LENT DAY 15: All About Jesus

 

Day 15 Friday - Mar 10, 2023; Mar 1, 2024; Mar 21, 2025

For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. -Galatians 3:27

I once was in a conversation around baptism with a couple guys who come from a church that view baptism very differently than our own. As I talked of the reliability of my baptism, even though it happened when I was a baby one of them accused me of putting faith in baptism instead of Jesus. Without hesitation I had one simple reply: that would be true if not for the fact that baptism is all about Jesus!

This scripture was one of the ones I then brought forward for our discussion. To be baptized is to be clothed in Christ, the entire thrust of baptism’s power, significance, and promise was based entirely upon Jesus. In what way can you look at a passage like this and ascribe to it a significance other than through Jesus? Indeed, it is hard to find passages about baptism that are not about Jesus or spoken by Jesus. We must learn then that baptism is all about Jesus.

It is important that we never lose sight of this or we will put our faith in baptism instead of Christ. One must learn to trust in Christ through your baptism. One must learn that the only trustworthy thing about baptism is what Jesus makes it to be. It is because he gave it to the church, commanded it be done, put his own name into it, sealed it with his own death, pours the Spirit out in it, and is the content of its promises that we have any reason for baptism to belong to faith and the gospel. What age I am, faith I have, church I am a part of, person I pick to baptize me - these things are not the substance of the act, just circumstances around which it happened. But in those waters is Christ. And just as those waters wash over you, so does he - clothing you with a righteousness that is not your own.

So when you think about your baptism, let it always make you think about Jesus.

Holy Spirit, you have come to take everything of my Lord Jesus and teach it to me. Keep him always on my mind, in my heart, and working in my life. Let me, through my baptism, believe all the more in his power, his presence, and his salvation. Cover my whole life with Jesus; by my baptism clothe me in the life he lived for me and the death he died for me. In Jesus' name I ask this, Amen.

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