“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
– Romans 6:4
What a great verse, what a great picture. When you think about baptism, so when someone is baptized, when I’m baptizing someone and they’re confessing faith in Christ and this visible picture as they go down into the water and it’s a picture of dying to sin and dying to self, dying to the penalty of sin ultimately death, but then the beauty is I don’t hold them under water too long, they come on out of the water and it’s this picture of them being raised to walk in newness of life by the glory of the father. To think that has happened in every one of our hearts who has trusted in Christ, we have died to sin to the ultimate penalty of sin and God has raised us up to walk an entirely new life. I think we have a tendency to miss this.
Romans 6:4 Tells Us to Find Life in Christ
Because of Christ’s work on the cross, we are justified and enjoy peace with God.
I think if we’re not careful, we can in our efforts even to lead as many people as possible to Christ or bring people to the church, we can almost delude what it means to follow Jesus. We can say, “Hey come to Christ” and almost practically say, “You can keep your life as you know it” when it’s not true. When you come to Christ, you lose your life as you know it, and that’s a great thing. You lose your life to find entirely new life in him, this phrase, “In newness of life.”
This Verse Shows Us How Christ Transforms Us
When you come to Christ your dreams are different, your desires are different, your thoughts are different. You begin to think, love, act, talk differently. Everything in your life is transformed by him. You have a new life, you’re a new creation. The old is gone, the new has come. I just want to experience that newness of life more and more every day, don’t you? Don’t we want to walk in newness of life and even greater and greater and greater ways on a daily basis?
Romans 6:4 Leads Us to Praise God for Rescuing Us
We pray, “God we don’t want to live as we once lived, slaves to sin, dead in sin, running from you. We praise you for saving us from that life. Lord, we praise you for saving us from the penalty of sin, death. We praise you for the eternal life you’ve given us but not just eternal life in the future, like eternal life now. Thank you God for new life now. We pray to you to help us to experience it.
Today I pray in my own life I pray in lives of those who are listening to us lord to help us to walk in newness of life. Lord change our thoughts, change the way we think, change our desires. Help us not to love the things we used to love. And help us to love you and your word and your ways so much more than anything else in this world. Help us to live new life. We’ve been crucified with Christ. We no longer live. Christ you live in us. Jesus you live in us. Cause your live to be more and more in us. May it be evident to those around us.
This Verse Helps Us to Walk in Newness of Life
May the people in our families see a new life in us more and more every day. May the people we work with see new life in us more and more every day. The people we live around, people in the world see new life in us more and more every day. God help us to experience, to walk in newness of life that you’ve made possible through Jesus’ death on the cross and resurrection from the dead for us, in Jesus’ name we pray and we live, amen.
David Platt serves as a pastor in metro Washington, D.C. He is the founder of Radical.
David received his Ph.D. from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and is the author of Don’t Hold Back, Radical, Follow Me, Counter Culture, Something Needs to Change, Before You Vote, as well as the multiple volumes of the Christ-Centered Exposition Commentary series.
Along with his wife and children, he lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.
