buried alive

“Buried with Christ! Alive in Christ!”

It’s what churches should shout as pastors baptize new believers. Let’s start a revolution, sell t-shirts, bake tomb rolls and create a #hashtag! As believers, we’re called into a whole new reality, a new way of living, thinking, speaking, acting (and reacting), engaging, politicking…adulting.

Or have you not read 2 Corinthians 5, Galatians 4 and Romans 8….or any other part of the New Testament? What does “new” mean to you?

Breaking it down: buried presumes not living anymore; alive assumes not dead anymore. This is the reality in which everyone who calls him or herself “Christian” now lives: life by death, a living sacrifice. The apostle Paul encourages the church in Corinth to remember to whom they belong and for whom they live. He says in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, “For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and He died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for Him who for their sake died and was raised.”

For the love of Christ controls us… The word translated “controls” is sunecko, which has to do with the idea of being completely devoted to or holding fast with strong convictions. It is the impetus of the inert, the catalyst for the catatonic; love of Christ …compels, causes, characterizes, controls the believer into a life of living for the Lord.

Sadly, I think too many Christians live for something else, whether it be their favorite political agenda, their favorite hobby habit, or their ability to share pets and pet peeves on social media. Seems like we’ve forgotten the fact that being alive in Christ requires burying our agendas, our ideals, our faves –our selves– not my will, but Yours be done. Remember Galatians 2:20? “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

Dear Christian, you are a new creation; the old is gone, behold the new has come! You have been buried with Christ so now you can live in Christ! Don’t be defined by the world and its hype; be defined by everything that is new in Christ and live for Him!