Romans 6 is a very good passage to help someone seeking to become a Christian know what is involved in their decision to be baptized. We can share what kind of commitment is involved and what changes need to be made in their lives to show that Jesus is truly Savior AND Lord.

But the apostle Paul did not write Romans 6 as an outreach passage to the lost; rather, it is written to those who are already Christians in the church at Rome. It is written to disciples who need to be reminded that their spiritual birth into Christ in the past has ramifications in their life NOW and into their future forevermore. Baptism is a one-time event BUT it has ongoing implications as long as we live. We should always remember the day we accepted the grace of God in Christ as we expressed our faith by being buried with Jesus in baptism. The blood of Jesus washes away our sins of the past and continues to wash away our sins day by day as we continue to walk in the light.

The water into which we are immersed is not special holy water. What is holy is the sacrifice of God in the holy, sinless Son of God. His precious blood is holy to forgive. Let’s remember what Jesus did for us AND let’s remember the day we gave our lives to Jesus by faith in baptism. May it influence us from here to heaven.

Read Romans 6:1-23. Then listen to Holy Water by We the Kingdom.

Romans 6

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? Far from it! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; for the one who has died is freed from sin.

Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all time; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. So you too, consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Therefore sin is not to reign in your mortal body so that you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the parts of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead, and your body’s parts as instruments of righteousness for God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under the Law but under grace.

What then? Are we to sin because we are not under the Law but under grace? Far from it! Do you not know that the one to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of that same one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were entrusted, and after being freed from sin, you became slaves to righteousness. I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. For just as you presented the parts of your body as slaves to impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now present your body’s parts as slaves to righteousness, resulting in sanctification.

For when you were slaves of sin, you were free in relation to righteousness. Therefore what benefit were you then deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed? For the outcome of those things is death. But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the outcome, eternal life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.