After Israel’s thirty-eight years of wandering in the wilderness, all the men of their first generation, except Joshua and Caleb, fell dead in the wilderness. The remaining second generation, the new generation, arrived at the plain on the east of the Jordan, and after they received renewed training by Moses in the reiteration of the law (Deut. 1), they crossed the Jordan and entered into the good land. The Jordan River typifies the death and resurrection of Christ, and the crossing of the Jordan River typifies the believers’ baptism.
Joshua 3 and 4 cover Israel’s crossing of the Jordan. The Jordan River signifies the death and resurrection of Christ. The Ark of God and the priests who bore it took the lead to go into the waters of the Jordan and stood in the waters (3:3, 6, 8, 10-11, 14). The Ark is a type of Christ as the embodiment of the Triune God. The Ark’s entering into and coming out of the Jordan indicates the death and resurrection of Christ.
The children of Israel passed through the death of Christ to bury their old man and to become a new man in Christ for fighting spiritual warfare. This shows that our natural man, our old man, is altogether unqualified to fight spiritual warfare for Christ. God’s intention is to join us to Christ that we may have an organic union with Him and become one with Him and that His history may become our history. In our union with Christ, His experiences become ours. He died on the cross, and we died with Him. He was buried, and we were buried with Him. He was resurrected from the dead, and we were resurrected with Him. Ephesians 2:5-6 says that we were dead in offenses, but God made us alive together with Christ and raised us up together with Him and seated us together with Him in the heavenlies in Christ Jesus.
In the New Testament the first baptism of the believers took place in the Jordan (Matt. 3:6). According to the spiritual principle in the Scriptures, the first mention concerning a matter becomes the spiritual significance of that matter. The first mention of the believers’ baptism takes place in the Jordan. Hence, according to the meaning in typology, the Jordan River denotes the death of Christ into which the believers have been baptized. According to the fact, the believers have been baptized into the death of Christ.
Romans 6:3 says, “Are you ignorant that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?” Baptism is not a form or a ritual; it signifies our identification with Christ. Christ and His death are one. Christ’s death has separated us from the world and the satanic power of darkness; it has terminated our natural life, our old man, our self, our flesh, and even our entire history. The former is signified by the crossing of the Red Sea and the latter by the crossing of the Jordan River. Through baptism we were buried with Christ into death. We did not die directly; we entered into Christ’s death through baptism.
The death of Christ leads us to His resurrection. The believers’ baptism into the death of Christ, as the crossing of the Jordan River, leads the believers into the resurrection of Christ. Colossians 2:12 says, “Buried together with Him in baptism, in which also you were raised together with Him through the faith of the operation of God, who raised Him from the dead.” In the aspect of burial, baptism is the termination of our flesh; in the aspect of resurrection, baptism is the germination of our spirit so that we are made alive in Christ with the divine life. In the new realm of resurrection we enjoy Christ as the all-inclusive good land in which we walk and even are being rooted and built up for the accomplishing of the economy of God (Rom. 6:4; Col. 2:7).