The import and obligations of baptism.
"For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ."
I. THE IMPORT OF BAPTISM INTO CHRIST.
1. It declares our union with Christ. We are baptized into his death, so far as we partake of its benefits, and are like him separated from the world and sin. We are by baptism separated from sin and devoted to Christ.
2. The text does not imply that all baptized persons have been baptized into Christ. Calvin well remarks that the apostle treats of the sacraments from two points of view. When he is arguing with hypocrites, he declares the emptiness of the outward symbols and the folly of confiding in them. But in dealing with the case of believers, while he attributes no false splendour to the sacraments, he refers emphatically to the inward fact signified by the outward ceremony. There is no warrant in this passage for the doctrine of baptismal regeneration, because the very persons here referred to were regenerated before they were baptized. Baptism followed upon their profession of faith in Christ.
II. THE OBLIGATIONS OF BAPTISM. They did "put on Christ." Baptized into his death and buried with him in baptism, they rise with him into newness of life. They put on Christ like a cloak. The beauty of holiness is to be upon them, because they are "predestinated to the very image of Christ." The text is very expressive.
1. Christ is put on for a complete covering. Not merely as a girdle to the loins, but to enfold the whole manhood of believers. The idea is not that of protection from the coldness of an outside world, but that of the full adornment of Christian character. Believers are so to put on Christ that the world may see Christ in the believer himself.
2. Christ is put on for a constant covering. Not as a beautiful robe to be worn on high days and holidays, but on every day, in every scene of human life.
3. While believers are here represented as having put on Christ at their baptism, it is quite consistent for the apostle to say, "Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 13:12), and "Put on the new man" (Ephesians 4:24). They are two sides of one great truth, representing in the one case a change that was complete from the very beginning, and in the other a change that is incomplete, but in process of still further development.