Baptism: God's Gift of a New Kind of Living - Ephesians 4:17-24
I’m
not going to ask for a show of hands on this one, mainly because it is not something
that many of us would want to admit to in a forum like this, especially sitting
so close to someone else. However, even
though I am not going to ask for anyone to identify themselves to us, I would suggest
that many, if not most, or even all of us have done this. We have an important event in which we want
to look our best, maybe it is a job interview, maybe it is a date, maybe it is
time to meet the future in-laws, or maybe it was even getting ready for church
this morning. We jump in the shower, because,
of course, we want to be clean and make a good first impression. We wash our hair, soap our body, and rinse
off. We get out of the shower, brush
our teeth, put on deodorant, and start getting dressed. Halfway through getting dressed, we
stop. Where is that shirt? It is the shirt that we had planned to wear
for all week long. We look in the
closet, it should be hanging up! Maybe we
folded it without thinking, so we look in our drawers. It’s not there. Then something hits us, “Man…that’s right, I
was supposed to have done the laundry last night…it’s in the hamper.” Then, rather than find a new outfit to
wear—yeah, go ahead and cringe—we start picking through the dirty clothes until
we find the shirt. “Hey, it doesn’t look
too bad. Hmmm, wonder how it smells…Sniff…not too bad…we’ll just throw it in
the dryer with a couple of fabric sheets to freshen it up and knock the
wrinkles out.” Ten minutes later, we
take it out of the dryer, give it the once over, sniff it again, slide it on,
and head out the door.
We’ve
journeyed through the waters of Baptism for a month now, and today we conclude
our journey.
We
began by discovering God’s prevenient grace…the understanding that God begins
working on us before we are ever aware of it.
God’s grace is constantly being poured into our lives and there is
nothing we could ever do to earn it. The
waters of our Baptism recognize and mark that special gift, freely given to us
by God.
We
then realized that as we gather, each and every time we gather, we are in the
midst of a huge family reunion. The
waters of Baptism are the entry way into the family of God. As we receive these waters we are joined to
Christ, made brother or sister with Christ, and brother and sister with all
before us, all with us, and all who will come after us, who have surrendered
their lives to Christ through these waters.
We
unpacked the gift of forgiveness that God offers us through Baptism. With the waters of our baptism, we are washed
clean of sin. That washing is not
because of anything that we do, but because of what Christ has done. We are recipients of God’s justifying grace…
as we are joined to Christ in Baptism, Christ’s righteousness is placed upon
us, erasing our sin before God…God no longer sees our sin, but sees Christ’s
obedience.
Last
week we examined how these aspects of what God does in Baptism grants us a new
birth, a new life…that when we are joined to Christ, as Paul says, we are a new
creation. That what is old, what our
lives have been about in the past, all the ugliness of our sin, is gone, and we
are new creatures, we are born again, through water and the Spirit. We are washed clean and made beautiful and
our past no longer has a hold on us.
So
where does that leave us? That leaves us
with the question of whether we are pulling those clothes out of our hamper. Why would we want to put dirty clothes on our
clean bodies? Paul says, “That is not
the way you learned Christ! For you have
heard about him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus. You were taught to put away your former way
of life, your old self, corrupt and deluded by its lusts, and to be renewed in
the spirit of your minds, and clothe yourselves with the new self, according to
the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”[i]
My
brothers and sisters, once Christ has given us a new life, once we have been
born again, once we have been made new creations, once we are clean, why we would
ever desire to intentionally dress in clothes we know are dirty? Why would we ever want to delve back into the
sin that He has freed us from and continue the same behavior? Through the waters of our Baptism, God not
only gives us a new life, but calls us to begin a new kind of living…living in His
holiness. God pours His grace into our
lives once more…just like prevenient grace, just like justifying grace…and
gives us His Sanctifying grace to make our lives holy like His and enable us to
live lives that reflect His glory. As you will hear me say time and again…with
justifying grace we find that God loves us enough to embrace us just as we are,
even covered with sin…however, with sanctifying grace, we find that God loves
us too much to leave us as we are, He wants to make holy.
All
too often we go rummaging through the hamper trying to use any excuse we can to
put those dirty clothes back on again.
We
say, “I just can’t help myself,” and we go right back to sinning. We find ourselves calling up Betty Jo to tell
her what we heard about Sandy from her neighbor’s cousin’s hairdresser. We find ourselves buying one more lottery
ticket. We find ourselves smoking one
more cigarette. We find ourselves
clicking on the link that we know will take us to that flesh-filled website or
sliding into the bed with someone who is not our spouse. We pull that shirt out of the hamper and
slide our arms right into the sleeves.
When
we use this excuse, we deny the power of God’s Holy Spirit to give us the
strength to resist temptation and live Holy lives. God’s Holy Spirit, recognized with our
Baptism, gives us the strength to be able to resist those temptations. Remember when Christ was tempted? He did not go into that temptation
empty-handed or relying on his own power.
Prior to entering the wilderness Jesus found Himself by the Jordan River
where John was Baptizing those who came.
Jesus entered that river, received the Baptism that John offered, and as
Jesus came out of the waters, what happened?
In every description of Jesus’ baptism, the first thing that is reported
is that the skies opened up and the Spirit, God’s Spirit, the Holy Spirit,
descended upon him. It is then, and only
then, after receiving the Spirit through baptism, that Jesus entered the
wilderness and endured temptation…and we read from Hebrews that Jesus was
tempted in every way as we are and was without sin.[ii] To say that we can’t help but put on those
dirty clothes again, is to deny that we have been joined to Christ, to deny
that God’s Spirit will empower us to resist temptation.
Sometimes
we say, “I was just made me this way” and go right back to sinning. We cuss with every other word we say. We live afraid of our shadow. We get angry and lash out at the drop of a
hat. Or we claim that some other sin is
just part of our make-up, who we are, how we are made, part of our very
nature. We pull those pants out of the
hamper, and step right into them.
When
we use this excuse, we are accusing God of designing us to be sinners. However, at the very beginning of time, God
said, “let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness….”[iii]
From the start we were created to be
sinless and holy like God. Unfortunately,
with the gift of our freewill we chose ourselves and chose to sin…and that is
not of God. Yet, despite our sin, God
gives us the gift of grace, and as we read this morning, our new self has is
“created according to the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness.”[iv] To say that we are just made to put on those
dirty clothes again, to say that it is part of our very being, is to suggest
that sin is part of the very nature and likeness of God or to say that God was
imperfect in how He created and recreated us.
Sometimes
we say (and I am just hitting the big three of our excuses), sometimes we say,
“Everyone else is doing it.” We choose
to get drunk with all the rest of the folks at the party. We join with the rest of the folks telling
racist jokes or ridiculing folks that have a different skin color or speak a
different language. We take the joint,
bottle, or needle that is being passed around the circle to grab hold of the
same buzz that everyone is experiencing.
We pull those dirty undergarments out of the hamper and clothe ourselves
in them.
When
we use this excuse, we fail to hear the word of God shared with us through
Paul, who wrote, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is
good and acceptable and perfect.”[v] And if Paul isn’t enough, we can turn to the
one on whom Christ promised to found the church, the Rock, Peter himself, who
tells us, “Like obedient children, do not be conformed to the desires that you
formally had in ignorance. Instead, as
he who called you is holy, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is
written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.”[vi] To say that we are going to do it because
everyone else is doing it is to choose to conform to the world rather than to
be transformed by God…it is saying that our family, our friends, those around
us are who we would rather be like and are more important to us than our
Creator.
My
friends, it is pretty gross, actually really gross, don’t you think, to
consider taking the shirt, the pants, or the underwear out of the dirty clothes
hamper and putting them on after our shower or bath? The only reason that we would ever consider
doing that is that we forgot to do the laundry and there is absolutely nothing
else to wear. That is not the case with
our lives. God did not forget to wash us,
He cleansed us all through the birth, life, death, and resurrection of His
Son…every one of us, no one has been forgotten.
Just as Jesus knelt and used water to cleanse the feet of his disciples,
so to, God uses this water to cleanse each and every one of us…and through
these waters and the Holy Spirit, God offers us clean clothes, holy clothes, to
wrap about ourselves and enter a new kind of living…living for Jesus, clothed
with Him in all that we do.
Thanks
be to God! My brothers and sisters, let
us cherish this gift that God has given us…the gift of his grace, the gift of a
new family, the gift of forgiveness, the gift of a new life, and the gift of a
new kind of living…
In
the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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