Baptismal meditation

Baptismal meditation March 24, 2013

Isaiah 53:8, 1: As for his generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living . . . . He will see His seed, He will prolong His days.

Reproduction by itself doesn’t create a Christian heritage. Something else has to happen, and Isaiah 53 shows us what that something else is. The Servant does live to see His seed, but only after his generation is cut off. He sees His seed after He pours out His soul to death and descends to the grave.

You can have many descendants with a high rate of reproduction. You can have godly descendants only if each generation is snipped off as soon as it begins, so that it can be raised to newness of life.

It has always been so.

Abram had Ishmael with Hagar, but he fathered the child of the promise when he was nearly dead, only after he was circumcised. You can produce sons of Abraham only if you and your children are drowned and reborn in the waters of baptism.

Families die each generation, and they can live again as Christian families only by the power of the Spirit of Jesus. You perpetuate the godly heritage of your family by faith in a God who raises the dead.

You want to live to see your offspring. You want to prolong your life and see your children’s children. You want Jane to share those blessings. So you bring Jane here to die.

That is what you must do, because you gain a life of righteousness only if you die first, only if your life is life on the other side of the grave of baptism.


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