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 at a graveside on a Tuesday morning, the ropes going slack, and the sound the first soil makes on the lid. Everyone walks back to the cars. The one they came for stays.
That is the picture Paul reaches for when the question on the table 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. Burial is what you do with something finished; nobody buries what they expect to need again on Thursday. He puts it the same way to Colossae: 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. He that is dead is freed from sin. Then the work he asks of you: 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 treating a burial that happened as having happened, through a week in which the buried thing keeps sending letters.
Which turns the Tuesday morning around. At that graveside you drive home and the one you came for stays. Here you are both parties, the thing that went into the ground and the person walking away from it into the rest of the day. Paul names that walk in the second half of his sentence, even so we also should walk in newness of life, and it is the plain word for going about on your feet.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 156 is Father (Psalm 103:13).