Baptism—A Burial

Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, October 30th, 1881, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were
baptized into his death? 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.''Romans 6:3-4.

I SHALL not enter into controversy over this text, although over it
some have raised the question of infant baptism or believers' baptism,
immersion or sprinkling. If any person can give a consistent and
instructive interpretation of the text, otherwise than by assuming
believers' immersion to be Christian baptism, I should like to see them
do it. I myself am quite incapable of performing such a feat, or even
of imagining how it can be done. I am content to take the view that
baptism signifies the burial of believers in water in the name of the
Lord, and I shall so interpret the text. If any think not so, it may at
least interest them to know what we understand to be the meaning of the
baptismal rite, and I trust that they may think none the less of the
spiritual sense because they differ as to the external sign. After all,
the visible emblem is not the most prominent matter in the text. May
God the Holy Spirit help us to reach its inner teaching.

I do not understand Paul to say that if improper persons, such as
unbelievers, and hypocrites, and deceivers, are baptized they are
baptized into our Lord's death. He says so many of us,' putting himself
with the rest of the children of God. He intends such as are entitled
to baptism, and come to it with their hearts in a right state. Of them
he says, Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ were baptized into his death?' He does not even intend to say
that those who were rightly baptized have all of them entered into the
fullness of its spiritual meaning; for if they had, there would have
been no need of the question, Know ye not?' It would seem that some had
been baptized who did not clearly know the meaning of their own
baptism. They had faith, and a glimmer of knowledge sufficient to make
them right recipients of baptism, but they were not well instructed in
the teaching of baptism; perhaps they saw in it only a washing, but had
never discerned the burial. I will go further, and say that I question
if any of us yet know the fullness of the meaning of either of the
ordinances which Christ has instituted. As yet we are, with regard to
spiritual things, like children playing on the beach while the ocean
rolls before us. At best we wade up to our ankles like our little ones
on the sea shore. A few among us are learning to swim; but then we only
swim where the bottom is almost within reach. Who among us has yet come
to lose sight of shore and to swim in the Atlantic of divine love,
where fathomless truth rolls underneath, and the infinite is all
around? Oh, may God daily teach us more and more of what we already
know in part, and may the truth which we have as yet but dimly
perceived come to us in a brighter and clearer manner, till we see all
things in clear sunlight. This can only be as our own character becomes
more clear and pure; for we see according to what we are; and as is the
eye such is that which it sees. The pure in heart alone can see a pure
and holy God. We shall be like Jesus when we shall see him as he is,
and certainly we shall never see him as he is till we are like him. In
heavenly things we see as much as we have within ourselves. He who has
eaten Christ's flesh and blood spiritually is the man who can see this
in the sacred Supper, and he who has been baptized into Christ sees
Christ in baptism. To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have
abundantly.

Baptism sets forth the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, and
our participation therein. Its teaching is twofold. First, think of our
representative union with Christ, so that when he died and was buried
it was on our behalf, and we were thus buried with him. This will give
you the teaching of baptism so far as it sets forth a creed. We declare
in baptism that we believe in the death of Jesus, and desire to partake
in all the merit of it. But there is a second equally important matter
and that is our realized union with Christ which is set forth in
baptism, not so much as a doctrine of our creed as a matter of our
experience. There is a manner of dying, of being buried, of rising, and
of living in Christ which must be displayed in each one of us if we are
indeed members of the body of Christ.

I. First, then, I want you to think of OUR REPRESENTATIVE UNION WITH
CHRIST as it is set forth in baptism as a truth to be believed. Our
Lord Jesus is the substitute for his people, and when he died it was on
their behalf and in their stead. The great doctrine of our
justification lies in this, that Christ took our sins, stood in our
place, and as our surety suffered, and bled, and died, thus presenting
on our behalf a sacrifice for sin. We are to regard him, not as a
private person, but as our representative. We are buried with him in
baptism unto death to show that we accept him as being for us dead and
buried.

Baptism as a burial with Christ signifies, first, acceptance of the
death and burial of Christ as being for us. Let us do that at this very
moment with all our hearts. What other hope have we? When our divine
Lord came down from the heights of glory and took upon himself our
manhood, he became one with you and with me; and being found in fashion
as a man, it pleased the Father to lay sin upon him, even your sins and
mine. Do you not accept that truth, and agree that the Lord Jesus
should be the bearer of your guilt, and stand for you in the sight of
God? Amen! Amen!' say all of you. He went up to the tree loaded with
all this guilt, and there he suffered in our room and stead as we ought
to have suffered. It pleased the Father, instead of bruising us, to
bruise him. He put him to grief, making his soul an offering for sin.
Do we not gladly accept Jesus as our substitute? O beloved, whether you
have been baptized in water or not, I put this question to you, Do you
accept the Lord Jesus as your surety and substitute?' For if you do
not, you shall bear your own guilt and carry your own sorrow, and stand
in your own place beneath the glance of the angry justice of God. Many
of us at this moment are saying in our inmost hearts'

My soul looks back to see

The burdens thou didst bear,

When hanging on the cursed tree,

And hopes her guilt was there.'

Now, by being buried with Christ in baptism, we set our seal to the
fact that the death of Christ was on our behalf, and that we were in
him, and died in him, and, in token of our belief, we consent to the
watery grave, and yield ourselves to be buried according to his
command. This is a matter of fundamental faith'Christ dead and buried
for us; in other words, substitution, suretyship, vicarious sacrifice.
His death is the hinge of our confidence: we are not baptized into his
example, or his life, but into his death. We hereby confess that all
our salvation lies in the death of Jesus, which death we accept as
having been incurred on our account.

But this is not all; because if I am to be buried, it should not be so
much because I accept the substitutionary death of another for me as
because I am dead myself. Baptism is an acknowledgment of our own death
in Christ. Why should a living man be buried? Why should he even be
buried because another died on his behalf? My burial with Christ means
not only that he died for me, but that I died in him, so that my death
with him needs a burial with him. Jesus died for us because he is one
with us. The Lord Jesus Christ did not take his people's sins by an
arbitrary choice of God; but it was most natural and fit and proper
that he should take his people's sins, since they are his people, and
he is their federal head. It behooved Christ to suffer for this
reason'that he was the covenant representative of his people. He is the
Head of the body, the Church; and if the members sinned, it was meet
that the Head, though the Head had not sinned, should bear the
consequence of the acts of the body. As there is a natural relationship
between Adam and those that are in Adam, so is there between the second
Adam and those that are in him. I accept what the first Adam did as my
sin. Some of you may quarrel with it, and with the whole covenant
dispensation, if you please; but as God has pleased to set it up, and I
feel the effect of it, I see no use in my controverting it. As I accept
the sin of father Adam, and feel that I sinned in him, even so with
intense delight I accept the death and atoning sacrifice of my second
Adam , and rejoice that in him I have died and risen again. I lived, I
died, I kept the law, I satisfied justice in my covenant Head. Let me
be buried in baptism that I may show to all around that I believe I was
one with my Lord in his death and burial for sin.

Look at this, O child of God, and do not be afraid of it. These are
Grand truths, but they are sure and comforting. You are getting among
Atlantic billows now, but be not afraid. Realize the sanctifying effect
of this truth. Suppose that a man had been condemned to die on account
of a great crime; suppose, further, that he has actually died for that
crime, and now, by some wonderful work of God, after having died he has
been made to live again. He comes among men again as alive from the
dead, and what ought to be the state of his mind with regard to his
offence? Will he commit that crime again? A crime for which he has
died? I say emphatically, God forbid. Rather should he say, I have
tasted the bitterness of this sin, and I am miraculously lifted up out
of the death which it brought upon me, and made to live again: now will
I hate the thing that slew me, and abhor it with all my soul.' He who
has received the wages of sin should learn to avoid it for the future.
But you reply, We never did die so; we were never made to suffer the
due reward of our sins.' Granted. But that which Christ did for you
comes to the same thing, and the Lord looks upon it as the same thing.
You are so one with Jesus, that you must regard his death as your
death, his sufferings as the chastisement of your peace. You have died
in the death of Jesus, and now by strange, mysterious grace you are
brought up again from the pit of corruption unto newness of life. Can
you, will you, go into sin again? You have seen what God thinks of sin:
you perceive that he utterly loathes it; for when it was laid on his
dear Son, he did not spare him, but put him to grief and smote him to
death. Can you, after that, turn back to the accursed thing which God
hates? Surely, the effect of the great grief of the Saviour upon your
spirit must be sanctifying. How shall we who are dead to sin live any
longer therein? How shall we that have passed under its curse, and
endured its awful penalty, tolerate its power? Shall we go back to this
murderous, villainous, virulent, abominable evil? It cannot be. Grace
forbids.

This doctrine is not the conclusion of the whole matter. The text
describes us as buried with a view to rising. Therefore we are buried
with him by baptism unto death,''for what object?''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.' Be buried in Christ! What for? That
you may be dead for ever? No, but that now getting where Christ is, you
may go where Christ goes. Behold him, then: he goes, first, into the
sepulchre, but next out of the sepulchre; for when the third morning
came he rose. If you are one with Christ at all, you must be one with
him all through; you must be one with him in his death, and one with
him in his burial, then you shall come to be one with him in his
resurrection. Am I a dead man now? No, blessed be his name, it is
written, Because I live ye shall live also.' True, I am dead in one
sense, For ye are dead'; but yet not dead in another, For your life is
hid with Christ in God'; and how is he absolutely dead who has a hidden
life? No; since I am one with Christ I am what Christ is: as he is a
living Christ, I am a living spirit. What a glorious thing it is to
have arisen from the dead, because Christ has given us life. Our old
legal life has been taken from us by the sentence of the law, and the
law views us as dead; but now we have received a new life, a life out
of death, resurrection-life in Christ Jesus. The life of the Christian
is the life of Christ. Ours is not the life of the first creation, but
of the new creation from among the dead. Now we live in newness of
life, quickened unto holiness, and righteousness, and joy by the Spirit
of God. The life of the flesh is a hindrance to us; our energy is in
his Spirit. In the highest and best sense our life is spiritual and
heavenly. This also is doctrine which is to be held most firmly.

I want you to see the force of this; for I am aiming at practical
results this morning. If God has given to you and to me an entirely new
life in Christ, how can that new life spend itself after the fashion of
the old life? Shall the spiritual live as the carnal? How can you that
were the servants of sin, but have been made free by precious blood, go
back to your old slavery? When you were in the old Adam life, you lived
in sin, and loved it; but now you have been dead and buried, and have
come forth into newness of life: can it be that you can go back to the
beggarly elements from which the Lord has brought you out? If you live
in sin, you will be false to your profession, for you profess to be
alive unto God? If you walk in lust, you will tread under foot the
blessed doctrines of the Word of God, for these lead to holiness and
purity. You would make Christianity to be a by-word and a proverb, if,
after all, you who were quickened from your spiritual death should
exhibit a conduct no better than the life of ordinary men, and little
superior to what your former life used to be. As many of you as have
been baptized have said to the world,'We are dead to the world, and we
have come forth into a new life. Our fleshly desires are henceforth to
be viewed as dead, for now we live after a fresh order of things. The
Holy Spirit has wrought in us a new nature, and though we are in the
world, we are not of it, but are new-made men, created anew in Christ
Jesus.' This is the doctrine which we avow to all mankind, that Christ
died and rose again, and that his people died and rose again in him.
Out of the doctrine grows death unto sin and life unto God, and we wish
by every action and every movement of our lives to teach it to all who
see us.

So far the doctrine: is it not a precious one indeed? Oh, if you be
indeed one with Christ, shall the world find you polluting yourselves?
Shall the members of a generous, gracious Head be covetous and
grasping? Shall the members of a glorious, pure, and perfect Head be
defiled with the lusts of the flesh and the follies of a vain life? If
believers are indeed so identified with Christ that they are his
fullness, should they not be holiness itself? If we live by virtue of
our union with his body, how can we live as other Gentiles do? How is
it that so many professors exhibit a mere worldly life, living for
business and for pleasure, but not for God, in God, or with God? They
sprinkle a little religion on a worldly life, and so hope to
Christianize it. But it will not do. I am bound to live as Christ would
have lived under my circumstances; in my private chamber or in my
public pulpit, I am bound to be what Christ would have been in like
case. I am bound to prove to men that union to Christ is no fiction, or
fanatical sentiment: but that we are swayed by the same principles and
actuated by the same motives.

Baptism is thus an embodied creed, and you may read it in these words:
Buried with him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with him through
the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised him from the dead.'

II. But , secondly, A REALIZED UNION WITH CHRIST is also set forth in
baptism, and this is rather a matter of experience than of doctrine.

1. First, there is, as a matter of actual experience in the true
believer, death. Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into
Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?' It must be contrary to all
law to bury those who are yet alive. Until they are dead, men can have
no right to be buried. Very well, then, the Christian is dead,'dead,
first, to the dominion of sin. Whenever sin called him aforetime he
answered, Here am I, for thou didst call me.' Sin ruled his members,
and if sin said, Do this,' he did it, like the soldiers obedient to
their centurion; for sin ruled over all the parts of his nature, and
exercised over him a supreme tyranny. Grace has changed all this. When
we are converted we become dead to the dominion of sin. If sin calls us
now, we refuse to come, for we are dead. If sin commands us we will not
obey, for we are dead to its authority. Sin comes to us now'oh, that it
did not,'and it finds in us the old corruption which is crucified, but
not yet dead; but it has no dominion over our true life. Blessed be
God, sin cannot reign over us, though it may assail us and work us
harm. Sin shall not have dominion over you; for ye are not under law,
but under grace.' We sin, but not with allowance. With what grief we
look back upon our transgressions! How earnestly do we endeavour to
avoid them! Sin tries to maintain its usurped power over us; but we do
not acknowledge it as our sovereign. Evil enters us now as an
interloper and a stranger, and works sad havoc, but it does not abide
in us upon the throne; it is an alien, and despised, and no more
honoured and delighted in. We are dead to the reigning power of sin.

The believer, if spiritually buried with Christ, is dead to the desire
of any such power. What!' say you, do not godly men have sinful
desires?' Alas, they do. The old nature that is in them lusteth towards
sin; but the true man, the real ego, desires to be purged of every
speck or trace of evil. The law in the members would fain urge to sin,
but the life in the heart constrains to holiness. I can honestly say,
for my own self, that the deepest desire of my soul is to live a
perfect life. If I could have my own best desire, I would never sin
again; and though, alas, I do consent to sin so that I become
responsible when I transgress, yet my innermost self loathes iniquity.
Sin is my bondage, not my pleasure; my misery, not my delight; at the
thought of it I cry out, O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me?' In our heart of hearts our spirit cleaves steadfastly to that
which is good, and true, and heavenly, so that the real man delights in
the law of God, and follows hard after goodness. The main current and
true bent of our soul's wish and will is not towards sin, and the
apostle taught us no mere fancy when he said, For he that is dead is
freed from sin.'

Moreover, in the next place we are dead as to the pursuits and aims of
the sinning and ungodly life. Brethren, are any of you that profess to
be God's servants living for yourselves? Then you are not God's
servants; for he that is really born again lives unto God: the object
of his life is the glory of God and the good of his fellow-men. This is
the prize that is set before the quickened man, and towards this he
runs. I do not run that way,' says one. Very well, then you will not
come to the desired end. If you are running after the pleasures of the
world or the riches of it, you may win the prize you run for, but you
cannot win the prize of our high calling in Christ Jesus.' I hope that
many of us can honestly say that we are now dead to every object in
life, except the glory of God in Christ Jesus. We are in the world, and
have to live as other men do, carrying on our ordinary business; but
all this is subordinate, and held in as with bit and bridle; our aims
are above yon changeful moon. The flight of our soul, like that of an
eagle, is above these clouds: though that bird of the sun alights upon
the rock, or even descends to the plain, yet its joy is to dwell above,
out soaring the lightning, rising over the black head of the tempest,
and looking down upon all earthly things. Henceforth our grace-given
life speeds onward and upward; we are not of the world, and the world's
engagements are not those upon which we spend our noblest powers.

Again, we are dead in this sense, that we are dead to the guidance of
sin. The lust of the flesh drives a man this way and that way. He
steers his course by the question, What is most pleasant? What will
give me most present gratification?' The way of the ungodly is mapped
out by the hand of selfish desire: but you that are true Christians
have another guide, you are led by the Spirit in a right way. You ask,
What is good and what is acceptable in the sight of the Most High?'
Your daily prayer is, Lord, show me what thou wouldest have me to do?'
You are alive to the teachings of the Spirit, who will lead you into
all truth; but you are deaf, yea, dead to the dogmas of carnal wisdom,
the oppositions of philosophy, the errors of proud human wisdom. Blind
guides who fall with their victims into the ditch are shunned by you,
for you have chosen the way of the Lord. What a blessed state of heart
this is! I trust, my brethren, that we have fully realized it! We know
the Shepherd's voice, and a stranger we will not follow. One is our
teacher, and we submit our understandings to his infallible
instruction.

Our text must have had a very forcible meaning among the Romans in
Paul's time, for they were sunk in all manner of odious vices. Take an
average Roman of that period, and you would have found in him a man
accustomed to spend a large part of his time in the amphitheater,
hardened by the brutal sight of bloody shows, in which gladiators slew
each other to amuse a holiday crowd. Taught in such a school, the Roman
was cruel to the last degree, and withal ferocious in the indulgence of
his passions. A depraved man was not regarded as being at all degraded;
not only nobles and emperors were monsters of vice, but the public
teachers were impure. When those who were regarded as moral were
corrupt, you may imagine what the immoral were. Enjoy yourself; follow
after the pleasures of the flesh,' was the rule of the age.
Christianity was the introduction of a new element. See here a Roman
converted by the grace of God! What a change is in him! His neighbours
say, You were not at the amphitheater this morning. How could you miss
the sight of the hundred Germans who tore out each other's bowels?'
No,' he says, I was not there; I could not bear to be there. I am
totally dead to it. If you were to force me to be there, I must shut my
eyes, for I could not look on murder committed in sport!' The Christian
did not resort to places of licentiousness; he was as good as dead to
such filthiness. The fashions and customs of the age were such that
Christians could not consent to them, and so they became dead to
society. It was not merely that Christians did not go into open sin,
but they spoke of it with horror, and their lives rebuked it. Things
which the multitude counted a joy, and talked of exultingly, gave no
comfort to the follower of Jesus, for he was dead to such evils. This
is our solemn avowal when we come forward to be baptized. We say by
acts which are louder than words that we are dead to those things in
which sinners take delight, and we wish to be so accounted.

2. The next thought in baptism is burial. Death comes first, and burial
follows. Now, what is burial, brethren? Burial is, first of all, the
seal of death; it is the certificate of decease. Is such a man dead?'
say you. Another answers, Why, dear sir, he was buried a year ago.'
There have been instances of persons being buried alive, and I am
afraid that the thing happens with sad frequency in baptism, but it is
unnatural, and by no means the rule. I fear that many have been buried
alive in baptism, and have therefore risen and walked out of the grave
just as they were. But if burial is true, it is a certificate of death.
If I am able to say in very truth, I was buried with Christ thirty
years ago,' I must surely be dead. Certainly the world thought so, for
not long after my burial with Jesus I began to preach his name, and by
that time the world thought me very far gone, and said, He stinketh.'
They began to say all manner of evil against the preacher; but the more
I stank in their nostrils the better I liked it, for the surer I was
that I was really dead to the world. It is good for a Christian to be
offensive to wicked men. See how our Master stank in the esteem of the
godless when they cried, Away with him, away with him!' Though no
corruption could come near his blessed body, yet his perfect character
was not savoured by that perverse generation. There must, then, be in
us death to the world, and some of the effects of death, or our baptism
is void. As burial is the certificate of death, so is burial with
Christ the seal of our mortification to the world.

But burial is, next, the displaying of death. While the man is indoors
the passers-by do not know that he is dead; but when the funeral takes
place, and he is carried through the streets, everybody knows that he
is dead. This is what baptism ought to be. The believer's death to sin
is at first a secret, but by an open confession he bids all men know
that he is dead with Christ. Baptism is the funeral rite by which death
to sin is openly set forth before all men.

Next, burial is the separateness of death. The dead man no longer
remains in the house, but is placed apart as one who ceases to be
numbered with the living. A corpse is not welcome company. Even the
most beloved object after a while cannot be tolerated when death has
done his work upon it. Even Abraham, who had been so long united with
his beloved Sarah, is heard to say, Bury my dead out of my sight.' Such
is the believer when his death to the world is fully known: he is poor
company for worldlings, and they shun him as a damper upon their
revelry. The true saint is put into the separated class with Christ,
according to his word, If they have persecuted me, they will also
persecute you.' The saint is put away in the same grave as his Lord;
for as he was, so are we also in this world. He is shut up by the world
in the one cemetery of the faithful, if I may so call it, where all
that are in Christ are dead to the world together, with this epitaph
for them all, And ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in
God.'

And the grave is the place'I do not know where to get a word'of the
settledness of death; for when a man is dead and buried you never
expect to see him come home again: so far as this world is concerned,
death and burial are irrevocable. They tell me that spirits walk the
earth, and we have all read in the newspaper The Truth about Ghosts,'
but I have my doubts on the subject. In spiritual things, however, I am
afraid that some are not so buried with Christ but what they walk a
great deal among the tombs. I am grieved at heart that it should be so.
The man in Christ cannot walk as a ghost, because he is alive somewhere
else; he has received a new being, and therefore he cannot mutter and
peep among the dead hypocrites around him. See what our chapter saith
about our Lord: Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death
hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin
once: but in that he liveth , he liveth unto God.' If we have been once
raised from dead works we shall never go back to them again. I may sin,
but sin can never have dominion over me; I may be a transgressor and
wander much from my God, but never can I go back to the old death
again. When my Lord's grace got hold of me, and buried me, he wrought
in my soul the conviction that henceforth and for ever I was to the
world a dead man. I am right glad that I made no compromise, but came
right out. I have drawn the sword, and thrown away the scabbard. Tell
the world they need not try to fetch us back, for we are spoiled for
them as much as if we were dead. All they could have would be our
carcasses. Tell the world not to tempt us any longer, for our hearts
are changed. Sin may charm the old man who hangs there upon the cross,
and he may turn his leering eye that way, but he cannot follow up his
glance, for he cannot get down from the cross: the Lord has taken care
to use the mallet well, and he has fastened his hands and feet right
firmly, so that the crucified flesh must still remain in the place of
doom and death. Yet the true, the genuine life within us cannot die,
for it is born of God; neither can it abide in the tombs, for its call
is to purity and joy and liberty; and to that call it yields itself.

3. We have come as far as death and burial; but baptism, according to
the text, represents also resurrection: 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.' Now, notice that the man who is dead in
Christ, and buried in Christ, is also raised in Christ, and this is a
special work upon him. All the dead are not raised, but our Lord
himself is the firstfruits of them that slept.' He is the
first-begotten from among the dead. Resurrection was a special work
upon the body of Christ by which he was raised up, and that work, begun
upon the Head, will continue till all the members partake of it, for'

Though our inbred sins require

Our flesh to see the dust;

Yet as the Lord our Saviour rose,

So all his followers must.'

As to our soul and spirit, the resurrection has begun upon us. It has
not come to our bodies yet, but it will be given to them at the
appointed day. For the present a special work has been wrought upon us
by which we have been raised up from among the dead. Brethren, if you
had been dead and buried, and had been lying one night, say, in Woking
Cemetery, and if a divine voice had called you right up from the grave
when the silent stars were shining on the open heath'if, I say, you had
risen right out from the green mound of turf, what a lonely being you
would have been in the vast cemetery amid the stilly night! How you
would sit down on the grave and wait for morning! That is very much
your condition with regard to the present evil world. You were once
like the rest of the sinners around you, dead in sin, and sleeping in
the grave of evil custom. The Lord by his power has called you out of
your grave, and now you are alive in the midst of death. There can be
no fellowship here for you; for what communion have the living with the
dead? The man out there in the cemetery just quickened would find none
among all the dead around him with whom he could converse, and you can
find no companions in this world. There lies a skull, but it sees not
from the eyeholes; neither is there speech in its grim mouth. I see a
mass of bones lying in yon corner: the living one looks at them, but
they cannot hear or speak. Imagine yourself there. All that you would
say to the bones would be to ask, Can these dry bones live?' You would
be a foreigner in that home of corruption, and you would haste to get
away. That is your condition in the world: God has raised you up from
among the dead, from out of the company among whom you had your former
conversation. Now, I pray you, do not go and scratch into the earth, to
tear up the graves to find a friend there. Who would rend open a coffin
and cry, Come, you must drink with me! You must go to the theatre with
me'? No, we dread the idea of association with the dead, and I tremble
when I see a professor trying to have communion with worldly men. Come
ye out from among them; be ye separate; touch not the unclean thing.'
You know what would happen to you if you were thus raised, and were
forced to sit close to a dead body newly taken from the grave. You
would cry, I cannot bear it; I cannot endure it'; you would get to the
wind side of the horrid corpse. So with a man that is really alive unto
God: deeds of injustice, oppression, or unchastity he cannot endure;
for life loaths corruption.

Notice that, as we are raised up by a special work from among the dead,
that rising is by divine power. Christ is brought again from the dead
by the glory of the Father.' What means that? Why did it not say, by
the power of the Father'? Ah, beloved, glory is a grander word; for all
the attributes of God are displayed in all their solemn pomp in the
raising of Christ from the dead. There was the Lord's faithfulness; for
had he not declared that his soul should not rest in hell, neither
should His Holy One see corruption? Was not the love of the Father seen
there? I am sure it was a delight to the heart of God to bring back
life to the body of his dear Son. And so, when you and I are raised out
of our death in sin, it is not merely God's power, it is not merely
God's wisdom that is seen, it is the glory of the Father.' Oh, to think
that every child of God that has been quickened has been quickened by
the glory of the Father. It has taken not alone the Holy Spirit, and
the work of Jesus, and the work of the Father, but the very glory of
the Father.' If the tiniest spark of spiritual life has to be created
by the glory of the Father,' what will be the glory of that life when
it comes into its full perfection, and we shall be like Christ, and see
him as he is! O beloved, value highly the new life which God has given
you. Think of it as making you richer than if you had a sea of pearls,
greater than if you were descended from the loftiest of princes. There
is in you that which it required all the attributes of God to create.
He could make a world by power alone, but you must be raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father.'

Notice next, that this life is entirely new. We are to walk in newness
of life.' The life of a Christian is an entirely different thing from
the life of other men, entirely different from his own life before his
conversion, and when people try to counterfeit it, they cannot
accomplish the task. A person writes you a letter and wants to make you
think he is a believer, but within about half-a-dozen sentences there
occurs a line which betrays the imposter. The hypocrite has very neatly
copied our expressions, but not quite. There is a freemasonry among us,
and the outside world watch us a bit, and by-and-by they pick up
certain of our signs; but there is a private sign which they can never
imitate, and therefore at a certain point they break down. A godless
man may pray as much as a Christian, read as much of the Bible as a
Christian, and even go beyond us in externals; but there is a secret
which he knows not and cannot counterfeit. The life divine is so
totally new that the unconverted have no copy to work by. In every
Christian it is as new as if he were the very first Christian. Even
though in every one it is the image and superscription of Christ, yet
there is a milled edge or a something about the real silver that these
counterfeits cannot get a hold of. It is a new, a novel, a fresh, a
divine thing.

And, lastly, this life is an active thing. I have often wished that
Paul had not been so fast when I have been reading him. His style
travels in seven-leagued boots. He does not write like an ordinary man.
I beg to tell him that if he had written this text according to proper
order, it should run, Like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the
glory of the Father, even so we also should be raised from the dead.'
But see; Paul has got over ever so much ground while we are talking: he
has reached to walking.' The walking includes the living, of which it
is the sign, and Paul thinks so fast when the Spirit of God is upon him
that he has passed beyond the cause to the effect. No sooner do we get
the new life than we become active: we do not sit down and say, I have
received a new life: how grateful I ought to be. I will quietly enjoy
myself.' Oh dear, no. We have something to do directly we are alive,
and we begin walking, and so the Lord keeps us all our lives in his
work; he does not allow us to sit down contented with the mere fact
that we live, nor does he allow us to spend all our time in examining
whether we are alive or no; but he gives us one battle to fight, and
then another; he gives us his house to build, his farm to till, his
children to nurse, and his sheep to feed. At times we have fierce
struggles with our own spirit, and fears lest sin and Satan should
prevail, till our life is scarce discerned by itself, but it is always
discerned by its acts. The life that is given to those who were dead
with Christ is an energetic, forceful life, that is evermore busy for
Christ, and would, if it could, move heaven and earth and subdue all
things unto him who is its Head.

This life Paul tells us is an unending one. Once get it, and it will
never go from you. Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more.'

Next, it is a life which is not under the law or under sin. Christ came
under the law when he was here, and he had our sin laid on him, and
therefore died; but after he rose again there was no sin laid on him.
In his resurrection both the sinner and the Surety are free. What had
Christ to do after his rising? To bear any more sin? No, but just to
live unto God. That is where you and I are. We have no sin to carry
now; it was all laid on Christ. What have we to do? Every time we have
the headache, or feel ill, are we to cry out, This is a punishment for
my sin'? Nothing of the kind. Our punishment is all done with, for we
have borne the capital sentence, and are dead: our new life must be
unto God.

All that remains for me

Is but to love and sing,

And wait until the angels come

To bear me to the King.'

I have now to serve him and delight myself in him, and use the power
which he gives me of calling others from the dead, saying, Awake, thou
that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee
light.' I am not going back to the grave of spiritual death nor to my
grave-clothes of sin; but by divine grace I will still believe in
Jesus, and go from strength to strength, not under law, not fearing
hell, nor hoping to merit heaven, but as a new creature, loving because
loved, living for Christ because Christ lives in me, rejoicing in
glorious hope of that which is yet to be revealed by virtue of my
oneness in Christ.

Poor sinner, you do not know anything about this death and burial, and
you never will till you have power to become sons of God, and that he
gives to as many as believe on his name. Believe on his name, and it is
all yours. Amen and Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON'Romans 6.

HYMNS FROM OUR OWN HYMN BOOK''775, 762, 646.
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Till We Meet Again