My project results – part 2 of 6

 

God taught me the details of what happened when I was baptized and how that gave me life.

 

Jesus was crucified, he died, was buried and raised (resurrected). When we are baptized, we also are crucified, we die, are buried and then raised (resurrected) with Jesus.

 

they put Jesus to death on a cross, they buried him in a tomb, God raised Jesus on the third day, witnesses ate and drank with Jesus after he rose from the dead, and the apostles gave testimony to the resurrection of the Jesus.

(see Acts 10:34-43 and Acts 4:33 and Matthew chapters 27 and 28)

 

I am baptized into Jesus (into his experience) (see Romans 6:3)

I am crucified with Jesus (see Romans 6:6)

I die with Jesus (see Romans 6:8)

I am buried with Jesus in baptism (see Colossians 2:12)

I am made alive together with Jesus (see Ephesians 2:4-7)

I am raised (resurrected) with Jesus in baptism (see Colossians 2:12)

I am now new. The old is gone. (see 2 Corinthians 5:17-18)

I have been born a spirit from above. (see John 3:6-7)

 

God asked me at this point if I understood what had happened to me in baptism. The fact he asked the question was a good clue I was reading the verses but not grasping what they said. So I wisely asked, tell me again as you would to a very young child. We went through the verses underlying words.

 

To bury something, it has to be dead. To make something alive, it first has to have no life, it has to be dead. You don’t bury a soul. You bury a body. The death we experience in baptism is a physical death.

 

Until Jesus made the comment, ‘Dee, what do you bury?’ I wasn’t seeing what he was trying to teach me. You bury a body. I have to come out of baptism with a new body because the old one has been buried. The old body is gone. God resurrected his son Jesus and me with him. I am now new. I am not partially old and partially new. The old is gone.

 

I died. I was buried. And God raised me from the dead. I have been resurrected. I have a new body. It happened in my baptism.

 

But some one will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”

You are sown in corruption, raised in incorruption.

You are sown in dishonor, raised in glory.

You are sown in weakness, raised in power.

You are sown a natural body, raised a spiritual body.

Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

(see 1 Corinthians 15)

 

I have been baptized into Jesus and I have now put on Jesus Christ.

(see Galatians 3:27)

 

God gave me a new body in baptism that is like Jesus. I have put on Christ. God changed me in an instant, in the twinkle of an eye, to be like his Son Jesus. I am born a spirit from above and I now have a heavenly (spiritual) body - a body for a spirit.

 

God showed me this is the completion of what he spoke in Genesis in the original creation of mankind. Let us make man in our image (Jesus is the image of God and I am now in Christ) and according to our likeness (God is spirit and now I am too). (see Genesis 1:26, Colossians 1:15, John 4:24) From the very beginning, God desired to create Christians!

 

 

Click here to read part 2 continued