Losing Interest with the power of the World - Part 3.1

What happened when you were baptized?
This may seem like a strange question but let's think about it for a minute. Many know that at our baptism we were not saved or cleansed of our sinfulness. Many also know that at our baptism we gained a public identity with Christ. Our new identity is what I desire to write about today.
How much have we really taken seriously this concept of new identity?
While reading Mere Discipleship, I believe I have found one of the best descriptions of what this new identity really means. The reality comes with letting the familiarity with which we often read Galatians 3:27-28 be challenged by God the Holy Spirit. Familiarity with texts can get us into such a rut that we do not see the sins that entangle us. We need to approach God's word to be challenged in our sinfulness and encouraged in our faithfulness not merely one or the other. If both are not happening when we live our relationship with the Creator then we may be missing most of what He wants us to read, see, understand and live.
In Mere Discipleship, Lee C. Camp reminds disciples that baptism brings a shift in our existence that is paramount. Baptism is our public declaration that we are not longer aligned with the trappings of this world but are aligned with the kingdom of God, the way of Jesus. "Baptism inducts one into a community with certain specific requirements, a community of discipleship." Baptism without discipleship then is not Christian baptism rather it is merely getting wet.
The baptized who are in Christ are now citizens not of American Christian culture but citizens of the Kingdom of the one true King. Baptism radically dramatizes that our allegiance has changed form the ways of the world to the ways of the kingdom of God: loving and pursuing the enemies of God as God loves and pursues His enemies. "The baptism that we are apart of beckons us to act against imperial mandates, reject infant baptism, refuse allegiance with the government, and refusing to war against the enemies of the empire. The baptism the Word of God calls us to be apart of makes us brothers and sisters of a 'new humanity.'"
The heart of baptism, the baptism in the Christ Jesus, is "all division, all the social groupings, all the forms of identity that serve to categorize, divide, estrange, and alienate one from the other-- these are broken down. There is, for those who have been clothed with Christ in baptism, a new identity, an identity that transcends race, economic class, ethnic grouping, and citizenship." Baptism takes an axe to the root of the tree of cultural imperialism and labeling we so often cling to.
If we are truly baptized into this biblical baptism then "we are to be the church, a baptized community walking always in the way of Christ, offer in the hope of redemption to a world trapped under the domination of those principalities and powers desperately clinging to an illusion of control." This baptism "inducts one into a new humanity, a new social order, a new way of existing in the world." By the world's standards "race, sex, denomination, family, and citizenship can all become levers for exclusion--and subsequently, a means of oppression. Baptism does not induct us into a group that seeks to wield power and control over others." The truly baptized are the 'new humanity' of the world proclaiming love, reconciliation, and forgiveness which sows peace and inclusiveness not constant divisiveness.
Did you get wet or get baptized?
Are you living the old ways of the flesh with a Christian varnish or are you apart of the 'new humanity' implementing the kingdom of God by living the way of Christ?