Last week we began discussing the effects of
personal salvation and why it might be associated with enhanced wellbeing as
found through Teleios’ research.1 Let's discover the Biblical
reasons why. This is a fantastic journey!
The next several blogs will talk about what
happens, as described in the Bible, at the time of salvation resulting in a
steadfast new and wonderful position of a believer. The blogs are based on the
list presented last week.
Let's start with spiritual baptism. This
important biblical truth is vital in understanding who we are as Christians. Our knowledge about baptism will transform the
way we think!
First, let's consider the word itself. Although
controversial, in the Epistles when baptism is mentioned it speaks generally of
spiritual baptism. It does not mean
dunking or sprinkling primarily; water baptism might be considered as an
external ritual to signify the internal event. The word is βαπτιζω (baptizoo) in
the Greek (this is the language in which the New Testament originally was
written), and was an old term borrowed from the dye trade. It meant that a
piece of cloth immersed in the dye became identified with the new color.
Secondly then, what does being identified with
Christ have to do with us as Christians? Fortunately, a lot!
When we become a Christian we are identified with
Christ’s gracious death and His resurrection. Otherwise, at salvation our old
self died and was buried with Christ. We are raised now to new life with Him
and we sit with Him on the right hand of God the Father (Romans 6:2-12;
Ephesians 2:4-7; Colossians 2:12-13).
Why is this concept so important? Similar
concepts in Scripture that also appear to speak probably to spiritual baptism
are: regeneration (Titus 3:5), born again (John 3:5) and a new man (Ephesians4:24; Colossians 3:10):
- Believer’s sin - Although every believer sins we can say ‘no’ to sin because as a new person in Christ we have the power to live a victorious life.
- The reason for the resurrection - Baptism teaches us the importance of the resurrection because we are raised with Christ to new life without which we would still be dead in our sins (I Corinthians 15:17).
- Eternal security - Baptism helps prove we cannot lose our salvation. because scripture does not indicate that if we commit sin that our new self can be killed and the old dead self re-resurrected like some bad re-make of the ‘Night of the Living Dead’!
In other words, you are transformed permanently
to a new life, resurrected with Christ and sitting with Him in heaven. These
changes cannot be reversed. What a great comfort we have in truth of scripture.
Therefore, as a new person, we are liberated from
sin and are free to serve Christ. We cannot be defeated by the misdeeds of our
old self.
Christ is a fantastic and true Savior! The nature
of our salvation is so important that we will continue to address each of the
individual promises overviewed last week.
We’ll see how they will enhance our wellbeing. Come back next week as we
continue this exciting journey about the nature of our great salvation.
WC Stewart
1.
MacIlvaine, W.R., Nelson, L.A.,
Stewart, J.A., Stewart, W.C. (2013). Association of strength of religious
adherence to quality of life measures. Complement Ther Clin Pract, 19:251-255.
Response policy - The purpose of the comment section is to promote discussion that
is encouraging, propels the further search of Scripture and raises interesting
and thought provoking Biblically related questions. You may feel free to
disagree with me in a constructive manner using appropriate language. I reserve
the right to remove your comments if they are profane, pornographic, libelous
or I do not consider them constructive or consistent with the policy
stated above. By posting you no longer own your comments and you are granting
me an unrestricted worldwide license to use your comments.
Copyright © 2016 Teleios, Inc. All rights
reserved.
No comments:
Post a Comment