OK, so baptism DOESN'T save after all.
Now it's righteous living that saves someone. After all, Paul also said...Romans 2:26 So, if a man who is uncircumcised keeps the precepts of the law, will not his uncircumcision be regarded as circumcision?
It's really about the heart after all then, isn't it and not the outward actions.
****It’s really about the heart after all then, isn’t it and not the outward actions.****
LOL, can you even seen the contradiction in what you wrote?
It is ALL about one’s actions after receiving the saving grace of salvation in baptism. One cannot undo baptism, just as one cannot undo a circumcision, but one’s actions can cut off that saving grace and so the consequences are as if one had not been baptized.
Paul is saying if the believer lives a life that does not reflect God’s light in them, if their life is not one which causes others to thirst for His saving grace, if it is a life of unrighteousness, then it will cause the unbeliever to deny the necessity of God, of Jesus’ passion and resurrection and of repentance. Indeed, it causes them to deny the very existence of God and to think they are good without Him and the precepts of His law.
It IS the actions and not just what the person professes to believe.
2 Peter 2:20-21
20 For if, after they have escaped the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome, the latter end is worse for them than the beginning. 21 For it would have been better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than having known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered to them.