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Galatians 3: 27 For all of you who
were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
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Should not people of hope, whose bodies are temples of God, look a bit different from children of despair?* |
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On
the red carpet at the Academy Awards, celebrities are asked, “Who are you
wearing?” Wearing a designer’s creation is an advertisement for him and if you
don’t look good, he doesn’t look good! Paul says that when we are baptized into
Christ, we begin to wear Christ; but if not
accompanied by faith and repentance, baptism is just a bath and the “clothes”
you wear around are cheap knock-offs, not designer originals.
Analogy may be useful for illustration purposes, but often
it stops short of a perfect word picture. In John 14: 20, Jesus tells us that he
is in the Father, we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in us. That sounds a little
more complex than merely donning the appropriate attire. But the unity
Christ describes between him and the father, and between him and us, is a
result of the same baptism by which we are clothed with Christ.
If
you aren’t wearing him on the
outside, you surely aren’t bearing
him on the inside!
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God approves righteousness when “inward”, but despises the mere outward show of it.* |
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