Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 156 · June 5
Buried With Him
“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.”
Six people stand at a graveside. The ropes go slack, the first soil hits the lid, and everyone walks back to the cars. The one they came for stays behind.
That is the picture Paul reaches for. The question in front of him is whether grace has made sin harmless: "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?" His answer is a funeral: "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death." You bury something when it is finished, and nobody buries what they expect to need again next week. Paul says the same thing to the church at Colosse: "Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him."
The grave stays in view for the rest of the chapter. "Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed." "For he that is dead is freed from sin." Then Paul gives you your part: "Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." Reckon is a bookkeeping word. It means counting something as true because it is true, treating a burial that really happened as having happened. You keep doing that all week, even while the old life you buried keeps sending you letters.
That turns the graveside picture around. At an ordinary funeral you drive home, and the one you came for stays behind. Here you are both people at once. You are the old self that went into the ground, and you are also the one walking away from the grave into the rest of the day. Paul names that walk in the second half of his verse: "even so we also should walk in newness of life." Walk is the plain word for getting about on your feet, one step after another. And the power behind each step is the same power that raised Jesus: "like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father."
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 156 is Father (Psalm 103:13).