What another phenomenal day! We awoke this morning to cooler temperatures and clear blue skies, the kind that says fall is in the air, ahh, I love this time of the year. Anyway, I need to get on with it, last week we left off with these three “Hearing, Belief, Repentance” as things that are in the scriptures when it comes to a plan of salvation, now as I told the congregation this morning do not get too hung up on order, as we go through this it appears the only things that require order is the first two, hearing and believing anyway, we looked at confession and how Jesus says we must confess Him before others and how He will do the same before His Father.
Next we looked at Baptism, which is probably the most argued point in all of Christianity. The scriptural teaching is reasonably clear, the scriptures command that we submit to baptism; it is a part of the salvation process and as much so as any other piece. Now, I am not arguing in favor of Baptismal regeneration, I am not arguing at all, I am simply stating the facts from scripture, for example, that word “for” is said to mean because so in other words, you are baptized because your sins are forgiven, (Acts 2:38) how ever if you were to turn your Bible to Matthew 26:28, you will find another “for” where Jesus said His blood was poured out for the forgiveness of sin, when you look to the original Greek text what you will find is this, εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν. The words are pronounced Ace, Aphesin, Hamartion, which in the English is for forgiveness “of” sins. OK, I know that is a lot to swallow, so I will refer you to the phrase study sheet which I have prepared. Anyway, the first word is the preposition “for” according to Thayer it means “to obtain” the second word Aph-es-in is a Singular Feminine Noun in the accusative case, the accusative case is the case of the direct object and it means “forgiveness” and finally Hamartion, which is a Feminine Plural Noun in the Genitive case, this case roughly corresponds to our English possessive case. The genitive expresses possession, and it means sins.
OK, Greek class is over, hang in there you are doing well, the only difference between the Acts passage and the Matthew passage is these two things which are both found in the Acts passage. In the Matthew passage, Jesus is referring to sin in general and at large, you know your sin, my sin, his sin, her sin and so on, while in the Acts passage, Peter uses the article “the” and the personal pronoun, “your” both in reference to a particular persons sin, yours, in other words “the sin of yours” Bottom, line is that there are five places where that phrase “for forgiveness of sin” occurs and in each and every case it is the same, so if we are to understand the Acts passage to read, the we are baptized “because” our sins have been forgiven then we must conclude that Jesus’ blood likewise was poured out “because” sin was forgiven. I simply can not do that because that really goes against everything the whole Bible teaches.
Next we moved to the last thing the scriptures say that lead to life and being saved and this my dear friends is perseverance, Jesus said just as He overcame we should also, for all practical purposes it works like this if Jesus can persevere against all He did surely we can manage in this life being faithful to the call and being faithful means, living our lives trusting that Jesus is who He said He is, that He will deliver on the promises He gave, and Obeying, this is lived out by following the commands of the scriptures and living life in a such a way as to say, no matter what because I love Jesus, I am going to do and teach what His word says.
Well, if you want to get a deeper understanding listen to both of the messages and look a the phrase study sheet, it is an excellent resource designed to strengthen and encourage you in your walk and growth in Christ Jesus. May the Lord Bless you in direct proportion to your study of His Word.