I just read a story about a convicted felon who was baptized while in prison. He was lowered into a wooden coffin that had been lined with plastic and filled with water. He carefully stepped into the water and was immersed. His dead body was given new life by the power of God. The man sat in the coffin weeping, saying "I want to wear these clothes as long as I can. I am now a free man...this (razor) wire can't shackle my soul. I know that I deserved to come here, to pay for what I did. But I also learned here that someone else paid for my crimes." (Hicks & Taylor, Down in the River to Pray, 216). A similar coffin would hold his body again but death would have no power over him at that time.
The power of God at work in baptism is more powerful than our wickedness, more powerful than all the wickedness of the whole world. Uniting with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus through our own death, burial and resurrection is a powerful act of faith, submission, obedience in which transformation into the image of God is powerfully displayed. All who experience this new birth have new hope and new life. Everyone! I truly mean everyone. Including the above prisoner who had molested his 10-year-old daughter. But who am I to cast the first stone? All sinners, regardless of the nature of their sins, are in need of the transforming power of God which is uniquely unleashed in baptism. So let's drop the rocks in our hands.
What do you think?
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