Baptized Into Christ: Leaving Bondage, Living Free

“They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” —1 CORINTHIANS 10:2

The Gospel message is about ‘a coming out of sin’ and ‘a coming into the fullness of Christ’. This is the way baptism is portrayed throughout the New Testament, but in the Old Testament, we have a wonderful foreshadowing, called a ‘typology’, which are events in the Old Testament history that depict New Testament truths. The typology of baptism depicts this coming out of sin and coming into the fullness of Christ. 

In 1 Corinthians 10:1-4, Paul talks about the children of Israel who were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ. After four hundred years of captivity in Egypt, Moses, commanded by God, had led them out of bondage, and they followed the cloud God had set before them. The cloud had led them to the banks of the Red Sea with the Egyptian army in hot pursuit. The people were trapped and were terrified and panicked, but what happens next is a profound portrait of what it means to be baptized. 

Moses held the staff of God over the Red Sea and God parted it. The Israelites went down into water on Egyptian territory where they had been enslaved, and are now stepping out of enslavement. They go into the water with their old masters, Pharaoh and his army, trying to round them up and bring them back. Their old masters were swallowed by the water, but the Hebrew people came up on the other side onto new ground; a new land with a new purpose and a new life. 

This, says Paul, is a picture of what baptism is. We come out of the old life, the bondage of sin, in order to come into the new life, the fullness of Christ. Sadly, many are satisfied with being forgiven and saved, and fail to embark on the whole purpose of coming out of the old life, which is to come into the new. Baptism is not simply identification with Christ’s death and His burial, so that our sin is forgiven and we go to heaven. That still leaves us treading water, trying our best to stay afloat.

All of Scripture leads to Christ, and the message of the Gospel is receiving fullness of life in Him. The Israelites, over 3500 hundred years ago, were nourished and sustained by the Spiritual Rock that was Christ among them. Today, having been raised with Christ, we have the incredible blessing of His presence, not among us, but “in us” and for all time.

Dear Lord Jesus, Thank You for Your life that indwells me. Help me to live in Your fullness and to submit all that I am to You.

Am I living in the fullness of Christ and growing in my relationship with Him?