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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | Saved by belief or belief and baptism? | NT general Archive 1 | bslinker | 37606 | ||
Believing and faith go hand in hand. Mark 16:16 "He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who does not believe will be condemned" So there HAS to be a belief system inside you to be baptized, otherwise baptism will do you no good. Belief has to come first. The writer above has it correct by quoting Rom 3:28, but on the flip-side of the coin, James 2:24 says EXPLICITLY that "... a man is justified by works and not by faith alone" There is a huge difference between being justified by faith and being justified by faith ALONE. Use this analogy when making a cake for example: You can say that "you can make a cake by using cake mix" which is true. But can you say "you can bake a cake by using cake mix only"? Of course not, you need an oven, flour, water, etc.... to make that cake. But its a true statement that you can make a cake by using cake mix, but its not true to say that you can make a cake by using cake mix only. It cannot be done. I believe we can understand that simple analogy. The same goes for baptism. We are saved by baptism and not by baptism only. We are saved by faith but not by faith only. We are saved by confession (Rom 10:10) but not by confession only. We are saved by repentence (Acts 2:38) but not by repentence only. So its the combination of all these together that saves us. It is correct as the above writer said that its not water that saves us, but it is the obedience to God that does. Think of the story of Naaman in 2 Kings 5 where Naaman was a leper. He wanted to be healed of his leprosy. He was told by the man of God to go to the Jordan river and dip 7 times to be cleansed. Naaman question that like people question baptism today, "why do I have to be baptized?" why can't I just believe?". Naaman questioned it too! "Whats wrong with the rivers of Damascus?" he asked. But it wasn't til he went to the Jordan River and dipped 7 times that he was cleansed. Was it something in the water? Not at all. It was OBEDIENCE. It was the faith and the belief that cleansed him, not the water. Do you think that he would have cleansed if just dipped once or twice? Not at all, but he did what was asked of him to be cleansed, he obeyed it, and believed that doing what he was told would cleanse him and he it did. I hope this helps in trying to make sense of the "baptism" issue. | ||||||
2 | Saved by belief or belief and baptism? | NT general Archive 1 | wak | 37621 | ||
Seems to me any kind of of cookbook formula goes against the sprit of what Paul's and Jesus's overall message was.... it's the heart, not the law. Simple stuff. | ||||||