The Children For Christ by Andrew Murray

Forty-Fifth Day – Baptized into Christ
`We who died to sin, shall we live any longer therein? Or are ye ignorant that all
we, who were baptized into Christ Jesus, were baptized into His death? We were
buried therefore with Him, through a baptism into death; that like as Christ was
raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in
newness of life.’ Rom. 6: 3, 4. `In Him ye are complete, having been buried with
Him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with Him, through faith in the
working of God, who raised Him from the dead.’ Col. 2: 10-12.
In writing both to the Romans and the Colossians, Paul, in pleading
with believers to live a life of separation from sin and the world — a life
of holiness and liberty — uses their baptism into Christ as his great
argument. He unfolds the spiritual meaning of baptism, as a union with
Christ both in His death and His life, and shows how this is both the
obligation and the possibility of a walk like Christ’s in newness of life.
Baptism is the symbol of the deep spiritual mystery of our perfect
oneness with Christ; as it is understood and believed, it is the pledge of
an abiding union and the ever growing likeness to Him.
It is a matter of deep importance to remember that baptism brings and
seals to an infant nothing less than to an adult. All the believing parent
receives in the covenant and its seal, is by God meant and secured for
the child too. For a double reason thus the parent needs continually to
remember what God meant baptism to be. Without this he cannot
educate the child into the possession of what God intended for it in its
baptism. Without this he cannot live himself, in the power of his
baptism, that life which alone can lead the baptized child to the blessing
God has in store for him. Let us try and understand what, in the full
light of the Holy Spirit’s teaching, baptism really is.
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