The Old Me Drowned

The Old Me Drowned

Picture the moment of baptism. You step into the water, and in that instant the old you is lowered beneath the surface. It is not a gentle dip or a symbolic gesture. It is death itself. Every aim you once chased, every meaning you attached to your days, every claim you made to run your own life, all of it drowns completely. The old person is finished. Nothing of that former purpose survives.

When you rise from the water, you do not come up the same. A new life begins right there, one that carries an entirely different meaning and an entirely different purpose. From that moment you join Christ in His own purpose. You hand the reins over fully. He becomes Lord over everything, not as an addition to your plans, but as the very center of them.

The apostle Paul captures this truth so clearly in Romans chapter 6, verses 1 through 6: “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it? Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? Therefore we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.”

Yet so many rise from those waters and walk away unchanged. They return to the old throne of self, still directing their steps, still deciding what matters most. They simply tack a little religion onto the life they already had. Jesus becomes an accessory rather than the Lord. The old me never truly drowned, and so the new life never truly begins.