S6E28 The Battle Between the Flesh and the Spirit

First of all, I want to share with you as we consider this battle between the flesh and the spirit.

Through salvation, we are dead to sin.

And I've read those scriptures already.

It says, what shall we say? Shall we continue in sin? That grace may abound.

How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein? We're dead.

Growing up, I had a distant family member who was known for his greed.

One of his friends once said, if you see him lying there and you think he's dead, just take a tenner, wave it over his nose, and if he flinches, you know he's not dead.

And, you know, we can laugh at stuff like that, but, you know, dead people don't respond.

They just don't.

Dead people don't respond to sin, and dead people don't respond to temptation to sin.

Why? Because they're dead.

And baptism pictures that.

It says in verse 3, know ye not that so many of us were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death.

So for those who go through the waters of baptism, they're picturing their death.

With Christ.

Christ died.

We die with him.

We're dead.

We're not living the old way.

We don't want to live after the old path.

We don't want to go the old way.

I don't understand why people want to be baptized and don't want to die.

Some people treat baptism like some sort of ritual.

And I don't know how to get that out of some people's heads.

Baptism is not a ritual.