Thursday

Related Verses
Rom. 11:24
24 For if you were cut off from what is by nature a wild olive tree and were grafted contrary to nature into the cultivated olive tree, how much more will these who are the natural branches be grafted into their own olive tree!

John 11:25
25 Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes into Me, even if he should die, shall live;

John 1:4
4 In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.

John 5:26
26 For just as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave to the Son to also have life in Himself;

John 6:39
39 And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all which He has given Me I should lose nothing but should raise it up in the last day.

John 17:21
21 That they all may be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us; that the world may believe that You have sent Me.

Related Reading
Although the significance of baptism is quite meaningful, very few who are baptized today truly appreciate its significance. When we go to contact people to preach the gospel, we must have the faith that the gospel we are preaching is the living word. The living Spirit goes with us…We must exercise our faith to believe that when we open our mouth to preach the word of God, the Spirit of Christ will work along with this word. Then we follow the Lord’s instruction to baptize the new believers into the Triune God (Matt. 28:19). Through baptism, these believers will grow together with Christ in the likeness of His death. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, p. 3055)

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Frederic Louis Godet, a famous expositor of the New Testament, has suggested in his Commentary on Romans that the growth revealed in Romans 6:5 is related to the notion of grafting. He translated this verse: “For if we have become one and the same plant [with Him] through the likeness of His death, we shall be also partakers of His resurrection.” According to Godet, the word grown denotes “the organic union in virtue of which one being shares the life, growth, and phases of existence belonging to another.” Through the organic union of two trees, accomplished by grafting, the one tree partakes of the life and characteristics of the other tree. Applying this understanding to our spiritual experience, we may say that we have been grafted into the “tree” of Christ, the Son of God, as the embodiment of the processed Triune God. Having become one with Him through grafting, we now partake of the life and characteristics of Him as the all-inclusive One, and in this way we grow in Him.

In this grafting, that is, in the organic union with Christ, whatever Christ passed through has become our history…Such a grafting discharges all our negative elements, resurrects our God-created faculties, uplifts our faculties, enriches our faculties, and saturates our entire being to transform us.

Once we are thus grafted into Him, His resurrection life comes into us and removes all the negative elements within. His life becomes ours in resurrection. He uplifts the original functions given to us at creation and enriches, strengthens, and even saturates our whole being. This new life is a life of two lives grafted into one. In this union are victory, life, light, power, and all the other divine attributes…In this grafting we grow together with Him. Then in resurrection His life grows in us. The divine life is in us, supplying us. This is the Christian life.

Apparently, grafting is a kind of cutting; actually, this cutting is a kind of growth. When a tree is cut off and grafted into another tree, in this tree that is grafted we see both the cutting and the growing, that is, its growth through being cut. This is a picture of our growth in Christ by being buried into the death of Christ through baptism…To be baptized is to be grafted into Christ. This baptism involves growth.

After a person repents and believes in the Lord Jesus, he grows with Christ first in baptism, in the likeness of His death, and then in the likeness of His resurrection, in the newness of life. As a believer experiences a proper baptism, the divine Spirit within him puts to death the old man with his worldly, sinful elements. After he comes out of the water of baptism a new person, he begins to live and walk in the newness of life, in the newness of His resurrection. Therefore, he grows daily in the likeness of His resurrection and walks in newness of life. This is certainly the wonderful experience and enjoyment of the Christ who died and resurrected. (The Conclusion of the New Testament, pp. 3055-3058)

Further Reading: Life-study of Romans, msg. 11