Buried with Christ

We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death. Rom 6:4 (ESV)

Buried with Christ, my soul is free!
From all the stench of sin and guilt
Formerly that surrounded me
Until the Savior’s blood was spilt,
Until they laid him in the tomb,
Until the dead was done away,
Until they sealed with heavy stone
The crypt where death’s corruption lay.
    (Rom 6:3; Matt 27:57-60;
    Mark 15:42-46; Luke 23:50-53;
    John 19:38-42; Rom 6:6 [NASB])

Buried with Christ, how can we rise
Again to dwell in sin’s domain?
The old man’s dead; he cannot prise
The grave apart, nor live again!
For Jesus gave his final breath
Atonement for our souls to win
And baptized us into his death
To free from slavery to sin.
    (Rom 6:1-4a, 6)

Buried with Christ, and dead to sin!
Behind his back it now is cast,
Ev’ry miasma once within
Dispersed, forgiven, blotted—past!
His sacrifice was once, for all
Our sins to plunge into the seas,
To lawless deeds no more recall
But cast them far as west from east.
    (Isa 38:17; 43:25; 44:22; Jer 31:34;
    Heb 9:26b; Mic 7:19; Heb 10:17-18;
    Ps 103:12)

Buried with Christ, I now press on
To make his resurrection mine;
Jesus has called me for his own
And bids me leave all else behind.
I do not fully here attain
To all that then I hope to be,
Yet still by faith I’ll upward strain
Until his glory raises me.
    (Phil 3:12-15)

—6/22/25

Forgive Us Our Debts

Ah, Lord, I hear my debtors knock
With hat in hand upon my mind,
Who’ve long since met my stony block
Of heart, and ceased my face to find.

And can I really fancy me
A better man than they have been
Because the first in repartee
Was theirs, against me first the sin?

For Lord, you know my rocky heart,
How furrows crooken on its plain;
You saw me take the meaner part
And curse my debtors for my pain.

Ah, friend of sinners, full of grace—
Assuming curses meant for me!—
Excruciated in my place,
E’en still, “forgive him” was thy plea.

O Lamb, you died as much for them
And their atonement as for me.
Forgive, restore, and comfort them;
Forgive, restore, and comfort me.

—6/17/25

If words were a kiss then I’ve kissed you
...
[I have heard that this fragment concerns a prolonged correspondence,
But the rest of the author is lost or was never at all.]
...
But once I wished to touch your cheek
Without a metaphor.
—Inscription on a shard of heart