Baptism and the Day You Died

Romans 6 says you went into the grave with Jesus before the water

"And now why are you waiting? Arise and be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord."

That's Ananias, talking to Saul of Tarsus three days after the road to Damascus. Paul repeated those words years later, standing on the steps of the Roman barracks in Jerusalem with a mob below him (Acts 22:16). If you grew up in a church that taught the water is where forgiveness happens, this is the verse you heard first. Wash away your sins. Read cold, it sounds like the sins stayed on him until he went under.

It's persuasive for a reason. Baptism is a big moment. People cry. Families film it. You come up out of that water and something feels different, so it's natural to assume the water made it different.

But go back to the first time Luke tells the story. Ananias walks into the house and says Jesus sent him that you may receive your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit. The scales fall from Saul's eyes, and only then does Luke write, he arose and was baptized (Acts 9:17-18). Saul had met Jesus on the road, called Him Lord, and been filled with the Spirit before a drop touched him. The washing in Acts 22 hangs on its last phrase, calling on the name of the Lord. The water was the public moment of a man who'd been saved three days earlier. I've walked through the other verses people use to make baptism the turnstile in Saved By the Water. This article is about the question you ask afterward: what happened to me?

The Baptistery at 12:20

The second service let out a while ago and most of the lights in the room are off. One pendant hangs over the baptistery. He's just come up out of the water with both arms in the air, the pastor's hand steady on his back, water running off his elbows into the tank.

His shoes are by the bottom step where he took them off. His watch, his wallet and his keys sit on the seat of a front-row chair. His wife is waiting at the edge with a towel, and his daughter hasn't stopped recording. On a small table by the steps there's a certificate with today's date on it.

In an hour he'll be in the car, still a little damp, wondering what just happened. Was it the water? The prayer he prayed back in March? Something the pastor said over him?

You Were in the Grave With Him

Paul answers that question in Romans 6, and he answers it with a burial.

Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (Romans 6:3-4)

How did you die to sin? That's the question Paul is answering here, because two verses earlier he said we who died to sin. Here's how. You didn't do it. Jesus died, and when He died He did it for you and as if it was you. It's as if you hung on that cross yourself. You were co-crucified. You were co-buried, because He went into the ground and so did you. And three days later He walked out, which means you've been co-raised.

The word baptized there means immersed, surrounded, completely taken in. Paul's talking about being placed into Christ, and he tells the Colossians how that happened. You were buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead (Colossians 2:12). Through faith. The real burial happened in a tomb outside Jerusalem, and you were counted in it the moment you believed.

So when you got born again, God didn't patch up the old you. He put the old you to death and raised a new one. If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). The tank on Sunday is how a church gets to see that with its own eyes. Water baptism is a beautiful celebration of what's already happened on the inside. It's a portrait of the finished work, and a portrait doesn't paint the person.

The Keys Belong to Someone Else Now

When you sell a house, there's a moment at the closing table when you slide the keys across to the buyer. From that minute on, the house belongs to somebody else, and you can't walk in whenever you feel like it. If you tried to keep living there, there's a word for that. You'd be a squatter.

Paul says the same thing happened to who you used to be. Our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin (Romans 6:6). The old address was sold at the cross. A lot of believers are spiritually squatting in a nature that isn't theirs anymore, still sleeping in the old house because nobody told them the closing happened at the cross.

That's why the first instruction Paul gives in this chapter is about how you think: reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 6:11). You don't reckon something into existence. You count on what's true. Some mornings the old address will feel more like home than the new one, and you'll have to remind yourself which keys you're holding.

What Happened to Him

So what happened to the man in the water? The biggest thing happened before he ever stood in it. He believed, and God joined him to His Son so completely that Jesus' death became his death and Jesus' life became his life. He's perfectly right with God because of what Jesus did, and he was before his shoes came off.

What happened at 12:20 is that he got to show it. His family got to watch. His daughter will play that video for her own kids someday, and they'll see a man coming up out of the water with his arms raised, celebrating a grave he'd already left.

He climbs the steps, and his wife wraps the towel around his shoulders, and the date on the certificate is the day he told everyone what Jesus did.