Jess hit on something we don’t usually think about – God is a community of three.  He values community because He is one – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  Three yet one is more than we can possibly fathom but that’s the mystery of the Godhead. 

God values relationships and we know it because He is a community.  We also know it because he valued a relationship with us so much that Christ gave himself as a sinless sacrifice to reconcile us back into community relationship with Himself. 

At salvation, I Corinthians 12:13 tells us that we were baptized into the body of Christ – into the universal community of believers.  We are not in this alone.  We are actually defined by being in this community.  Romans 12:4-6  from The Message tells us ^“In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we’re talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us finds our meaning and function as a part of his body.”

Think about the ramifications of being in community with God and other believers.  Who we are and what we do affects others.  The choices we make affect the whole community.  If the community of the Godhead does not relate in self-centered, selfish love but self-giving, sacrificial love then that is the pattern for us. 

We were more important to Christ than his comfort.  He laid down his glory to come to earth to live as the son of man to pay our debt.  He is our example of seeing and making others more important than ourselves – sacrificial community love.

When you see the golden arches what do you think of?  McDonalds.  The golden arches are a symbol of fast food.  You know what you are going to get no matter where you are in the world when you see those arches.  They identify the place as McDonalds.

So, in baptism we are identified with Christ’s death and resurrection.  Baptism is symbolic.  It tells the world that we have decided to follow Jesus.  We are His.  It reminds us that we are dead to the power of sin and alive to the Spirit of God living within us.  Baptism symbolizes to us that the same power that raised Christ from the dead lives in us.  Praise God!!  What power!

Baptism gives us a new identity – we are “in Christ.”  Just read the Epistles and see how many times you see these words describing us as in Christ.  This is a position in which we have been placed as disciples – a place of security, responsibility and power.

Before Christ’s baptism, baptism was an initiation into the community.  If people from other nations or religions wanted to join the Jewish community they had to be baptized to signify their cleansing from their old affiliation and their belonging to the Jewish faith.  So, water baptism is an initiation into the body of Christ and the Kingdom of God.  While the spiritual birth into the body of Christ happened at salvation, the baptism is an outward sign that this has happened.  We belong to one another as believers.

Baptism is a sign.  Just as circumcision was a sign in the Old Testament that a person was a Jew, so water baptism is a sign that we are participating in the New Covenant of Christ’s grace.

While we were redeemed, adopted, justified, sanctified, and reborn at the moment of committing our life to Christ, baptism is a sign, symbol, identification and initiation into a life of ongoing transformation into the likeness of Christ.

Few of us truly understand the significance water baptism had in the first century and should have in our lives today.  It is a radical first step of obedience for the disciple.  What is keeping you from being Baptized?