LENT DAY 20: Checking Jesus' Pulse

 Day 20 Thursday - Mar 16, 2023; Mar 7, 2024; Mar 27, 2025

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. -Romans 6:3-4

This is arguably the hardest and at the same time most important passage in the Bible about baptism. As we mentioned already, this is the passage our catechism ascribes to the daily significance of baptism. What is more, it is explicit in what we have been saying: that baptism joins us to the death and resurrection of Jesus. On top of even that, Chapter 6 as a whole shows us how much this passage is meant to mean something for our lives (hence our catechism using it to speak of daily significance).

If that is the weight of its importance, here is the rub: it is so easy to take the words lightly. We immediately want to make them a metaphor. We want it to symbolize more than signify. The two are very similar yet loads apart. That is, we want its significance to be entirely symbolic. After all, it says we died to sin and were buried with Christ? I look down and I see my hands moving. It is cold outside as I write this, I could step out and even see my breaths. It sure seems to me like I’m not dead. Thus this death must be symbolic.

But it’s not. The problem is we go looking for its significance by looking down at our body and checking our own pulse. But what we should be doing is checking Christ’s, and when it came to the cross and grave (because that is precisely where this passage takes us) he was not just symbolically dead. Jesus did not metaphorically die so we would live differently. He actually died. And he didn’t do that so we would make a metaphor of his death. He did that to take us from death to life. When I lie in my coffin, I sure don’t want a metaphorical resurrection. I want to know that Christ actually rose and that this new life is actually mine.

In baptism we are directed to Jesus. When he dies, we die. That’s how much baptism joins you to Christ. No matter how many signs of life you check yourself for, when you are taken to the cross you die there because Jesus did. This is why (as we mentioned last time we looked at this passage) Paulson says baptism is an attack on the sinner. It’s because Jesus bore you on the cross. That’s why he died there. Not for himself, but for you.

And that’s why you actually have a way to life apart from sin. That’s why someone new has been raised up within you. Because Jesus really did rise from the grave, and baptism has joined you to that reality just as much.

In short, the only way we understand how this passage actually affects our lives is to see how much it is about Christ’s life, and how much baptism knits the two lives into one story.

Kind heavenly Father. I forget sometimes that your Son actually died for me, and that his story is so much mine that I died there too. This Lent, give me the eyes of your Son as I gaze upon the story of the cross, that I might know what it is to be my story too. Amen.

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