Day 39 (Good Friday) - Apr 7, 2023; Mar 29, 2024; Apr 18, 2025
Is Christ divided? Was Paul crucified for you? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? -1 Corinthians 1:13
Was Paul crucified for you? The answer very clearly is no. Thus you were not baptized into Paul’s name; or mine; or your parents; or some other saint. You were baptized into Jesus who died for you. Paul’s questions here remind us that baptism’s name proclaims baptism’s message. And that message is the Son of God was sent by his Father and with the Spirit’s leading journeyed from the River Jordan (where his ministry began with a baptism) to the cross on Calvary.
Today is Good Friday. Today the church observes the occasion of Christ’s death by crucifixion. It was not a pleasant death, one so grueling certain people in society were excluded from it. But not Jesus. He didn’t come among the privileged. He came among the lowly, and he died as a lowly criminal. It would have been traumatic to witness, but it is something that we adore because we know it was done for us.
That’s baptism’s message: it says "for you"! You were baptized because Jesus died for you! That sacrament is all you’ll ever need to observe this day with the most reverent faith. The only reason many baptized people don’t is - like the church in Corinth whom Paul was writing these words to - they do not use baptism rightly. Or worse yet they don’t use it all. This devotional has aimed to help you find ways to use it rightly: in prayer, in repentance, in applying to ourselves today God’s grace, to strengthen faith, unite under the gospel, see a dignity bestowed to us by God through Christ, to lead us into the wider world of faith like church, communion, and the Word.
Was Jesus crucified for you? Yes. That’s why you received his baptism and everything it bestows. We’ve talked about how Jesus is the source of grace while baptism is the means. Today we as a church remember what Jesus as the source of baptism’s grace endured for us. What is yours freely, was to God very costly. As a means of grace, baptism then reminds us that there is a source of grace. But it also means that the grace is going somewhere for a purpose. You are the somewhere and your salvation is the purpose. Baptism then bears witness to the “good” of Good Friday, so that the horrors of this day would not be for nothin’...
Instead...they’d be for you.
It was for a reason I was baptized in your name, O Lord. May I never forget that you were crucified for me. I want my baptism to mean something; let its meaning be from you. I want your cross to matter for my life; let baptism assure me it does. And when I forget all that you have done for me, misuse or neglect my baptismal grace, and when my heart is cold to the message of the cross; thank you for not taking it away but by my baptism leaving it right there always to be used again.
We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, for by your holy cross you have redeemed the world. Amen.
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