09.20.26 | Sunday Morning | Ps. Joe Cormier

What if the moment we stepped into the waters of baptism, we were not just getting wet but actually burying someone? That is the striking picture painted in Romans 6, where Paul makes clear that the old self does not need to be managed or rehabilitated. It needs to die. When we give our lives to Christ, we are crucified with him, and baptism is the burial. We go under the water carrying the weight of who we used to be, and we come up as people raised into resurrection life. This is not religious ceremony for its own sake. It is a willful, intentional, measurable act of obedience that mirrors the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus himself. The symbolism is impossible to miss when we understand it this way. We are not burying alive things. We bury what is already dead. And if we have truly surrendered to Christ, the old self is already gone. The question worth sitting with is whether we have been quietly digging that old self back up, dragging our past around as though it still has a claim on us. The gospel says it does not. The grave is empty, and so is ours.