. Baptism gives us a new start because it gives us the new life that Jesus received when God raised him from the dead. Paul wanted the Ephesian congregation to know the “immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead…” (Ephesians 1:19-20). Peter tells us that we may know something of this power when we believe that baptism might save us and give us a clear conscience precisely by the way it shares this power with us. 

Faith will learn from baptism then to link our own life to Christ’s. It is because God raised him from the dead that you have clear conscience. By being baptized, an appeal has been made to God through Jesus’ resurrection to give you a good conscience. 

And precisely because Peter says that baptism saves you in this way, it tells you that God has answered that appeal. It not only directs our faith to link our good conscience with Jesus, but it becomes the link between our conscience and Jesus. To be baptized is to have a good conscience through Jesus' resurrection. Baptism therefore is one of the ways God helps us to (as Paul puts it) “know him and the power of his resurrection” (Philippians 3:10).

Jesus, if not for you what would be my spiritual state today? I would no doubt be lost. But like a lost sheep found by the shepherd, my conscience has been set right with my Heavenly Father through you. Let the fact that I am baptized keep me firm in this faith, and through my baptism then let me know you and power of your resurrection for my life. Amen.

This post is a part of my daily Lenten devotional on Baptism. You can read more about it here.