Posted on 01/21/2005 6:34:28 AM PST by P-Marlowe
1) Believe,
2) repent of your sins,
3) confess that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God,
4) and be baptized for the remission of your sins.
You left that off.
If God promises to do x if a man will do y and when a man then does x and God does not do y, then what is God?
That wasn't my list.
If man does x it is because God, the prime mover, did w. To say otherwise is rob God of His power and glory.
I agree that you need faith first, but that doesn't mean that faith alone leads to salvation. The Bible does not teach faith alone. If you try to take repentance, confession, and baptism out of the mix, you are disregarding clear Biblical teaching.
I am assuming you meant this as a response to me, since I am the one who listed these things on here initially. I totally agree, God does reveal Himself through His Word.
Romans 10:17 "So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God."
Cornelius was saved before he was baptized (Acts 10:44-48)
Faith alone, given to man by His grace.
Like Lazarus, we live again to repent only after God regenerates our dead hearts.
I gave you the KJV, marlowe. And you rewrite Scripture.
As God wills.
There is nothing in the New Testament text that implies that Cornelius was saved before he was baptized. I do realize that he received the give of the Holy Spirit and was able to speak in tongues, but the Bible makes it clear that this was in order to show those of Jewish descent that were with them that God could indeed work through Gentiles as well as Jews. Just as the reception of the Holy Spirit by the apostles on Pentecost showed the Jews that God was working through them. The ones there with Peter realized that Cornelius and his family were welcome by God, and agreed they should be baptized, and Peter commanded them to do so.
If the Jews were commanded to be baptized for the remission of their sins at Pentecost (Acts 2:38), and God is not respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), then baptism for Cornelius and his family was also for the remission of sins when it was commanded by Peter (Acts 10:48).
The Bible does not teach faith alone.
The Bible does teach that "confession is made unto salvation" (Romans 10:10). How can we be saved before confession if confession is made unto, or towards, salvation?
The Bible also teaches that we are baptized "for the remission of sins" (Acts 2:38). How can we be saved before baptism if it is for, or towards, the remission of our sins?
Water baptism came after he was saved.
Water baptism is a sign one is saved and has nothing to do with New Testament salvation as stated by Peter himself (1Pet.3:21), who states water baptism is a figure of salvation.
Was Noah now saved from the flood? It does not seem so, God gives him more commandments to follow
Gen 6:13 Then God said to Noah, " The end of all flesh has come before Me; for the earth is filled with violence because of them; and behold, I am about to destroy them with the earth. 14 "Make for yourself an ark of gopher wood; you shall make the ark with rooms, and shall cover it inside and out with pitch. 15 "This is how you shall make it: the length of the ark three hundred cubits, its breadth fifty cubits, and its height thirty cubits. 16 "You shall make a window for the ark, and finish it to a cubit from the top; and set the door of the ark in the side of it; you shall make it with lower, second, and third decks.
God has really piled on to Noah now. Just having favor was not enough, now he has to build an ark. Noah can not build it he way he wants to either. god gave him very specific instructions about the construction. BUT, Noah is still not saved from the flood. His Faith has to be followed through. Gen6:22 Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did.
Gen7:1 Then the LORD said to Noah, "Enter the ark, you and all your household, for you {alone} I have seen {to be} righteous before Me in this time.
Noah must be saved now, God said he is righteous. Maybe some think he should have stopped there, but Noha did not, he followed through with more commands.
Gen 7:5 Noah did according to all that the LORD had commanded him Gen7:7 Then Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons' wives with him entered the ark because of the water of the flood Gen 7:23 Thus He blotted out every living thing that was upon the face of the land, from man to animals to creeping things and to birds of the sky, and they were blotted out from the earth; and only Noah was left, together with those that were with him in the ark.
So Noah had to keep following through wiht what God wanted in order to attain salvation. God REVEALED Himself, not enough, Noah Beleived, not enough, began building the Ark, (compare to repent & confess), then Noah had to enter the ark to be saved (baptism)
It was not just one thing that God commanded that saved Noah, he had to follow through with all of it. I Peter3:18 For Christ also died for sins once for all, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit; 19 in which also He went and made proclamation to the spirits now in prison, 20 who once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. 21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you--
The Bible is filled with statements where God says he will do Y if man does X, and the onus is on man to perform. God does not do the things he commands man to do, nor does God do those things that men do that God forbids him to do. To say otherwise is to make men mere pre-programmed robots and make God into the author of sin. To me that diminishes God's glory and makes him into nothing short of a cosmic puppeteer.
"The Baptism of the Holy Spirit" that you speak of is only recorded twice in the New Testament: at Pentecost and with Cornelius. Water baptism, which is the baptism that is mentioned in all 10 conversion stories in Acts, is the baptism that is commanded by Jesus himself (Mark 16:16). It is also the baptism commanded by the apostles (Acts 2:38).
As for what Peter says in 1 Peter 3, you are missing the point. He is saying that the water itself doesn't save us. That is true. By being baptized, a penitent sinner is doing as God commanded him, and having their sins washed away. (Acts 22:16)
The Baptism that occured with Cornelius (minus the speaking in tongues) happens now everytime one believes in Christ.
He is placed by the Holy Spirit into Union with Christ (1Cor.12)
Water baptism, which is the baptism that is mentioned in all 10 conversion stories in Acts, is the baptism that is commanded by Jesus himself (Mark 16:16).
Mark 16 is not speaking of water baptism, it is speaking of spirit baptism.
The last verse states nothing about not getting baptized leading to one being damned, only disbelief.
When one believes in Christ, then one is baptized by the Holy Spirit and saved.
It is also the baptism commanded by the apostles (Acts 2:38).
And Peter never preached that Gospel again.
That was the Kingdom gospel, not the Gospel of the grace of God for this dispensation (1Cor.15:3-5)
Peter says in 1Pet (well after Acts 2) that Baptism is simply a figure.
A 'figure' is a representation of something else.
That figure is the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ and when one goes under the water he is showing the world that he has become identifed with Christ.
The water does nothing to his sins, which have already been forgiven because of his earlier faith.
As for what Peter says in 1 Peter 3, you are missing the point. He is saying that the water itself doesn't save us. That is true. By being baptized, a penitent sinner is doing as God commanded him, and having their sins washed away. (Acts 22:16)
Acts 22:16 is referring back to when Paul was saved and Ananias was still referring to the Gospel preached by John the Baptist.
That Gospel had changed as noted by Paul in Acts 19:3-5.
Now, why would these men have to be baptized again if the first baptism washed away their sins and saved them?
These men were saved, but had not entered into the church through the baptism of the Holy Spirit and so had to be re-baptized as being identified with the work of the Resurrected Christ.
Today, in the church age, we preach the gospel of the grace of God and spirit baptism is what places into union with the Body of Christ and Christ Himself.
Water baptism does nothing to anyone sins since they have been forgiven before one enters the water as a saved man.
The only people noted to have been immersed prior to John the Baptist were the antediluvians, and on another thread it was noted that the general consensus around here is that those people were NOT saved (although I hold out hope that many of them repented as the water approached nose level).
It should also be noted that Moses' biggest miracle was in preventing the "baptism" of the Israelites as they crossed the red sea.
So if Baptism is a requirement for salvation, then most, if not all, of the old testament patriarchs are out of luck.
But wait, isn't there a sect that does baptism for the dead?
I am choosing not to continue to go back and forth on this issue. I have tried to let the Bible speak for itself, but you have inserted outside doctrine into your understanding of the Bible and it has caused you to see things that are not there. There is one Gospel, and it was preached to those at Pentecost, and Cornelius, and it is still being preached today by those who cling to the Bible as their only source of doctrine. God bless.
??? Find a Jew, and ask them what a "mikve" is.
Baptism is a Greek name for a Jewish ritual, prescribed over and over again in the Law.
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