Welcome
to Thesis # 25 out of 95 with the intent to lead the German
speaking people to think about their loving acceptance of God’s Cove-
nant of Grace, the New Covenant in Christ’s blood.
One of the first demands of God’s New Covenant we have studied in
Thesis # 21 and # 24. We know this Truth now very well. I hope you have
read all the texts regarding repentance that you can find in your Bible. In
those two lessons we could not quote or refer to all of them.
Just remember, that repentance symbolizes the spiritual death of a per-
son who is seeking redemption through Christ. It also symbolizes, as Truth
for salvation, the real death of Jesus the Messiah on the cross at Golgotha.
I hope you are more than overjoyed that He did that for you personally.
This statement is of course only true, if you accept Him as a gift of God, by
obeying the provisions His death provided, with all your love and devotion.
If you are not willing to do that, you will continue to be under the wrath and
judgment of God. As we have learned in these first 24 Theses’ you have to
prepare yourself personally for the day you plan to enter God’s New Cove-
nant agreement. The price Jesus paid for your redemption was to high. You
should not downgrade or make fun of His way of salvation, like these two
big denomination do. The steps of the New Covenant are worth more than all
the gold in the whole world. They have eternal value like nothing else on this
earth.
Let us now turn our thoughts to another demand of the New Covenant.
After Jesus had died on the cross, He was buried. This is exactly what
has to happen to a repentant person. In immersion a person is symbolically
buried. This is the funeral of the old sinful nature.
This is again the picture of the Metamorphosis, (caterpillar- butterfly).
Have you, dear Reader, obeyed this command of the New Covenant yet?
“Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus
were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through
baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead
through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Gal. 6:3,4).
If you have not yet obeyed this demand of the New Covenant, you
are still a sinner, separated from redemption through Christ. You are still un-
der God’s wrath. That, of course doesn’t have to stay this way. All you will
have to do is accept God’s New Covenant with all your love and devotion.
Through this symbolic burial, the newly baptized person receives many
more gifts of grace from God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
Immersion is that part of the commands of the New Covenant through
which God forgives the sins of the repentant sinner. That doesn’t happen
through repentance, like some say today. If it did, baptism wouldn’t be neces-
sary or as important as it is. The forgiveness of our sins happens in the
watery grave which is the next salvation step after repentance. (Read Ac.
2:38 once more please!)
After the newly baptized former sinner has become free from his sins,
he or she also receives the Holy Spirit and with it life in Christ. It’s not him
or her that live now anymore, because from now on Christ is their life (Ac.
2:28; cf. Gal. 2:20).
The Apostle Peter explains something else that is happening through
immersion, “..this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also- not the
removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward
God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ ”(1.Pet. 3:21; cf. Hebr.
10:22).
The Apostle Paul calls immersion a circumcision not made by hands of
men, “In him you were also circumcised, in the putting off of the sinful
nature, not with a circumcision done by the hands of men but by the circum-
cision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised
with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the
dead” (Col. 2: 11,12; see also Tit. 3:5; cf. Jn. 3: 1-15).
He also explains, “If we have been united with him like this in his death,
we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection” (Ro. 6:5).
Does the burial with Christ, of a repentant believer, symbolize in any
form or sense what has been done with us as infants? You be the judge!
God’s power behind immersion i.e. baptism is only effective, if our
repentance shows, that we have changed our mind in favor of God’s will and
New Covenant demands. Otherwise a person was only sorry for sins commit-
ted and just got wet but not saved and transferred into Christ.
We read in the letter to the Colossians, “For he has rescued us from the
dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,
in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of our sins” (Col. 1:13,14).
The Apostle Paul concludes, “So from now on we regard no one from a
worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so
no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has
gone, the new has come!” (2. Cor. 5:16,17). The “old” being our sinful na-
ture and sin, symbolic of the caterpillar. The “new” being our Life in Christ,
symbolic to a butterfly.
Much more happens in our life through our acceptance of God’s New
Testament or New Covenant provisions.
I hope you are able and willing to understand and accept all of these
Truths of the Bible. It just takes a total and honest rethinking of the faith we
have been forced into as infants by our parents and those two deceiving and
deceived denominations.
Questions you are able to answer now:
- What does the grave of the repentant sinner consist of________________?
- What happens as a result of his or her burial________________________?
- Does it take a priest to make this covenant demand effective___________?
- Are the Catholic or Lutheran officials even necessary to make the Lord’s
will on earth effective____?
This is our prayer for you, dear Reader.
With a loving hug Pastor Bert