The Lord Jesus has been performing many miracles in Israel, but the Jews refused to believe that He was sent by God the Father as the redeemer of Israel. When Christ healed on the Sabbath day, the Jews began to persecute Him. In response Jesus tells the people that God is his own Father, so that they became even angrier because He was making Himself equal with God. Jesus Christ shows them that their life and salvation is intricately connected to his life. He says in 5:24,

Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life.

The believer no longer belongs to death, but has entered into life. Faith is not hoping that one day you may pass from death to life, but everyone who believes the Father who sent his Son by that very act has crossed over from death to life.

This crossing over from death to life is very closely tied to the person of Jesus Christ. This crossing over from death to life has been foreshadowed in Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea on dry land. The apostle Paul makes this connection in 1 Corinthians 10:1, 2. He reminds the readers that all Israel passed through the Sea. “They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.”

The Lord God sent Moses as the mediator and deliverer of Israel. Moses is much more than simply God’s spokesperson. For the Lord gives him the power to perform many wonders in Egypt (Exodus 4:21) in order to deliver Israel. It is through Moses that the LORD will deliver Israel from the cruel bondage of slavery. Moses will lead them from certain death in bondage to a new life of freedom. That is most evident in the crossing of the Red Sea.

At the Red Sea God instructs Moses to lead Israel through the Red Sea on the dry path He has made for them. Israel is to follow him and if they refuse, they will continue to be a people in slavery. Israel’s deliverance is intimately tied to Moses.

Therefore Paul can write about all Israel being baptized into Moses in the cloud and the Sea. The lives of Moses and the people of Israel became so interwoven that you can say Israel became one with Moses when they joined Moses under the cloud and in the sea. Israel’s life was bound up in the life of Moses whom God sent as their deliverer.

And so, when Moses entered into the sea to cross over, Israel joins him in the sea. This wonderful union with Moses has the result that the people have crossed over from slavery to freedom.

Standing before the Red Sea Israel faced death, but now that they have crossed over the Sea, they experience freedom. Through Moses, the LORD has delivered Israel from death and given them a new life. There on the other side of the sea, God enters into a covenant relationship with His people at Mt. Sinai.

Paul draws an analogy between Moses and Jesus Christ. Whereas Israel was baptized into Moses, today we experience something much greater, having been baptized into Jesus Christ. The life of the church of Christ is intimately bound up in the life of her Saviour. That is the point that the Jews refuse to accept in John 5. They refused to bind their life by faith to Jesus Christ whom the Father sent from heaven as their redeemer.

Christ declares that everyone who receives the one the Father has sent as his or her redeemer, has crossed over from death to life. Christ Jesus came to lead us from death to sin to life with the Father. The Jews were not able to understand that the redeemer would endure suffering and even death on the cross in order to lead his people from the death of this life to a new life that He has obtained by his resurrection.

But everyone who believes in Christ Jesus has died to sin with Christ and crossed over to life through his resurrection. By faith our life has become intimately bound up in the life of our Saviour. For everyone who seeks his or her life in Jesus Christ has crossed over from death to life. The deliverance experienced by Israel at the Red Sea has been given to you in much greater measure in Christ Jesus. In Him you have crossed over from slavery to sin and misery, to a new life of fellowship with the Father in heaven.