Baptism, a burial. This sermon was originally preached on October 30th in the year 1881 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The text for today comes from the book of Romans chapter 6 verse 3 and 4. Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

I will not enter into controversy over this text. Although many have used this text to raise the question of infant baptism or believer's baptism, immersion or sprinkling, If any person can give a consistent and instructive interpretation of the text, proving anything other than believers' immersion to be Christian baptism, I would 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 will so interpret the text.

If anyone does not agree, then it may at least interest them to know what we understand to be the meaning of the rite of baptism. And I trust that they will also think just as much of the spiritual sense of baptism because it is different than 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 meaning.

The Apostle Paul is not saying that if inappropriate persons, such as unbelievers and hypocrites and deceivers, are baptized that they are baptized into our Lord's death. He says all of us, putting himself with the rest of the children of God. He intends that only believers are entitled to be baptized. and must come to it with our hearts in a right state. Of these believers, he says, don't you know that all of us who were baptized in Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

He does not intend to say that each one of them who were properly baptized have entered into the fullness of its spiritual meaning. For if they had, there would have been no need of the question, don't you know? 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 it only as a cleansing 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 the Lord's Supper or baptism, both of which Christ has instituted. We are as yet with regard to spiritual things like children playing on the beach while the ocean rolls before us. At best, we wait up to our ankles like the little ones at the seashore. 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 the point where we are willing to lose sight of shore and to swim in the Atlantic of divine love, where immeasurable truth rolls underneath and the infinite is all around us?

Oh, may God daily teach us more and more of what we already know in part. And may the truth which we have only 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 the eye is, so is that which it sees. Only the pure in heart can see a pure and holy God. We will be like Jesus when we will see him as he is, and certainly we will 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 in the Christ sees Christ in baptism. To him that has, more will be given, and he will have in abundance.

Baptism sets forth the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ and our participation in it. 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 basic teaching of baptism. We declare in baptism that we believe in the death of Jesus and desire to partake in all its merits.

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 statement of belief but more as a matter of personal experience. There is an expression 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.

First, 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 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 place. The great doctrine of our justification lies in this, that Christ took our sins, stood in our place, and as our substitute suffered and bled and died, thus presenting on our behalf a sacrifice for sin. We are to regard him not as an unrelated person, but as our representative.

We are buried with him in baptism unto death to show that we accept his death and we accept his burial as being ours. 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 do we have? When our Divine Lord came down from the heights of glory and took upon Himself our manhood, He became one with you and one with me. and being found in appearance as a man, it pleased the Father to lay sin on him, even your sins and mine.

Don't you 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? All of you say, Amen, Amen. He went up to the cross loaded with all this guilt and there He suffered in our place as we ought to have suffered. It pleased the Father, instead of bruising us, to bruise Him. He caused Him to suffer grief, making His soul an offering for sin. Don't we 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 substitute? For if you don't, you will bear your own guilt and carry your own sorrow, and stand in your own place beneath the glance of the angry justice of God. 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 died and was buried for us, in other words, substitution, vicarious sacrifice, that is, Christ serving as a sacrifice for us. 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, but because I am dead myself. Baptism is an acknowledgment of our own death in Christ. Why would a living man be buried? Why would 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 bear his people's sins due to an arbitrary choice of God. Rather, it was very natural and fitting and proper that he should suffer for his people's sins, since they are his people and he is their head. It was necessary for 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 fitting that the head, though the head had not sinned, should bear the consequence of the acts of the body. Just 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 was pleased to set it up that way and I feel the effect of it, I see no use in my arguing over 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 everyone 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 magnificent truths, and they are certain and comforting. You are getting far out to sea, no longer in sight of shore, and are in the waves of the Atlantic now. But do not be 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 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 back among men again as alive from the dead, and what should be the state of his mind with regard to his offense? Will he commit that crime again, a crime for which he has died? I emphatically say, God forbid. Rather, he would 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 I have been made to live again. Now I will hate the thing that killed me and abhor it with all my soul. He who has received the wages of sin learns to avoid it in the future. But you reply, we never really did die that way. We were never made to suffer the due consequence 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 thus one with Jesus, so much so that you must regard His death as your death, His sufferings as your punishment. 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 hates it. For when it was laid on his dear son, he did not spare him, but caused him great grief and afflicted him until he died. Can you, after that, turn back to the accursed thing which God hates? Surely the effect of the great grief of the Savior upon your spirit must be sanctifying.

How will we who are dead to sin live any longer in it? How will we who have passed under its curse and endured its awful penalty tolerate its power? Will we go back to this murderous, villainous, venomous, abominable evil? It can't be. Grace forbids it.

This doctrine is not the conclusion of the whole matter. The text describes us as being buried with a view to rising. We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death. For what purpose? In order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Be buried in Christ? What for? That you may be dead forever? No, but that now, going where Christ went, you may go where Christ goes. Look at him. There he goes, first into the grave, but next out of the grave. And when the third morning came, he rose up from the grave. If you are to be one with Christ at all, you must be one with Him in everything. You must be one with Him in His death and one with Him in His burial. Then you will 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, you will also live. True, I am dead in one sense, for I died, but yet not dead in another sense, because my life is now hidden with Christ in God. Is any person really 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, made alive 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 a doctrine which must 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 waste itself living like it did in the old life? Will the spiritual live as the carnal? How can you that used to be 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 in newness of life. Can it be that you can go back to the beggarly elements from which the Lord has brought you up out of? If you live in sin, you will be false to your profession, for you profess to be alive to God. If you walk in lust, you will tread underfoot the blessed doctrines of the Word of God, for these lead to holiness and purity. You would cause Christianity to be mocked in our society if, after all, you who were risen from your spiritual death should exhibit a conduct no better than the life of ordinary men and women, and little better than what your former life used to be. Many of you who 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 from this day forward to be viewed as dead. For now we live after a fresh order of things, The Holy Spirit has fashioned in us a new nature, and though we are in the world, we are not of it, but are newly created men and women, created new in Christ Jesus. This is the doctrine which we affirm to all mankind, that Christ died and rose again, and that his people died and rose again in him. Out of this doctrine grows death to sin and life to God. and we wish by every action and every movement of our lives to teach it to all who see us. Isn't the doctrine indeed a precious one? Oh, if you truly are one with Christ, will the world find you polluting yourselves? Will the members of a generous, gracious Master and Lord be covetous and greedy? Will the members of a glorious, pure and perfect Master and Lord be defiled with the lust of the flesh and the follies of a vain life? If believers are truly so identified with Christ that they are His fullness, shouldn't they 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 of those who profess to be Christians 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 the privacy of my home or in the public pulpit, I am bound to be what Christ would have been in the same situation. I am compelled to prove to men that union with Christ is no fiction or fanatical sentiment, but that we are influenced by the same principles and actuated by the same motives as Christ is. Baptism is thus a personified belief, and you may read it in these words. buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God who raised him from the dead. Secondly, a realized union with Christ is also set forth in baptism. And this is more accurately a matter of experience than of doctrine. A realized union with Christ is also set forth in baptism. And this is more accurately a matter of experience than of doctrine. First, there is, as a matter of actual experience in the true believer, death. Don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? It must be contrary to every known law to man to bury those who are still alive. Until they are dead, men are not to be buried. Very well then, the Christian is dead, dead first to the dominion of sin. Whenever sin called him before, he answered, here I am, you called me? Sin ruled his body, and if sin said, do this, he did it, like the soldiers who are obedient to their commander. For sin ruled over every part of his nature and exercised over him a supreme tyranny. But grace has changed all this. When we were converted, we became 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 still comes to us now. Oh, I pray that it didn't. 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 attack us and do us harm. Sin shall not be your master, because you are not under law, but under grace. We sin, but it is with grief that we look back on our sins. We sincerely endeavor to avoid them. Sin tries to maintain its commanding power over us, but we do not acknowledge it as our sovereign. Evil enters us now as an intruder and a stranger and works sad havoc, but it does not rule our lives. It is an alien and despised and no longer honored 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 such sinful power. What do you say? Don't godly men and women have sinful desires? Yes, they do. The old nature that is in them lusts toward sin, but the true person, the real personality, desires to be purged of every speck or trace of evil. The old desires of the flesh would happily yield to sin, but the life in the heart constrains the flesh to live in 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, yes, I do consent to sin so that I become responsible when I transgress, yet my innermost self hates sin. Sin is my bondage, not my pleasure. It's my misery, not my delight. At the thought of it, I cry out, what a wretched man I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death? In our hearts, our spirit persistently cleave to that which is good and true and heavenly, so that the real man delights in the law of God and follows intensely after goodness. The main flow and true bent of our soul's wish and will is not towards sin. And the Apostle taught us such when he said, anyone who has died has been set free 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 spiritually alive man and towards this he runs. I don't run that way, one says. 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 of this is subordinate and held in check. Our aims are far above the moon. The flight of our soul, like that of an eagle, is above the clouds. Though that bird of the sun perches on the rock or even descends to the plain, yet its joy is to stay above. soaring above the lightning, rising over the blackness of the storm, and looking down on all earthly things. From now on, our grace-given life speeds onward and upward. We are not of the world, and the world's pleasures are not things on which we spend our noblest powers. Again, we are dead in this sense. that we are dead to the guidance of sin. 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 simple question, what is most pleasant? What will give me 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 the 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 you want me to do. You are alive to the teachings of the Spirit who will lead you into all truth, but you are deaf, yes, dead. dead to the doctrines of carnal wisdom, dead to the oppositions of philosophy, dead to the errors of proud human wisdom. Blind guides who fall with their victims into the ditch are rejected 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 we will not follow a stranger. Our shepherd is our teacher, and we submit our minds and hearts to his infallible instruction. Our texts must have had a very powerful meaning among the Romans in Paul's time, for they were sunk in all kinds of detestable vices. Take an average Roman from that period. and you would have found in him a man accustomed to spending a large part of his time at the arena, hardened by the brutal sight of bloody shows in which gladiators slaughtered each other to amuse a holiday crowd. Taught in such a school, the Roman was cruel in the deepest sense and was 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. Suddenly you have a Roman converted by the grace of God. What a change in him. His neighbors say, you were not at the arena this morning. How could you miss the sight of 100 Germans who tore out each other's intestines? 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 would shut my eyes, for I could not look on murder committed in sport. The Christian did not go to places of wickedness. 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 commit open sin, but they spoke of it with horror, and their lives rebuked it. Things which the multitude counted a joy and rejoiced in, gave no comfort to the follower of Jesus, for he was dead to such evils. This is our solemn declaration when we come forward to be baptized. We say by an act which is louder than words that we are dead to those things in which sinners take delight, and we wish to declare it publicly. 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 death certificate. Burial is, first of all, the seal of death. It is the death certificate. Is the man really dead, you say? Another answers, why sir, he was buried a year ago. There have been instances of persons being buried alive and I am afraid that the same thing sadly happens all too often 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 up out of the grave just as they were. But if burial is true, it is a death certificate. If I am able to say with absolute certainty that I was buried with Christ 30 years ago, then 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 before long, the world said of me that I had the smell of death. They began to say all kinds of evil things against me and my preaching, but the more I smelled of death in their nostrils, the better I liked it, for it was positive proof that I really died to the world. It is good for a Christian to be offensive to wicked men. See how our master smelled of death in the opinion 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 fully appreciated 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 invalid. As burial is the death certificate, so is our burial with Christ the seal of our death to the world. But burial is, next, the displaying of death. It is the displaying of death. While the man is indoors, the people walking by his house are not aware 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 undertakes to let everyone 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 isolation of death. It is the isolation of death. The dead man no longer remains in the house. but is set 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 its work on it. Even Abraham, who had for so long been united with his beloved Sarah, is heard to say, sell me some property for a burial site so I can bury my dead. Such is the believer when his death to the world is fully known. He is unwanted company for the people of the world, and they shun him because he puts a damper on their festivities. The true saint is put into the separated class with Christ. According to his word, if they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. The saint is put into the same grave as his Lord. For as he was, so are we also in this world. He was shut up by the world in the one cemetery of the faithful, if I may so call it, where everyone that is in Christ is collectively dead to the world. With this epitaph for them all, you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. And the grave is the place of the fullness of death. The grave is the place of the fullness of death. 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.

Some people say that spirits walk on the earth. And we have read the recent article in the newspaper the truth about ghosts, but I have my doubts on the subject. However, in spiritual things, I am afraid that some are not so buried with Christ and that they do walk around among the tombs. I am grieved in my heart that it should be so.

The man in Christ cannot walk around like a ghost because he is alive somewhere else. He has received a new spirit and therefore he cannot mutter and peep among the dead hypocrites around him.

Listen to what our chapter says about our Lord. We know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

Once we have been raised from dead works, we will never go back to them again. I may sin, but sin can never have dominion over me. I may commit many sins and wander far from my God, but I can never go back to the old life again.

When my Lord's grace got hold of me and buried me, he produced in my soul the conviction that from that time forth and forever I was a dead man to the world. I am very glad that I made no compromise, but came right out. I have drawn the sword and thrown away the scabbard.

Tell the world that they needn't try to bring us back, for we are so stained with the death of Christ that as far as they are concerned, it is as if we are dead. All that they could have would be our carcasses. Tell the world not to tempt us any longer, for our hearts have changed.

Sin may charm the old man who hangs there on 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 hammer well, and he has fastened his hands and feet very securely, so that the crucified flesh must still remain in the place of doom and death.

Yet the true life, the genuine life within us cannot die, for it is born of God. Neither can it remain in the tombs, for its call is to purity and joy and liberty, and to that call it yields itself.

We have come as far as death and burial, but baptism, according to the text, also represents resurrection. Just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may have a new life.

Baptism, according to the text, also represents resurrection. 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 those who have fallen asleep. He is the firstborn 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 until all the members partake of it. For though our inbred sins require our flesh to see the dust, Yet as the Lord our Savior rose, so all of his followers must.

As to our soul and spirit, the resurrection has begun in us. It has not come to our bodies yet, but it will be given to them on the appointed day. For the present, a special work has been created in 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 in a cemetery, and if a divine voice had called you right up out of the grave while the silent stars were shining on the gravestones, if, I say, you had risen right out from the green mound of turf, what a lonely person you would have been in the vast cemetery on that dark and still night. You would have to sit down on the grave and wait for the 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 behavior. The Lord by His power has called you up 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 does the living have with the dead? The man out there in the cemetery that was just raised would find no one, no one among all the dead around him with whom he can converse. And you will find no companions in this world. There lies a skull, but it does not see from the eye holes. Neither is there speech in its grim mouth. I see a mass of bones lying in a corner. The living one looks at them, but they cannot hear or speak. Imagine yourself there. All you could say to the bones would be to ask, can you dry bones live? You would be a foreigner in that home of death and you would be in a hurry to get away. This is exactly your condition in the world. God has raised you up from among the dead. out from the company among whom you had your former conversation. Now I pray, do not go, do not go and dig in the earth to tear open the graves to find a friend there. Who would open up a coffin and say, come out, you must drink with me. You must go to the theater with me. No, we dread the idea of association with the dead. And therefore I tremble, I tremble when I see a Christian trying to have communion with worldly men. Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing. Do you know what would happen to you if you were raised from the dead and then were forced to sit close to a dead body that was recently taken from the grave? You would cry out, I cannot stand it, I cannot endure it. You would quickly move to the upwind side of the decomposing corpse. So it is with a man that is really alive to God. He cannot endure deeds of injustice, oppression, or immorality. No, he cannot endure them, for life hates corruption. I want you to notice that as we are raised up by a special work from among the dead, that rising is by divine power. Christ is raised again from the dead through the glory of the Father. What does that mean? Why didn't it 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 splendor in the raising of Christ from the dead. There was God's faithfulness, for He had declared that He would not let His Holy One be abandoned to the grave, nor let Him see decay. Wasn't 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 and sin, it is not merely by 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 raised up to new life has been raised through the glory of the Father, It has taken not only 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 through the glory of the Father, what will the glory be of that life when it comes into its full perfection? And we will be like Christ and see Him as He is. O Beloved, Highly value the new life which God has given to you. Think of it as making you richer than if you had a sea of pearls, greater than if you were descended from the most exalted of princes. What is created in you required all the attributes of God to create. He could make a world by power alone, but you must be raised from the dead through and by the glory of the Father. Next, I want you to notice that this life is entirely new. This life is entirely new. We are to live a new 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 a 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 fellowship among Christians, and the outside world watches us for a little while, and in time they pick up certain of our sayings and expressions. But there is a private side of us 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 his outward actions, but there is a secret which he does not know and cannot counterfeit. The divine life 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 Christian it is the image of Christ, yet there is something about the real silver that these counterfeits can never get a hold of. It is a new, a novel, a fresh, a divine thing. And lastly, this life is an active thing. 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 flying boots. He does not write like an ordinary man. I beg to tell him that if he had written this text according to the proper order, it should read Just like 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 covers ever so much ground while we are talking. He has made it all the way to living. The raising includes the living. 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 are we raised to a 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 right away now that we are alive and we begin living the new life. And so throughout all our new life, the Lord keeps us in his work. He does not allow us to sit down contented with the mere fact that we live, 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 fear that sin and Satan might prevail. However, our true condition is always discerned by its outward acts. The life that is given to those who are dead with Christ is an energetic, forceful life that is forever busy for Christ and would, if it could, move heaven and earth and subdue all things unto Him who is the Head. This life, Paul tells us, is an unending one. Once you get it, it will never leave you. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again. Finally, it is a life which is not under the law or under sin. 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 sin bearer are free. What did Christ have to do after rising from the dead? 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 do we have to do? Every time we have a headache or feel sick, are we to cry out, this is 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 only to love and sing and wait until the angels come to carry me to the king. All I have to do now is to serve him and delight myself in him, and use the power which he gives me to call others from the dead, saying, wake up, O sleeper, rise up from the dead, and Christ will shine on you. 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 I have been loved by Christ, living for Christ because Christ lives in me, rejoicing in the glorious hope of that which is yet to be revealed by virtue of my oneness in Christ. or sinner. You do not know anything about this death and burial and you never will until you have power to become a child 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.