Waist Deep 2018 - October 27


Galatians 3: 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. (NIV)


Should not people of hope, whose bodies are temples of God, look a bit different from children of despair?*


On the red carpet at the Academy Awards, celebrities are asked, “Who are you wearing?” Wearing a designer’s creation is an advertisement for him and if you don’t look good, he doesn’t look good! Paul says that when we are baptized into Christ, we begin to wear Christ. But if not accompanied by faith and repentance, baptism is just a bath, and the “clothes” you wear around are cheap knock-offs, not designer originals.

Such an analogy may be useful for illustration purposes, but it stops short of a perfect word picture. In John 14: 20, Jesus tells us that he is in the Father, we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in us. That sounds a little more complex than merely donning the appropriate attire. But the unity Christ describes between him and the father, and between him and us, is a result of the same baptism by which we are clothed with Christ.

If you aren’t wearing him on the outside, you surely aren’t bearing him on the inside!


God approves righteousness when “inward”, but despises the mere outward show of it.*


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