November 17, 2016 – Colossians 2:12

For you were buried with Christ when you were baptized. And with him you were raised to new life because you trusted the mighty power of God, who raised Christ from the dead.  Colossians 2:12When I was seven years old, our minister described a tug of war game with eternal consequences.  Each of us are in the middle of this tug of war.  Satan tempts us and Jesus saves.  Satan tries to pull us to his side. And Jesus gives us strength and love to not sin when we pray.  How?  Through the death and resurrection of baptism, of being buried in the water and being brought up to walk in newness of life.This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. 2 Corinthian 5:17-18.Baptism is a picture of dying to sin and being raised again to walk in a new life.  Baptism makes us clean again, with the promise of forgiveness.  Sinning is like writing a story and no matter how many times you read through it, you can’t find all the misspelled words known as ‘typos’.  You meant the correct spelling – but it didn’t happen.  In the old days, instead of spell-check, we had ‘white-out’ to correct our mistakes by painting over them.  Jesus is like our personal whiteout, only He completely erases our typos (our sins).After I was baptized, when eight years old, I came up out of the water, feeling so very, very clean. I still remember that moment of being born again and it was eighty years ago.  I still make ‘typos’, but I know Jesus forgives me!When we have died with Christ, through baptism, we are free from the spiritual powers that try to capture us and pull us away from living with Jesus.You have died with Christ, and he has set you free from the spiritual powers of this world.  Colossians 2:20a