LENT DAY 30: No Going Back

 Day 30 Tuesday - Mar 28, 2023; Mar 19, 2024; Apr 8, 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

One of the scarier things in life is the inability to change your mind on some things. It’s part of why I’ll probably never get a tattoo. It’s too “forever”. Once the artist starts inking my skin that’s it - whether I like it or not. If I stamp myself with someone’s name or some image it is there forever. Or think of being on a plane over the ocean and you pass the “point of no return”. There isn’t fuel enough to get home, we’ll have to plough ahead no matter what. 

Baptism has the same finality to it. In Romans 5:12-21, Paul speaks of two humanities: Adam’s humanity that dies (through sin) and Christ’s humanity that is made alive (through justification). Sin reigns in death but grace rules through righteousness and eternal life through Jesus (Romans 5:21). And baptism is that journey from one humanity to the other.

But then chapter 6 comes around and immediately asks if we can just keep on sinning so grace can shine? Paul’s retorts that you must not realize what has happened: you’ve flown past the point of no return! The ink of God’s word has already been written into you through baptism. You’ve gone from death to life. There is no going back. To stop the tattoo artist now will not change what’s been done; to turn the plane around will only end in a crash. We must go the new way of Jesus Christ.

Years ago I read about an atheist convention where there was a hair-drying ceremony: a ritual act of renouncing one’s baptism. Unfortunately for their intentions at the time there is no undoing what God has done. They are baptized forever. Fortunately, then, they are baptized forever. No matter how much they want the message of Jesus erased from their life, they just can’t shake it. I imagine that ceremony exists because of that: because no matter how much they’ve renounced the faith, called it all bologna, and claimed there is nothing more out there they could not shake one thing: they are baptized.

That’s its gift. You can’t ever shake it. It happened to you. Now hear what it means: you’ve passed the point of no return. Don’t waste your time with the hairdryer, just plough ahead by faith in newness of life.

Thank you, Jesus, for not giving me the chance to walk away entirely. Thank you for taking me past the point of no return and into the world of your redemption. Give me faith now to walk in this newness, believing as I should that all sin must die with you and that you have provided me today a different way. Let me go that way today and always. Amen.

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