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The Daily Word of Righteousness
The First Four Feasts, #3
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)
The act of being baptized in water represents the fact that the believer has turned his back on the present world, that he has died to the world and the lust thereof. A gospel that does not require the convert to turn from sin and lead a new life of righteousness is not the Christian Gospel.
The "feast" (accepting the Lamb of God as our personal Passover) must be kept with "unleavened bread" (sincerity and truth).
The phrase "newness of life" is associated with the meaning of unleavened bread. Paul commands: "Purge out therefore the old leaven, that ye may be a new lump." The new life in Christ is free from the leaven of sin.
In water baptism the leaven of our old nature is portrayed as dying with Christ on the cross of Calvary.
The crucifixion of our soulish nature is, as we know from Scripture and experience, a position which we are to grasp by faith and work out in our daily life. The adoption of this attitude—that our entire first personality died with Christ and we now are walking in resurrection life—is the manner in which we regard our own state of being, and is the necessary point of view for the saint.
One hardly can overemphasize the importance of considering ourselves to be crucified with Christ and risen with Christ. To make a success of victorious Christian living we must remind ourselves every day that we have come out of the world, have died with Christ on the cross, and have been raised to live in the heavenlies in Him at the right hand of the Father.
The necessity for remembering who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going, is enjoined on us in both the Old and New Testaments:
. . . that thou mayest remember the day when thou camest forth out of the land of Egypt all the days of thy life. (Deuteronomy 16:3)
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 6:11)
There always must be a remembrance, a calling to mind, a reckoning that we have left the world and are following Christ. The believer who does not make a conscious daily effort to call to mind that he has left the world and now is living in Christ, wanders in confusion, not understanding why he cannot occupy himself with this or that part of the world.
If we keep remembering we have died with Christ on the cross, having made our exodus from the world, and that our goal is the fullness of His Presence, we do not have nearly as much trouble maintaining our consecration to His will.
If we do not maintain each day the overcoming point of view, which is that our soulish natural man is crucified with Christ and our new spiritual man is in the heavenlies with Christ, either we will slip back carelessly into a sinful life or else we will wrestle ineffectively with sin in order to gain a position that Christ already has secured for us and that we are to seize by faith and maintain by faith.
To be continued.