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Galatians 3.27 (NIV)
For all of you who were
baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.
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| Should not people of hope, whose bodies are temples of God, look a bit different from children of despair?* |
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On
the red carpet at the Academy Awards, celebrities are asked, “Who are you
wearing?” Wearing a designer’s creation is an advertisement for him and if you
don’t look good, he doesn’t look good!
Paul
says that when we are baptized into Christ, we begin to wear Christ; but if not accompanied by faith and repentance, baptism is just
a bath and the “clothes” you wear around are cheap knock-offs, not designer
originals.
Analogy may be useful for illustration purposes, but often
it stops short of an apt word picture. In John 14.20, Jesus tells us
that he is in the Father, we are in Jesus, and Jesus is in us. That sounds a
little more complex than merely donning the appropriate attire. But the
unity Christ describes between him and the father, and between him and us, is a
result of the same baptism by which we are clothed with Christ.
If
you aren’t wearing him on the outside, you surely aren’t bearing him on the
inside!
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| God approves righteousness when “inward," but despises the mere outward show of it.* |
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