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Baptism Is A Burial
This verse is very important for everyone, because it is warning us that we are in danger of having God's
wrath upon us if we do not do something which it says we must do. It says we must "obey the gospel".
The first several times I heard of this expression I was bewildered. This was a new expression for me. I needed
to find out exactly what that meant, as I most assuredly did not desire to come under the wrath of the Almighty God.
With a little bit of study of the scriptures, the meaning was made apparent and soon became quite obvious to me. I knew
by my study that I had not done what was necessary to avoid God's wrath upon me, and so I determined in my mind that I
needed to do something about becoming right with God, and that this could only happen when I was willing to submit to doing His
will.
The first question that comes to mind when reading this passage is, "What is the gospel?" We must go to other passages to find the answer to that question: It is the power unto salvation (it can save us):
It is that Christ died, was buried and was resurrected:
 Illustration by Robert Swain As we can see from 1Cor 15:1-4 above:
- Paul preached it - They received it (believed it) - They stand in it (practice and uphold it) - They are saved by it (IF they continue in it) Notice again, that 2 Thess. 1:7-9 says if we want to avoid God's vengeance we must
"obey" the gospel. And if the gospel is the death, burial and resurrection, as we have seen already, then
how is it that we "obey" that?
Now it is becoming more clear. We must be baptized into His death! This verse
says that we are buried with Him through baptism. And then, just as Christ was raised from the dead, we also are raised
to walk in newness of life after we are baptized. It is absolutely essential that our baptism involves a death and a
burial and a resurrection. We must die to our sins, be buried into His death (His death is where His blood was shed)
and we rise (are resurrected) a new creature, free from sin. Paul says that the saints in Rome had obeyed a form of doctrine which he had delived to
them:
What had he delivered to them? He delivered unto them the gospel of Christ. What did we say
the gospel of Christ was? It was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The Greek word translated "form" is "tupos," meaning example, fashion, figure, form, manner, pattern, print. So, he says that they had obeyed a pattern o doctrine, a like-figure, a manner of Jesus' death, burial and resurrection. How did they obey it? They were baptized - immersed into His death! Now we can see the connection.  Illustration by Robert Swain What Is So Important About Being Buried With Him?
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