By: Curtis Baker
When I was a kid one of my favorite movies was the famous Charlton Hesston epic about Moses. Every Easter, the movie would play on Sunday night. We always had church on Sunday night, so I usually missed the opening parts of the movie, but that didn’t really bother me because the scene I wanted to see was the parting of the Red Sea. Looking back on it now, with all the modern technology that makes movies so realistic, the 1950’s technology that split the waters on our television screens looks rather amateur. But at the time, it filled my child like mind with wonder as the water parted on each side. Somehow, in a grand miracle only God could perform, the Israelites crossed the floor of the Red Sea on dry ground while Pharaoh and his army were in hot pursuit to stop them. But just as the last Israelite crossed onto the opposite bank and Moses lowered his staff, the waters came crashing down drowning all of the Egyptians in its flood. It was a great moment of deliverance for God’s people, and I never tired of watching it with wonder.
As Paul continues to narrate the Christian story as a retelling of the original Exodus story in chapters 5-8, he draws on this very dramatic event to point towards our own salvation moment. In chapter 5 Paul taught us that everyone had been caught in slavery to sin because of the sin of our original parents, Adam and Eve. When they sinned in the garden, all those many years ago, they unleashed a force on the earth that God never intended. That force was sin, and its result was slavery and death. Paul has shown in Romans that no one is immune from the power of sin, and therefore, every single person that has ever come into existence has come under the power and slavery of sin. Just as the Israelites were born into a nation of people who were already enslaved to the Egyptians, so too has every human being been born into a world that is already captive to sin.
If the story stopped there it would be an incredibly depressing story. But thankfully, just as Israel’s story did not end with slavery in Egypt, so too has our story not ended in sin and death. As was shown in the classic Charlton Hesston movie, God delivered the people of Israel from their slavery by leading them through the waters of the Red Sea. In a similar way, Paul shows us in Romans 6:1-4 that we have our own Exodus moment where we too have been delivered from slavery by passing through the water. Our Exodus comes in the form of baptism.
When Paul speaks about baptism, there are two pictures that work together at the same time. One, as we have already mentioned, is tied together with Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea. Just as Israel’s passing through water was the moment of their salvation from Egyptian slavery, so too, when we submit to Christ in baptism, are we freed from our slavery to sin and brought into a new land of freedom with Christ. This picture follows the Exodus theme which will carry on through chapter 8. But there is a second picture that baptism represents that goes beyond the Exodus and the Red Sea. When we are baptized, we literally re-enact the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
According to Paul, here is how it works. We were all slaves to sin and death as the spiritual ancestors of Adam and Eve. When Christ came, offering up his life as a sacrifice on our behalf, he opened a way for us to leave our life of slavery, and to come into a new life of freedom. When a person is baptized, they literally participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus that sets us free from sin. When a person is immersed under the water, their old life in sin dies and is buried in the submersed grave, just as Christ was…but then, just as Christ was raised from the dead, so also when we are lifted from our submersion in water, do we rise up as new people, no longer held captive by sin and death. This doesn’t mean, of course, that sin will not be something we have to struggle with, but Paul says, in baptism, a new reality takes place. Our job as Christian people is to live into the new reality that our baptism has given us. Next week Paul will help us understand how this is accomplished.
(curtisbaker@hotmail.com) Write to: P.O. Box 157, Slaton, TX 79364
