Evangelical Lutheran Diocese of North America

Friday after Quasimodogeniti

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Pastor Dulas under Devotions
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Scripture: Romans 6:3-11 (NKJV)
 
6:3 Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
 
5 For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. 7 For he who has died has been freed from sin. 8 Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, 9 knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more. Death no longer has dominion over Him. 10 For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God. 11 Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
 
Devotion
 
Every time we look at the crucifix of our Lord we should be reminded of our Baptism. Our Baptism connects us in such a wonderful, mysterious, and supernatural way to the cross and sepulcher of our crucified and risen Savior. By Baptism we are, in a way, plugged into His suffering, death, and resurrection so that we should look at the cross as our crucifixion, and the open tomb as our new life from the dead. How is this possible? Have we actually atoned for our own sins? Have we conquered death by our power or might? No! But by Baptism we put on Christ who has done these things for us. We are Baptized into Him, and in Him we own the events of Holy Week as though they happened to us.
 
Now, being spiritually risen from the dead, having our sins forgiven through the laver, let us not return to the tomb and once again wrap ourselves up in the burial shroud. Consider yourselves to be dead to sin, alive to God with a desire to live each and every day in the light of Christ’s glorious resurrection! The Baptized of the Lord have a bright future to look forward to: not only are they risen spiritually through faith, but on the Last Day they will rise physically with their glorified bodies and, like their Savior, be received into the everlasting glory of the Father.
 
Prayer: Grant, we beseech Thee, Almighty God, that we who have celebrated the solemnities of the Lord’s resurrection may, by the help of Thy grace, bring forth the fruits thereof in our life and conversation; through the same Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
 
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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