Baptism--A Burial


                             October 30th, 1881
                                     by
                               C. H. SPURGEON
                                (1834-1892)


"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ 
were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by 
baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the 
glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."--
Romans 6:3,4

I shall not enter into controversy over this text, although over it some 
have raised the question of infant baptism or believers' baptism, 
immersion or sprinkling. If any person can give a consistent and 
instructive interpretation of the text, otherwise than by assuming 
believers' immersion to be Christian baptism, I should like to see them 
do it. I myself am quite incapable of performing such a feat, or even of 
imagining how it can be done. I am content to take the view that baptism 
signifies the burial of believers in water in the name of the Lord, and I 
shall so interpret the text. If any think not so, it may at least interest 
them to know what we understand to be the meaning of the baptismal 
rite, and I trust that they may think none the less of the spiritual sense 
because they differ as to the external sign. After all, the visible emblem 
is not the most prominent matter in the text. May God the Holy Spirit 
help us to reach its inner teaching.

I do not understand Paul to say that if improper persons, such as 
unbelievers, and hypocrites, and deceivers, are baptized they are 
baptized into our Lord's death. He says "so many of us," putting himself 
with the rest of the children of God. He intends such as are entitled to 
baptism, and come to it with their hearts in a right state. Of them he 
says, "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus 
Christ were baptized into his death?" He does not even intend to say that 
those who were rightly baptized have all of them entered into the 
fullness of its spiritual meaning; for if they had, there would have been 
no need of the question, "Know ye not?" It would seem that some had 
been baptized who did not clearly know the meaning of their own 
baptism. They had faith, and a glimmer of knowledge sufficient to make 
them right recipients of baptism, but they were not well instructed in the 
teaching of baptism; perhaps they saw in it only a washing, but had 
never discerned the burial. I will go further, and say that I question if 
any of us yet know the fullness of the meaning of either of the 
ordinances which Christ has instituted. As yet we are, with regard to 
spiritual things, like children playing on the beach while the ocean rolls 
before us. At best we wade up to our ankles like our little ones on the 
sea shore. A few among us are learning to swim; but then we only swim 
where the bottom is almost within reach. Who among us has yet come to 
lose sight of shore and to swim in the Atlantic of divine love, where 
fathomless truth rolls underneath, and the infinite is all around? Oh, may 
God daily teach us more and more of what we already know in part, and 
may the truth which we have as yet but dimly perceived come to us in a 
brighter and clearer manner, till we see all things in clear sunlight. This 
can only be as our own character becomes more clear and pure; for we 
see according to what we are; and as is the eye such is that which it sees. 
The pure in heart alone can see a pure and holy God. We shall be like 
Jesus when we shall see him as he is, and certainly we shall never see 
him as he is till we are like him. In heavenly things we see as much as 
we have within ourselves. He who has eaten Christ's flesh and blood 
spiritually is the man who can see this in the sacred Supper, and he who 
has been baptized into Christ sees Christ in baptism. To him that hath 
shall be given, and he shall have abundantly.

Baptism sets forth the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and our 
participation therein. Its teaching is twofold. First, think of our 
representative union with Christ, so that when he died and was buried it 
was on our behalf, and we were thus buried with him. This will give you 
the teaching of baptism so far as it sets forth a creed. We declare in 
baptism that we believe in the death of Jesus, and desire to partake in all 
the merit of it. But there is a second equally important matter and that is 
our realized union with Christ which is set forth in baptism, not so much 
as a doctrine of our creed as a matter of our experience. There is a 
manner of dying, of being buried, of rising, and of living in Christ which 
must be displayed in each one of us if we are indeed members of the 
body of Christ.

I. First, then, I want you to think of OUR REPRESENTATIVE UNION 
WITH CHRIST as it is set forth in baptism as a truth to be believed. Our 
Lord Jesus is the substitute for his people, and when he died it was on 
their behalf and in their stead. The great doctrine of our justification lies 
in this, that Christ took our sins, stood in our place, and as our surety 
suffered, and bled, and died, thus presenting on our behalf a sacrifice for 
sin. We are to regard him, not as a private person, but as our 
representative. We are buried with him in baptism unto death to show 
that we accept him as being for us dead and buried.

Baptism as a burial with Christ signifies, first, acceptance of the death 
and burial of Christ as being for us. Let us do that at this very moment 
with all our hearts. What other hope have we? When our divine Lord 
came down from the heights of glory and took upon himself our 
manhood, he became one with you and with me; and being found in 
fashion as a man, it pleased the Father to lay sin upon him, even your 
sins and mine. Do you not accept that truth, and agree that the Lord 
Jesus should be the bearer of your guilt, and stand for you in the sight of 
God? "Amen! Amen!" say all of you. He went up to the tree loaded with 
all this guilt, and there he suffered in our room and stead as we ought to 
have suffered. It pleased the Father, instead of bruising us, to bruise him. 
He put him to grief, making his soul an offering for sin. Do we not 
gladly accept Jesus as our substitute? O beloved, whether you have been 
baptized in water or not, I put this question to you, "Do you accept the 
Lord Jesus as your surety and substitute?" For if you do not, you shall 
bear your own guilt and carry your own sorrow, and stand in your own 
place beneath the glance of the angry justice of God. Many of us at this 
moment are saying in our inmost hearts--

                         "My soul looks back to see
                        The burdens thou didst bear,
                      When hanging on the cursed tree,
                      And hopes her guilt was there."

Now, by being buried with Christ in baptism, we set our seal to the fact 
that the death of Christ was on our behalf, and that we were in him, and 
died in him, and, in token of our belief, we consent to the watery grave, 
and yield ourselves to be buried according to his command. This is a 
matter of fundamental faith--Christ dead and buried for us; in other 
words, substitution, suretyship, vicarious sacrifice. His death is the hinge 
of our confidence: we are not baptized into his example, or his life, but 
into his death. We hereby confess that all our salvation lies in the death 
of Jesus, which death we accept as having been incurred on our account.

But this is not all; because if I am to be buried, it should not be so much 
because I accept the substitutionary death of another for me as because I 
am dead myself. Baptism is an acknowledgment of our own death in 
Christ. Why should a living man be buried? Why should he even be 
buried because another died on his behalf? My burial with Christ means 
not only that he died for me, but that I died in him, so that my death with 
him needs a burial with him. Jesus died for us because he is one with us. 
The Lord Jesus Christ did not take his people's sins by an arbitrary 
choice of God; but it was most natural and fit and proper that he should 
take his people's sins, since they are his people, and he is their federal 
head. It behooved Christ to suffer for this reason--that he was the 
covenant representative of his people. He is the Head of the body, the 
Church; and if the members sinned, it was meet that the Head, though 
the Head had not sinned, should bear the consequence of the acts of the 
body. As there is a natural relationship between Adam and those that are 
in Adam, so is there between the second Adam and those that are in him. 
I accept what the first Adam did as my sin. Some of you may quarrel 
with it, and with the whole covenant dispensation, if you please; but as 
God has pleased to set it up, and I feel the effect of it, I see no use in my 
controverting it. As I accept the sin of father Adam, and feel that I 
sinned in him, even so with intense delight I accept the death and 
atoning sacrifice of my second Adam , and rejoice that in him I have 
died and risen again. I lived, I died, I kept the law, I satisfied justice in 
my covenant Head. Let me be buried in baptism that I may show to all 
around that I believe I was one with my Lord in his death and burial for 
sin.

Look at this, O child of God, and do not be afraid of it. These are Grand 
truths, but they are sure and comforting. You are getting among Atlantic 
billows now, but be not afraid. Realize the sanctifying effect of this 
truth. Suppose that a man had been condemned to die on account of a 
great crime; suppose, further, that he has actually died for that crime, 
and now, by some wonderful work of God, after having died he has 
been made to live again. He comes among men again as alive from the 
dead, and what ought to be the state of his mind with regard to his 
offence? Will he commit that crime again? A crime for which he has 
died? I say emphatically, God forbid. Rather should he say, "I have 
tasted the bitterness of this sin, and I am miraculously lifted up out of 
the death which it brought upon me, and made to live again: now will I 
hate the thing that slew me, and abhor it with all my soul." He who has 
received the wages of sin should learn to avoid it for the future. But you 
reply, "We never did die so; we were never made to suffer the due 
reward of our sins." Granted. But that which Christ did for you comes to 
the same thing, and the Lord looks upon it as the same thing. You are so 
one with Jesus, that you must regard his death as your death, his 
sufferings as the chastisement of your peace. You have died in the death 
of Jesus, and now by strange, mysterious grace you are brought up again 
from the pit of corruption unto newness of life. Can you, will you, go 
into sin again? You have seen what God thinks of sin: you perceive that 
he utterly loathes it; for when it was laid on his dear Son, he did not 
spare him, but put him to grief and smote him to death. Can you, after 
that, turn back to the accursed thing which God hates? Surely, the effect 
of the great grief of the Saviour upon your spirit must be sanctifying. 
How shall we who are dead to sin live any longer therein? How shall we 
that have passed under its curse, and endured its awful penalty, tolerate 
its power? Shall we go back to this murderous, villainous, virulent, 
abominable evil? It cannot be. Grace forbids.

This doctrine is not the conclusion of the whole matter. The text 
describes us as buried with a view to rising. "Therefore we are buried 
with him by baptism unto death,"--for what object?--"that like as Christ 
was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also 
should walk in newness of life." Be buried in Christ! What for? That you 
may be dead for ever? No, but that now getting where Christ is, you may 
go where Christ goes. Behold him, then: he goes, first, into the 
sepulchre, but next out of the sepulchre; for when the third morning 
came he rose. If you are one with Christ at all, you must be one with him 
all through; you must be one with him in his death, and one with him in 
his burial, then you shall come to be one with him in his resurrection. 
Am I a dead man now? No, blessed be his name, it is written, "Because I 
live ye shall live also." True, I am dead in one sense, "For ye are dead"; 
but yet not dead in another, "For your life is hid with Christ in God"; 
and how is he absolutely dead who has a hidden life? No; since I am one 
with Christ I am what Christ is: as he is a living Christ, I am a living 
spirit. What a glorious thing it is to have arisen from the dead, because 
Christ has given us life. Our old legal life has been taken from us by the 
sentence of the law, and the law views us as dead; but now we have 
received a new life, a life out of death, resurrection-life in Christ Jesus. 
The life of the Christian is the life of Christ. Ours is not the life of the 
first creation, but of the new creation from among the dead. Now we 
live in newness of life, quickened unto holiness, and righteousness, and 
joy by the Spirit of God. The life of the flesh is a hindrance to us; our 
energy is in his Spirit. In the highest and best sense our life is spiritual 
and heavenly. This also is doctrine which is to be held most firmly.

I want you to see the force of this; for I am aiming at practical results 
this morning. If God has given to you and to me an entirely new life in 
Christ, how can that new life spend itself after the fashion of the old 
life? Shall the spiritual live as the carnal? How can you that were the 
servants of sin, but have been made free by precious blood, go back to 
your old slavery? When you were in the old Adam life, you lived in sin, 
and loved it; but now you have been dead and buried, and have come 
forth into newness of life: can it be that you can go back to the beggarly 
elements from which the Lord has brought you out? If you live in sin, 
you will be false to your profession, for you profess to be alive unto 
God? If you walk in lust, you will tread under foot the blessed doctrines 
of the Word of God, for these lead to holiness and purity. You would 
make Christianity to be a by-word and a proverb, if, after all, you who 
were quickened from your spiritual death should exhibit a conduct no 
better than the life of ordinary men, and little superior to what your 
former life used to be. As many of you as have been baptized have said 
to the world,--We are dead to the world, and we have come forth into a 
new life. Our fleshly desires are henceforth to be viewed as dead, for 
now we live after a fresh order of things. The Holy Spirit has wrought in 
us a new nature, and though we are in the world, we are not of it, but are 
new-made men, "created anew in Christ Jesus." This is the doctrine 
which we avow to all mankind, that Christ died and rose again, and that 
his people died and rose again in him. Out of the doctrine grows death 
unto sin and life unto God, and we wish by every action and every 
movement of our lives to teach it to all who see us.

So far the doctrine: is it not a precious one indeed? Oh, if you be indeed 
one with Christ, shall the world find you polluting yourselves? Shall the 
members of a generous, gracious Head be covetous and grasping? Shall 
the members of a glorious, pure, and perfect Head be defiled with the 
lusts of the flesh and the follies of a vain life? If believers are indeed so 
identified with Christ that they are his fullness, should they not be 
holiness itself? If we live by virtue of our union with his body, how can 
we live as other Gentiles do? How is it that so many professors exhibit a 
mere worldly life, living for business and for pleasure, but not for God, 
in God, or with God? They sprinkle a little religion on a worldly life, 
and so hope to Christianize it. But it will not do. I am bound to live as 
Christ would have lived under my circumstances; in my private chamber 
or in my public pulpit, I am bound to be what Christ would have been in 
like case. I am bound to prove to men that union to Christ is no fiction, 
or fanatical sentiment: but that we are swayed by the same principles 
and actuated by the same motives.

Baptism is thus an embodied creed, and you may read it in these words: 
"Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through 
the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead."

II. But , secondly, A REALIZED UNION WITH CHRIST is also set 
forth in baptism, and this is rather a matter of experience than of 
doctrine.

1. First, there is, as a matter of actual experience in the true believer, 
death. "Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus 
Christ were baptized into his death?" It must be contrary to all law to 
bury those who are yet alive. Until they are dead, men can have no right 
to be buried. Very well, then, the Christian is dead,--dead, first, to the 
dominion of sin. Whenever sin called him aforetime he answered, "Here 
am I, for thou didst call me." Sin ruled his members, and if sin said, "Do 
this," he did it, like the soldiers obedient to their centurion; for sin ruled 
over all the parts of his nature, and exercised over him a supreme 
tyranny. Grace has changed all this. When we are converted we become 
dead to the dominion of sin. If sin calls us now, we refuse to come, for 
we are dead. If sin commands us we will not obey, for we are dead to its 
authority. Sin comes to us now--oh, that it did not,--and it finds in us the 
old corruption which is crucified, but not yet dead; but it has no 
dominion over our true life. Blessed be God, sin cannot reign over us, 
though it may assail us and work us harm. "Sin shall not have dominion 
over you; for ye are not under law, but under grace." We sin, but not 
with allowance. With what grief we look back upon our transgressions! 
How earnestly do we endeavour to avoid them! Sin tries to maintain its 
usurped power over us; but we do not acknowledge it as our sovereign. 
Evil enters us now as an interloper and a stranger, and works sad havoc, 
but it does not abide in us upon the throne; it is an alien, and despised, 
and no more honoured and delighted in. We are dead to the reigning 
power of sin.

The believer, if spiritually buried with Christ, is dead to the desire of 
any such power. "What!" say you, "do not godly men have sinful 
desires?" Alas, they do. The old nature that is in them lusteth towards 
sin; but the true man, the real ego, desires to be purged of every speck or 
trace of evil. The law in the members would fain urge to sin, but the life 
in the heart constrains to holiness. I can honestly say, for my own self, 
that the deepest desire of my soul is to live a perfect life. If I could have 
my own best desire, I would never sin again; and though, alas, I do 
consent to sin so that I become responsible when I transgress, yet my 
innermost self loathes iniquity. Sin is my bondage, not my pleasure; my 
misery, not my delight; at the thought of it I cry out, "O wretched man 
that I am! who shall deliver me?" In our heart of hearts our spirit cleaves 
steadfastly to that which is good, and true, and heavenly, so that the real 
man delights in the law of God, and follows hard after goodness. The 
main current and true bent of our soul's wish and will is not towards sin, 
and the apostle taught us no mere fancy when he said, "For he that is 
dead is freed from sin."

Moreover, in the next place we are dead as to the pursuits and aims of 
the sinning and ungodly life. Brethren, are any of you that profess to be 
God's servants living for yourselves? Then you are not God's servants; 
for he that is really born again lives unto God: the object of his life is the 
glory of God and the good of his fellow-men. This is the prize that is set 
before the quickened man, and towards this he runs. "I do not run that 
way," says one. Very well, then you will not come to the desired end. If 
you are running after the pleasures of the world or the riches of it, you 
may win the prize you run for, but you cannot win "the prize of our high 
calling in Christ Jesus." I hope that many of us can honestly say that we 
are now dead to every object in life, except the glory of God in Christ 
Jesus. We are in the world, and have to live as other men do, carrying on 
our ordinary business; but all this is subordinate, and held in as with bit 
and bridle; our aims are above yon changeful moon. The flight of our 
soul, like that of an eagle, is above these clouds: though that bird of the 
sun alights upon the rock, or even descends to the plain, yet its joy is to 
dwell above, out soaring the lightning, rising over the black head of the 
tempest, and looking down upon all earthly things. Henceforth our 
grace-given life speeds onward and upward; we are not of the world, 
and the world's engagements are not those upon which we spend our 
noblest powers.

Again, we are dead in this sense, that we are dead to the guidance of sin. 
The lust of the flesh drives a man this way and that way. He steers his 
course by the question, "What is most pleasant? What will give me most 
present gratification?" The way of the ungodly is mapped out by the 
hand of selfish desire: but you that are true Christians have another 
guide, you are led by the Spirit in a right way. You ask, "What is good 
and what is acceptable in the sight of the Most High?" Your daily prayer 
is, "Lord, show me what thou wouldest have me to do?" You are alive to 
the teachings of the Spirit, who will lead you into all truth; but you are 
deaf, yea, dead to the dogmas of carnal wisdom, the oppositions of 
philosophy, the errors of proud human wisdom. Blind guides who fall 
with their victims into the ditch are shunned by you, for you have 
chosen the way of the Lord. What a blessed state of heart this is! I trust, 
my brethren, that we have fully realized it! We know the Shepherd's 
voice, and a stranger we will not follow. One is our teacher, and we 
submit our understandings to his infallible instruction.

Our text must have had a very forcible meaning among the Romans in 
Paul's time, for they were sunk in all manner of odious vices. Take an 
average Roman of that period, and you would have found in him a man 
accustomed to spend a large part of his time in the amphitheater, 
hardened by the brutal sight of bloody shows, in which gladiators slew 
each other to amuse a holiday crowd. Taught in such a school, the 
Roman was cruel to the last degree, and withal ferocious in the 
indulgence of his passions. A depraved man was not regarded as being 
at all degraded; not only nobles and emperors were monsters of vice, but 
the public teachers were impure. When those who were regarded as 
moral were corrupt, you may imagine what the immoral were. "Enjoy 
yourself; follow after the pleasures of the flesh," was the rule of the age. 
Christianity was the introduction of a new element. See here a Roman 
converted by the grace of God! What a change is in him! His neighbours 
say, "You were not at the amphitheater this morning. How could you 
miss the sight of the hundred Germans who tore out each other's 
bowels?" "No," he says, "I was not there; I could not bear to be there. I 
am totally dead to it. If you were to force me to be there, I must shut my 
eyes, for I could not look on murder committed in sport!" The Christian 
did not resort to places of licentiousness; he was as good as dead to such 
filthiness. The fashions and customs of the age were such that Christians 
could not consent to them, and so they became dead to society. It was 
not merely that Christians did not go into open sin, but they spoke of it 
with horror, and their lives rebuked it. Things which the multitude 
counted a joy, and talked of exultingly, gave no comfort to the follower 
of Jesus, for he was dead to such evils. This is our solemn avowal when 
we come forward to be baptized. We say by acts which are louder than 
words that we are dead to those things in which sinners take delight, and 
we wish to be so accounted.

2. The next thought in baptism is burial. Death comes first, and burial 
follows. Now, what is burial, brethren? Burial is, first of all, the seal of 
death; it is the certificate of decease. "Is such a man dead?" say you. 
Another answers, "Why, dear sir, he was buried a year ago." There have 
been instances of persons being buried alive, and I am afraid that the 
thing happens with sad frequency in baptism, but it is unnatural, and by 
no means the rule. I fear that many have been buried alive in baptism, 
and have therefore risen and walked out of the grave just as they were. 
But if burial is true, it is a certificate of death. If I am able to say in 
very truth, "I was buried with Christ thirty years ago," I must surely be 
dead. Certainly the world thought so, for not long after my burial with 
Jesus I began to preach his name, and by that time the world thought me very 
far gone, and said, "He stinketh." They began to say all manner of evil 
against the preacher; but the more I stank in their nostrils the better I 
liked it, for the surer I was that I was really dead to the world. It is good 
for a Christian to be offensive to wicked men. See how our Master stank 
in the esteem of the godless when they cried, "Away with him, away 
with him!" Though no corruption could come near his blessed body, yet 
his perfect character was not savoured by that perverse generation. 
There must, then, be in us death to the world, and some of the effects of 
death, or our baptism is void. As burial is the certificate of death, so is 
burial with Christ the seal of our mortification to the world.

But burial is, next, the displaying of death. While the man is indoors the 
passers-by do not know that he is dead; but when the funeral takes place, 
and he is carried through the streets, everybody knows that he is dead. 
This is what baptism ought to be. The believer's death to sin is at first a 
secret, but by an open confession he bids all men know that he is dead 
with Christ. Baptism is the funeral rite by which death to sin is openly 
set forth before all men.

Next, burial is the separateness of death. The dead man no longer 
remains in the house, but is placed apart as one who ceases to be 
numbered with the living. A corpse is not welcome company. Even the 
most beloved object after a while cannot be tolerated when death has 
done his work upon it. Even Abraham, who had been so long united 
with his beloved Sarah, is heard to say, "Bury my dead out of my sight." 
Such is the believer when his death to the world is fully known: he is 
poor company for worldlings, and they shun him as a damper upon their 
revelry. The true saint is put into the separated class with Christ, 
according to his word, "If they have persecuted me, they will also 
persecute you." The saint is put away in the same grave as his Lord; for 
as he was, so are we also in this world. He is shut up by the world in the 
one cemetery of the faithful, if I may so call it, where all that are in 
Christ are dead to the world together, with this epitaph for them all, 
"And ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God."

And the grave is the place--I do not know where to get a word--of the 
settledness of death; for when a man is dead and buried you never 
expect to see him come home again: so far as this world is concerned, 
death and burial are irrevocable. They tell me that spirits walk the earth, 
and we have all read in the newspaper "The Truth about Ghosts," but I 
have my doubts on the subject. In spiritual things, however, I am afraid 
that some are not so buried with Christ but what they walk a great deal 
among the tombs. I am grieved at heart that it should be so. The man in 
Christ cannot walk as a ghost, because he is alive somewhere else; he 
has received a new being, and therefore he cannot mutter and peep 
among the dead hypocrites around him. See what our chapter saith about 
our Lord: "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath 
no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: 
but in that he liveth , he liveth unto God." If we have been once raised 
from dead works we shall never go back to them again. I may sin, but 
sin can never have dominion over me; I may be a transgressor and 
wander much from my God, but never can I go back to the old death 
again. When my Lord's grace got hold of me, and buried me, he wrought 
in my soul the conviction that henceforth and for ever I was to the world 
a dead man. I am right glad that I made no compromise, but came right 
out. I have drawn the sword, and thrown away the scabbard. Tell the 
world they need not try to fetch us back, for we are spoiled for them as 
much as if we were dead. All they could have would be our carcasses. 
Tell the world not to tempt us any longer, for our hearts are changed. 
Sin may charm the old man who hangs there upon the cross, and he may 
turn his leering eye that way, but he cannot follow up his glance, for he 
cannot get down from the cross: the Lord has taken care to use the 
mallet well, and he has fastened his hands and feet right firmly, so that 
the crucified flesh must still remain in the place of doom and death. Yet 
the true, the genuine life within us cannot die, for it is born of God; 
neither can it abide in the tombs, for its call is to purity and joy and 
liberty; and to that call it yields itself.

3. We have come as far as death and burial; but baptism, according to 
the text, represents also resurrection: "That like as Christ was raised up 
from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in 
newness of life." Now, notice that the man who is dead in Christ, and 
buried in Christ, is also raised in Christ, and this is a special work upon 
him. All the dead are not raised, but our Lord himself is "the firstfruits of 
them that slept." He is the first-begotten from among the dead. 
Resurrection was a special work upon the body of Christ by which he 
was raised up, and that work, begun upon the Head, will continue till all 
the members partake of it, for--

                      "Though our inbred sins require
                         Our flesh to see the dust;
                     Yet as the Lord our Saviour rose,
                        So all his followers must."

As to our soul and spirit, the resurrection has begun upon us. It has not 
come to our bodies yet, but it will be given to them at the appointed day. 
For the present a special work has been wrought upon us by which we 
have been raised up from among the dead. Brethren, if you had been 
dead and buried, and had been lying one night, say, in Woking 
Cemetery, and if a divine voice had called you right up from the grave 
when the silent stars were shining on the open heath--if, I say, you had 
risen right out from the green mound of turf, what a lonely being you 
would have been in the vast cemetery amid the stilly night! How you 
would sit down on the grave and wait for morning! That is very much 
your condition with regard to the present evil world. You were once like 
the rest of the sinners around you, dead in sin, and sleeping in the grave 
of evil custom. The Lord by his power has called you out of your grave, 
and now you are alive in the midst of death. There can be no fellowship 
here for you; for what communion have the living with the dead? The 
man out there in the cemetery just quickened would find none among all 
the dead around him with whom he could converse, and you can find no 
companions in this world. There lies a skull, but it sees not from the 
eyeholes; neither is there speech in its grim mouth. I see a mass of bones 
lying in yon corner: the living one looks at them, but they cannot hear or 
speak. Imagine yourself there. All that you would say to the bones 
would be to ask, "Can these dry bones live?" You would be a foreigner 
in that home of corruption, and you would haste to get away. That is 
your condition in the world: God has raised you up from among the 
dead, from out of the company among whom you had your former 
conversation. Now, I pray you, do not go and scratch into the earth, to 
tear up the graves to find a friend there. Who would rend open a coffin 
and cry, "Come, you must drink with me! You must go to the theatre 
with me"? No, we dread the idea of association with the dead, and I 
tremble when I see a professor trying to have communion with worldly 
men. "Come ye out from among them; be ye separate; touch not the 
unclean thing." You know what would happen to you if you were thus 
raised, and were forced to sit close to a dead body newly taken from the 
grave. You would cry, "I cannot bear it; I cannot endure it"; you would 
get to the wind side of the horrid corpse. So with a man that is really 
alive unto God: deeds of injustice, oppression, or unchastity he cannot 
endure; for life loaths corruption.

Notice that, as we are raised up by a special work from among the dead, 
that rising is by divine power. Christ is brought again "from the dead by 
the glory of the Father." What means that? Why did it not say, "by the 
power of the Father"? Ah, beloved, glory is a grander word; for all the 
attributes of God are displayed in all their solemn pomp in the raising of 
Christ from the dead. There was the Lord's faithfulness; for had he not 
declared that his soul should not rest in hell, neither should His Holy 
One see corruption? Was not the love of the Father seen there? I am sure 
it was a delight to the heart of God to bring back life to the body of his 
dear Son. And so, when you and I are raised out of our death in sin, it is 
not merely God's power, it is not merely God's wisdom that is seen, it is 
"the glory of the Father." Oh, to think that every child of God that has 
been quickened has been quickened by "the glory of the Father. " It has 
taken not alone the Holy Spirit, and the work of Jesus, and the work of 
the Father, but the very "glory of the Father." If the tiniest spark of 
spiritual life has to be created by "the glory of the Father," what will be 
the glory of that life when it comes into its full perfection, and we shall 
be like Christ, and see him as he is! O beloved, value highly the new life 
which God has given you. Think of it as making you richer than if you 
had a sea of pearls, greater than if you were descended from the loftiest 
of princes. There is in you that which it required all the attributes of God 
to create. He could make a world by power alone, but you must be 
raised from the dead by "the glory of the Father."

Notice next, that this life is entirely new. We are to "walk in newness of 
life." The life of a Christian is an entirely different thing from the life of 
other men, entirely different from his own life before his conversion, 
and when people try to counterfeit it, they cannot accomplish the task. A 
person writes you a letter and wants to make you think he is a believer, 
but within about half-a-dozen sentences there occurs a line which 
betrays the imposter. The hypocrite has very neatly copied our 
expressions, but not quite. There is a freemasonry among us, and the 
outside world watch us a bit, and by-and-by they pick up certain of our 
signs; but there is a private sign which they can never imitate, and 
therefore at a certain point they break down. A godless man may pray as 
much as a Christian, read as much of the Bible as a Christian, and even 
go beyond us in externals; but there is a secret which he knows not and 
cannot counterfeit. The life divine is so totally new that the unconverted 
have no copy to work by. In every Christian it is as new as if he were the 
very first Christian. Even though in every one it is the image and 
superscription of Christ, yet there is a milled edge or a something about 
the real silver that these counterfeits cannot get a hold of. It is a new, a 
novel, a fresh, a divine thing.

And, lastly, this life is an active thing. I have often wished that Paul had 
not been so fast when I have been reading him. His style travels in 
seven-leagued boots. He does not write like an ordinary man. I beg to 
tell him that if he had written this text according to proper order, it 
should run, "Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of 
the Father, even so we also should be raised from the dead." But see; 
Paul has got over ever so much ground while we are talking: he has 
reached to "walking." The walking includes the living, of which it is the 
sign, and Paul thinks so fast when the Spirit of God is upon him that he 
has passed beyond the cause to the effect. No sooner do we get the new 
life than we become active: we do not sit down and say, "I have received 
a new life: how grateful I ought to be. I will quietly enjoy myself." Oh 
dear, no. We have something to do directly we are alive, and we begin 
walking, and so the Lord keeps us all our lives in his work; he does not 
allow us to sit down contented with the mere fact that we live, nor does 
he allow us to spend all our time in examining whether we are alive or 
no; but he gives us one battle to fight, and then another; he gives us his 
house to build, his farm to till, his children to nurse, and his sheep to 
feed. At times we have fierce struggles with our own spirit, and fears 
lest sin and Satan should prevail, till our life is scarce discerned by itself,
but it is always discerned by its acts. The life that is given to those who 
were dead with Christ is an energetic, forceful life, that is evermore busy 
for Christ, and would, if it could, move heaven and earth and subdue all 
things unto him who is its Head.

This life Paul tells us is an unending one. Once get it, and it will never 
go from you. "Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more."

Next, it is a life which is not under the law or under sin. Christ came 
under the law when he was here, and he had our sin laid on him, and 
therefore died; but after he rose again there was no sin laid on him. In 
his resurrection both the sinner and the Surety are free. What had Christ 
to do after his rising? To bear any more sin? No, but just to live unto 
God. That is where you and I are. We have no sin to carry now; it was 
all laid on Christ. What have we to do? Every time we have the 
headache, or feel ill, are we to cry out, "This is a punishment for my 
sin"? Nothing of the kind. Our punishment is all done with, for we have 
borne the capital sentence, and are dead: our new life must be unto God.

                          "All that remains for me
                          Is but to love and sing,
                       And wait until the angels come
                          To bear me to the King."

I have now to serve him and delight myself in him, and use the power 
which he gives me of calling others from the dead, saying, "Awake, thou 
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." I 
am not going back to the grave of spiritual death nor to my grave-
clothes of sin; but by divine grace I will still believe in Jesus, and go 
from strength to strength, not under law, not fearing hell, nor hoping to 
merit heaven, but as a new creature, loving because loved, living for 
Christ because Christ lives in me, rejoicing in glorious hope of that 
which is yet to be revealed by virtue of my oneness in Christ.

Poor sinner, you do not know anything about this death and burial, and 
you never will till you have power to become sons of God, and that he 
gives to as many as believe on his name. Believe on his name, and it is 
all yours. Amen and Amen.


Provided by:

Bible Bulletin Board
internet: www.biblebb.com
modem: 609-324-9187
Box 318			
Columbus, NJ 08022	
....online since 1986
Sysop/Webmaster: Tony Capoccia