BAPTISM facilitates universal participation—BOTH male AND female, BOTH Jew AND non-Jew, BOTH slave AND free—in the New Covenant, by Christ’s CIRCUMCISION at the Cross, which “stripped off” his ENTIRE male, Jewish FLESH

WHO PROPITIATED WHOM?

God Himself “provided” (Gen. 22:13-14; Hebrew:  “saw [to]”) the sacrifice, not us.  So He ‘paid for‘ the sacrifice for our sins, yet not for the sins themselves, of course (for Scripture never teaches that sins are, or can be, ‘paid for’).  He bought and paid for us, not for our miserable sins, for Heaven’s sake!

Thus God Himself gave the propitiation concerning our sins:  Israel had been taught and commanded to sacrifice in various ways to God, but when the full time came—the time, that is, when all those old shadows would be dispelled by the Light radiating from the Open Tomb from behind the Cross that cast its long shadow across the irregular landscape of antiquity, and though obscure in contours to earth-bound mortals, yet was distinctly visible to the eyes of Heaven—I repeat, when that time came, God sent His very own Son, begotten before all ages of time, before They together had planned the creation of all else.  The Son, according to plan, was both given by the Father and voluntarily, obediently gave himself to be the coverage, shielding, or protective shelter concerned with our sins as well as those of the entire world (1 John 2:2).  What a Savior!  Hallelujah!  Hallelujoshua!  Praise Jesus!  [3/17/04]

STRIPPING OFF THE FLESH = CLEANSING BY THE SPIRIT

The New Testament teaching and depiction of immersion suggests that the cleansing of the heart, the spirit, and the inward human entails the stripping off of the entire flesh or outward human (Col. 2:14-15a; 2 Cor. 5:16-18).  This was what circumcision pre-figured by the partiality of its symbolism.  But what it only pre-figured, Jesus literally fulfilled by his crucifixion—the off-stripping of his entire body of flesh in death, and his descent, in spirit and soul, into the Unseen, there to herald and proclaim to the dead, preceding his resurrection from that abode, dressed in an immortal body or outward person that perfectly befitted his wholesomeness of Spirit.

Water immersion allows all who believe to participate in Christ’s circumcision at the Cross (Col. 2:11-15), which was the ultimate cleansing off of human flesh—Adam’s mortal flesh or “body of death” (Rom 7:24), banned from regenerative fruit for his eating forbidden fruit.  Thus the flesh was not merely “washed off” with water; the mortal flesh itself was ‘washed off of’ the freshly-regenerated (Tit. 3:5) spirit—the body of death cleaned right off of its now-immortalized soul!  When a person emerges from the water of immersion they are picturing the dressing (“in-slipping”—endu-) of their freshly sanctified spirit with a suitably congruent wholesome body, fit for agelong life in the regenerated New Earth (Matt. 19:28).  The cleaning must be more thorough than often supposed.  This body of Adamic origin is much too decayed to survive by any measure short of a full replacement when Christ returns.  [3/23/04]

WHERE GRACIOUSNESS REIGNS, GRACIOUSNESS TRAINS

How is it possible so to misunderstand the graciousness of God as to deny that this age of its superabundant dispensing is attended by a law that expects graciousness from us?  Dispensationalism, however, has historically been well known for this distinctive and perfidious denial.  This denial, in practice, leads to the tragic stunting of spiritual growth to maturity in the image of God displayed in His own Son—graciousness and truth personified.  For the Law of Messiah—the Law of Liberty {James 2:12-13) that Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount—is seemingly as far beyond the Law of Moses as graciousness itself is beyond indignation.  It appears to require graciousness from us even where the Law at times invoked wrath (Rom. 4:15). The new requirement is clearly a much heavier burden to our decaying flesh than Moses’ requirement.  However, the New Covenant, by which “He has made the former  old“—and in starkest contrast to the former, which is “getting old” and is “decrepit” and “near disappearance“ (Heb. 8:13)—supplies a new power for obedience as well as a new example of suffering abuse in the interests of obedience, rewarded with a new and “better” (Heb. 7:29) and “living“ (1 Peter 1:3) expectation of resurrection from the dead!  As a result, Messiah’s yoke is “kindly” and his load “light” (Matt. 11:30).

The heavier and more spiritual Law of Messiah is most certainly an indispensable part of the new order of graciousness inaugurated by Jesus; indeed, it dares to demand that we become as gracious as Jesus, who went the full length of graciousness by sacrificing himself under the assault of misdeeds.  No greater love has any person than to give their soul (that is, ‘earthly existence’) for their friends  (John 15:13).  [4/8/04]

The Law of Moses demanded righteousness…to a point; the royal Law of Messiah requires graciousness…to a fault.  [4/13/04]

That said, the Lord’s Prayer does not authorize us to pardon sins-in-general that others may commit, but precisely to forgive “our debtors” of their debts against us and pardon “those who trespass against us” of those specific trespasses.  Clearly, then, blanket, wholesale pardons were not what our Master expected of us, much less the clerical usurping of such an imaginary right.  This strongly suggests that the admonition to “get sins confessed to one another” (James 5:16a) likewise does not refer to a broadside confessional, but to our own specific sins against those particular persons.  This is still no small duty, yet is happily attended by graciousness from God and hence power from Above.  Let’s not make a mountain out of a molehill.  [4/23/04]