Subject 19 : The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the EPHESIANS
[Chapter 2-8] We Had Been Estranged From God the Father Because of Our Sins (Ephesians 2:14-22)
(Ephesians 2:14-22)
“For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father. Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building, being fitted together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.”
Jesus is our Savior and the King of peace. When all human beings had become God’s enemies because of their sins, Jesus the Son of God came to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man and bore all the sins of the world once and for all by being baptized by John the Baptist in the Jordan River. That is why Jesus could shed His precious blood on the Cross, rise up from the dead again in three days, and then sit at the right hand of God the Father as the Judge. Jesus Christ offered Himself as our everlasting propitiation of peace to reconcile us with God the Father. It was to break down this wall of sin separating us from God, and it also was to abolish the enmity between God and us humans that Jesus offered Himself as our own propitiation.
Jesus had come to this earth to blot out all the sins that we commit from our failure to keep the commandments of God. The Lord then bore all our sins by being baptized on His body, laid down His life by being crucified on the Cross to be punished for all these sins, and thereby brought our souls back to life with the price of His own life. Therefore, thanks to Jesus, we the believers in the gospel of the water and the Spirit could be forever reconciled to God and become His children by faith, and God Almighty could become our Father. That is why the Apostle Paul said that whoever believes in Jesus Christ has been reconciled to God.
Jesus came by the gospel of the water and the Spirit to make us sinless. He has blotted out all our sins by accomplishing this genuine gospel. Therefore, all who believe in Jesus as their Savior within this true gospel have received the remission of sins and become God’s own children.
However, there still are many people in this world who have not become God’s children, and this is because these people do not believe in Jesus who came by the gospel of the water and the Spirit as their Savior. Nonetheless, the true gospel Word of God and the Holy Spirit that are in the hearts of all who have received the remission of sins by faith are more than able to make every believer a child of God.
A Story of a Mother and Her Grown-Up Daughter Who Was Adopted Because of Poverty When She Was Just a Toddler
Although South Korea is now quite a prosperous country, it was not so just a few decades ago. In fact, it was one of the poorest countries in the world just half a century ago, reeling from the devastating consequences of the Korean War. Although South Korea was able to thwart the North Korean invasion with the help of UN forces, the destruction brought by the war left many tragic legacies, one of which was countless children who lost their parents in this ruinous war. Many of these orphaned children were then adopted by foster-parents in developed countries, particularly from wealthy Western nations.
In those days, many Korean women also had no means to raise their children. With the whole country ruined by the war, there was hardly anything to eat. As many women were not able to even feed their own children, they had no other choice but to give them up for adoption, thinking that this would be better than seeing the children starve to death. When they heard that wealthy foreigners were willing to adopt their children and raise them in a far better environment, they gave up their children as the last recourse to ensure their children’s survival. As a result, South Korea came to earn its dishonorable title as the largest exporter of adopted children.
Of course, it’s been many years since the war ended. Most children adopted over the course of the years grew up happily under their adoptive parents in a loving and prosperous home. As they grew older, they realized that they were adopted, and so they began to wonder why their birth parents had abandoned them, asking deep questions such as, “Why did my parents give me up? Was it because they hated me? Why did they send me off to such a far away country?” They were not able to fully understand just why their parents had forsaken them.
So, as they grew up, their hatred of and longing for their parents also grew alongside in their hearts at the same time. They tried to understand their birth parents, asking and answering themselves, “How could my parents abandon me? How could they send me to this far away country? Did they hate me? No, they must have had another reason.” They spent their adolescence years torn by such thoughts, understanding their birth parents one minute, hating them the next, and swearing to never think about their birth parents again. When they grew up in time, they got married, had their own children, and began to raise their own family in their adoptive land. However, their longing and hatred for their birth parents did not disappear.
Recently, a TV station in Korea went to Germany to investigate the state of Korean children adopted abroad. The story I am about to tell you now is about one such woman who was born in Korea and adopted to a German family. The woman in our story grew up and raised her family in her adoptive country, but the more time went by, the more she wished to see her birth parents even if only once. She longed for her birth parents so much that she wished to know just how they looked like, but at the same time, she also struggled with her hatred for them, wondering, “How could my own parents abandon me? What circumstances were they facing that they sent me all the way to Germany?” As Korea was where her parents were and she herself was born, she was naturally drawn to any news coming from Korea, and she did hear about it from various sources. Now over 40 years had passed by since she first came to Germany, and by then Korea had already grown into a rather prosperous country. As a result, her hatred for her birth parents grew even more, as she mistakenly thought that her parents had abandoned her even though they were not that poor.
A TV reporter from Korea visited the woman who had been adopted to Germany long ago. By then she was already in her mid 40s, and she had also married and had a daughter. She was also studying theology. The TV station had called her earlier asking her for an interview, and it had taken a great deal of pleading by the reporter for her to agree with the interview. The reporter began to talk with her through an interpreter. He first thanked her for agreeing to be interviewed, but the woman was still hesitant. She told him that she was afraid of exposing her private life, but the reporter said to her that he would appreciate it if she could co-operate so as to prevent such tragic events as hers from ever happening again. After hesitating for awhile, she finally agreed to the interviewed, saying that she was doing this against her own interests only to prevent any more children from being separated from their birth parents and adopted by foreign countries.
The reporter asked many questions, including the following: “If you were to meet your birth parents right now, what’s the first thing you would like to say to them?” The woman then said unhesitantly, “I would like to ask why they sent me here. If I were to ever meet my birth parents, I would ask them why they had to give me up for adoption. I just can’t understand them. I want to ask them why they hated me even to send me away.”
Her interview was included in the documentary program that the TV station was making on adoption, and soon after the program was broadcasted here in Korea, a certain woman claiming to be her birth mother contacted the TV station. Having seen her daughter in this documentary, she had contacted the TV station to ask if she could see her. The station then got in touch with the woman in Germany to inform her that her birth mother was looking for her, and asked her if she would be willing to meet her. She then told the station that she also wanted to see her birth mother.
The birth mother came to the airport to wait for her daughter’s arrival. She wanted to see her daughter so badly that she never let her eyes off the terminal gate. But the daughter did not show up even after her arrival time was well past. Everyone was disappointed, and just when all were about to give up, they heard from the daughter that she had taken the wrong connecting flight and would not arrive for another seven hours. The reporter then suggested to the mother to go to a restaurant or somewhere else to get some rest and return later. The mother then said to him, “I have waited for my daughter for decades, and so I can wait for seven more hours. I’ll wait here in the airport.” After waiting like this so longingly, the daughter finally arrived. She walked out the airport’s arrival gate holding hands with her six-year old daughter.
The birth mother had seen her daughter’s face in the TV. Perhaps for this reason, she found her daughter before the TV crew did and her eyes began to well up with tears. It was the first time that the mother and the daughter saw each other since the day of her adoption. Even though they could not understand each other’s words, the moment they saw one another, they hugged and broke down in tears. The mother cried so much and kept saying she was sorry so many times that her words echoed around the airport.
The mother took the daughter to her home and they caught up on all those missing years. Of course, they couldn’t understand each other as they spoke different languages, but at least their hearts were connected in an unbreakable bond only as mother and daughter could. The mother had named her daughter when she was born, and the daughter perhaps knew this name as she answered whenever her mother called this name. So, despite speaking different languages, they still were able to share many silent conversations, caressing each other’s face and speaking through their eyes.
When the day came for the daughter to return to Germany, the reporter who had arranged her meeting asked her, “You told me that if you ever came to Korea and met your birth parents, the first thing you wanted to ask them was why they had given her up for adoption to a foreign country. Did you ask this question to your mother?” Her reply was that she saw no need to ask that question anymore, saying as she was departing, “My mother is still poor. Although the rich in Korea are so rich that they drive around in luxurious imported cars, I saw my mother still living in poverty. Even though I didn’t ask my mother and she didn’t answer me, I knew already that she had given me up for adoption abroad because she was so poor, and because she wanted to rescue me from this poverty. So I didn’t have to ask her that question, and all my doubts and hatred have also disappeared.”
Just as the Mother and the Daughter in This Story Were Separated Because of Poverty, We Had Also Been Separated from God Because of Our Sins
Why were all the human beings in this world separated from God our Maker? The woman in our story was separated from her mother because in the aftermath of the war, her birth parents were in such grinding poverty that they didn’t even have any food to feed her. They were forced into giving her up for adoption abroad as the last recourse to rescue their daughter. Like the daughter here, we were also separated from God despite the fact that we were fundamentally made by God Himself in the likeness of His own image. What explain this? Why did we as human beings had no choice but to live separated from God?
We were separated from God because Satan had made us sin against God. It’s because of these sins that we committed against God that we were estranged from God. God’s original intent in creating us in the likeness of His image was to make us His very own people. He had made us in His own image so that we would live with Him happily forever. However, Satan the fallen angel alienated man from God with his lies, making him fall into sin and drift away from God. The Devil had meddled in man’s relationship with God so that he would not believe in His Word. In other words, Satan had deceived human beings into not believing in the Word of God. So the Devil made Adam and Eve eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil that God had forbidden from them, and as a result of this, human beings turned into sinners in God’s sight and drifted away from Him.
With the fall of Adam and Eve, everyone became a sinner before God automatically. Man was so arrogant that he not only refused to believe in the Word of God, but he also rejected His love, choosing to disobey His Word. Even though God had told Adam and Eve to eat from the tree of life to reach everlasting life, far from eating from this tree, they instead ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and as a result of this, they fell into the sin of arrogance by trying to become like God. Because of this arrogance, Adam and Eve ended up sinning against God by disobeying His Word; because of this disobedience, sin entered every human heart; and because of this sin, all human beings were forever alienated and cut off from God. That’s why we have been living estranged from our God for so long.
And all this time, throughout this long period of alienation, we had been blaming God for all our woes, saying, “Why did God forsake us after making us? Why did He allow us to fall into sin? He should not have made us in the first place. Why did He create us as such feeble creatures that we ended up committing sin, only to suffer for our sins until we are cast into hell?” Living with so many unanswered questions like these, we had stroked our hatred for God.
In reality, however, God our Creator actually loved us all this time. In fact, God loved us so much that to restore us, He sent to this earth Jesus Christ, His only begotten Son incarnated in the flesh of man. And for the sake of all human beings unable to come to the presence of God the Father because of their sins, the Son of God was baptized, shed His blood on the Cross, and rose from the dead again. Like this, the Lord has saved the entire human race from all its sins and condemnation. In other words, God wanted to once again embrace us in His arms, and He has achieved this once and for all through the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
Before believing in Jesus, we all wondered why God made us the way we are and we also hated Him for it. However, through the gospel of the water and the Spirit written in both Testaments of the Scriptures, we have come to know God’s love and His desire for us. As a result, we have now not only cast away all our hatred for God, but even more importantly, we have also come to understand His righteousness. By believing in the righteousness of Jesus sent to this earth by God the Father, we could therefore be reconciled to God again, for the wall of sin that had separated us from Him has now been completely broken down, just like the barrier of the heart that had alienated the adopted daughter and her mother in our story was broken down.
The Bible Says That the Lord Came to This Earth to Break Down the Wall of Our Sins
There is a spiritual lesson that I learned while watching this documentary that I told you about. I realized even more profoundly that just as nothing can separate a mother from her child forever, nor can any trial, any misunderstanding, any curse, or any sin whatsoever ever separate us from God. Watching the documentary reminded me of our relationship with God, as I came to ponder, “The relationship between God and human beings must also have been like this. Even though God loves human beings and they love God, it was still possible for them to be alienated from one another. It’s not because the mother hated her daughter that she gave her up to be adopted so far away in Germany, but because she had no other choice. Like this, there was an unavoidable reason why we were alienated from God.”
Fundamentally speaking, what made us drift away from God is none other than our sins. And God had a great plan for all of us. There was no other reason to explain our alienation from God. There was no reason why God would put us off, nor was there any reason for us to hate God. God and we loved one another. God loves us even now, just as we also love Him, and there is no hatred between the two.
We Can Realize This from Today’s Scripture Passage
We can understand how our relationship with God has been restored when we turn to Ephesians 2:13-15: “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances.” Nowhere in this passage is it written that we humans have done anything on our own to get nearer to God.
For you and me alike, and for the sake of the entire human race, God Himself bore all our sins by being baptized by John the Baptist and shed His blood in order to abolish the written Law of commandments contained in ordinances. To break down the wall of sin alienating us from God, His Son Jesus came to this earth, was baptized, and shed His blood of life on the Cross; and with this price of life, He has saved all human beings from their sins and condemnation. God has restored us by sacrificing His own Son Jesus. The Bible clearly writes that God loves us so much that He has saved us and embraced us in His arms. Here we can discover without any trace of doubt that we have reached our salvation through the gospel Truth of the water and the Spirit.
The Undeniable Importance of the Baptism of Jesus
What would happen if there were no water in this world? Imagine what it would be like. A while ago, I held a revival meeting at our affiliate church in Inchon, and on the last day of the revival meeting water was cut off from the church. Without any tap water available in the building, the organizers could not even do any dishes, and so when lunch was served, they had to wrap the plates in plastic and put food on top of them. When we hold our revival meetings we usually stay at the church for several days until we finish the meeting. When the last day’s meeting is over at night, we return home the next morning after breakfast. But on that day, I had to ask everyone to return home once the evening service was over. I was reminded of how indispensable water is.
Seoul is a huge city with over 10 million residents. What would happen to them if Seoul were cut off from water supply for just a month? The whole city will turn into a giant garbage dump, with every building overflowing with filth and smelling so bad that the city will be uninhabitable. The importance of water is that obvious even when we just consider its material use. It is even more important when we consider its spiritual significance, for the Bible says, “There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism” (1 Peter 3:21).
If our Lord had not been baptized on this earth, what would have happened to all of us who believe in God? We would have remained intolerably filthy. Had our Lord not been baptized when He came to this earth—that is, if He had not washed away all our sins—then we could not have believed in God, and even if we did, it would have been all in vain, for we would have realized that God could not make us sinless in the end. If Jesus had not accepted all our sins by receiving His water baptism on this earth, then He could not have washed away our hearts’ sins. Therefore, the water of the baptism of Jesus is the water of life that has washed away all our sins.
It is written in 1 Peter 3:21, “There is also an antitype which now saves us—baptism (not the removal of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God), through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” As this passage makes it abundantly clear, the baptism that Jesus received on this earth is the Truth that has washed away all our hearts’ sins. By being baptized by John the Baptist on this earth, Jesus bore all our sins once and for all and washed them all away, and that is why all of us who believe in this Truth have seen our hearts completely cleansed once and for all. It’s because Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist that He could accept all the sins of this world at once, and it’s because all our sins were thus transferred onto the body of Jesus that we could receive the remission of our sins by believing in this Jesus as our Savior. In contrast, if Jesus had not been baptized by John the Baptist, then we would still be sinners despite believing in Jesus. Unless we had faith in the baptism of Jesus, we could have never passed all our sins onto Him. We would then still have remained filthy sinners no matter how ardently we might have believed in Jesus as our Savior.
The Lord Taught Us to Avoid Death by Washing Away All Our Sins with His Baptism and His Blood on the Cross
Let’s turn to the Old Testament and see how sins were washed away with water. It’s written in Exodus 30:17-21: “Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying: ‘You shall also make a laver of bronze, with its base also of bronze, for washing. You shall put it between the tabernacle of meeting and the altar. And you shall put water in it, for Aaron and his sons shall wash their hands and their feet in water from it. When they go into the tabernacle of meeting, or when they come near the altar to minister, to burn an offering made by fire to the LORD, they shall wash with water, lest they die. So they shall wash their hands and their feet, lest they die. And it shall be a statute forever to them—to him and his descendants throughout their generations.’”
As described in the above passage, inside the court of the Tabernacle there was a laver of bronze. This laver was designed and placed to hold water. And the laver of bronze was located right in the middle of the court of the Tabernacle. What would have happened to the priests of the Tabernacle if this laver of bronze was missing, or there was no water in the laver, even if everything else was in place, from the sacrificial animal to the laying on of hands and the altar of burnt offering?
Let’s consider this question carefully here. In the age of the Old Testament, every sinner had to offer a sacrifice to God on a daily basis. Once the sinner laid his hands on his sacrificial animal, the priests of the Old Testament had to kill this animal, draw it blood, cut its flesh into pieces, and burn it to offer it to God. So they skinned the animal, cut out its fat, took out all the unclean parts and dumped them outside the camp to be burnt. The priests did this work all day long, and so you can imagine just how much blood must have splattered on them and how dirty they must have got as a result. If the Tabernacle had no water in the laver of bronze, it would have been impossible for the priests ministering in there to cleanse their bodies. While the ordinary people cleansed themselves outside the court of the Tabernacle, the priests had to wash themselves inside it, and therefore, if there was no laver of bronze in the court of the Tabernacle or no water in the laver, then the only conclusion to reach is that the priests would have remained unclean.
That is why God had prepared the laver of bronze for the priests, so that they could come into His presence with a clean body. The priests ministered in the Tabernacle on behalf of the people of Israel, killing and offering sacrificial animals to God (the High Priest himself laid his hands on the sacrificial animals when he offered the sacrifice of the Day of Atonement), and whenever these priests sought to enter the Sanctuary of God, they absolutely had to wash their hands and feet with the water which was in the bronze laver. They had to wash their hands and feet from all uncleanness like this and come into the presence of God with a completely clean body because that was the only way they could avoid death.
God cannot accept any unclean sinner as His own child. He had no choice but to condemn whoever has any sin at all. That’s because God is completely sinless and holy. Therefore, even the priests could not just open the screen door of the Tabernacle and step inside even as this filthy soiled and blood of the sacrificial animals were still on their bodies. That is why God had commanded that whenever the priests sought to come into the presence of God after ministering sacrifices for the people of Israel, they should first wash away all their filthiness absolutely clean with the water which was in the laver of bronze.
What would happen to this world if God no longer brought down any rain? Think about it for a moment. Without any rain, the whole world will surely turn into one giant garbage dump. If God did not bring down rain from the heavens, this world will rot away completely. Nature itself will lose all its life, and the beauty of this planet earth would all disappear. That is why God exerts His sovereign rule over even the weather, allowing storms to rise and bringing down rain to cleanse the air, wash away all kinds of filth and grime on the surface of the earth, and continue to provide us with clean water to drink from and to sustain our lives.
Just As No One Can Live without Water, Nor Can Any Sinner Wash Away All His Sins without the Baptism of Jesus
We believe in the love of God manifested in the gospel of the water and the Spirit. And we also believe in the righteousness of His Son Jesus Christ. What is it that Jesus did for us when He came to this earth? God the Father had sent His Son to this earth incarnated in the flesh of man, but what exactly did Jesus do on this earth? The very first work of salvation that Jesus did on this earth was being baptized by John the Baptist (Matthew 3:13-17). It was to receive this water baptism and thereby accept all the sins of the world that Jesus stepped into the Jordan River 2,000 years ago. That Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist holds the same significance as the Old Testament’s laying on of hands—that is, just as the scapegoat in the days of the Old Testament accepted the yearly sins of the Israelites when the High Priest’s hands were laid on its head, so did Jesus accept all the sins of the world when John the Baptist put his hands on His head. Jesus was completely submerged in water when He was baptized by John the Baptist, and spiritually speaking, this implies His death indicating that He would die on the Cross.
How could you live if there was no water in this world? Think about it for a moment. As those professing to believe in Jesus, could our sins be blotted out unless we have faith in His baptism? No, of course not! It’s through His baptism that Jesus bore all our sins on this earth, and therefore unless we believe in this baptism with all our hearts, we cannot approach the holy God, for we would still remain sinners. After all, how could God call anyone sinful and filthy His own child? God never calls any such people His children. Indeed, God has made His children only those who believe that the Lord has blotted out all their sins with the gospel of the water and the Spirit. This is not a mere doctrine that’s in vogue nowadays.
It was absolutely indispensable for God the Father to send John the Baptist and Jesus to this world; it’s not as if either could be dispensed with. Just as every living creature in this world can survive only if there is water, and just as everything can be cleansed only if there is water, it was to cleanse us that our Lord was baptized by John the Baptist, crucified to death, and resurrected back to life, thereby saving us all. The gospel of the water and the Spirit is absolutely indispensable for our remission of sins and our salvation.
Our Lord has saved us by cleansing us from all our filthy sins with the water and the Spirit. Put differently, our Lord has washed away all our sins by being baptized by John the Baptist to bear them all. The Holy Spirit descended from the heavens like a dove when Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist, and this shows us that our salvation was achieved by the work of God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit. The baptism that Jesus received from John the Baptist constitutes an indispensable element of the beautiful gospel proclaiming that our Lord bore all the sins of the entire human race to save everyone from all sins. The punishment that Jesus received on the Cross, on the other hand, is the condemnation that He bore to pay off the wages of all the sins of mankind.
As such, the baptism that Jesus received in our place and the blood He shed to pay off the wages of all our sins on our behalf are the embodiment of the selfless love of God. Even though He had never committed any sin nor done anything wrong to deserve any punishment at all, He had become a Man to save us from all the sins of the world, and having accepted our sins, He was beaten by the Roman soldiers, despised and put to death in our place for our sins, and resurrected from the dead. Like this, through His 33 years of life on this earth, Jesus fulfilled our salvation perfectly in order to deliver us from all our sins.
After Jesus became a Man, what did He do first to blot out your sins and mine? He was baptized by John the Baptist in order to make us humans completely sinless. It was to make us God’s own children and righteous people that Jesus was baptized and shed His blood when He came to this earth. By receiving His baptism from John the Baptist, Jesus has turned us into sinless people. He has made completely sinless all who believe in His baptism and His blood on the Cross.
Dying on the Cross is not the only thing Jesus Christ did for our salvation. Prior to His suffering on the Cross, He also bore all our sins by being baptized by John the Baptist. That is why our Lord said that unless one is born again of water and the Spirit, he can neither see the Kingdom of God nor enter it (John 3:5). It was to wash away our sins that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist.
It is absolutely indispensable for every human being to receive the remission of sins from God; and for God to give this remission of sins to all mankind; it was absolutely necessary for Jesus to be baptized by John the Baptist and crucified to shed His blood on the Cross. The only way for human beings to be freed from the punishment of their sins is to believe in the baptism that Jesus received from John the Baptist and the precious blood that He shed on the Cross.
The Apostle Paul said that the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). Since all of us were sinners from the day we were born as human beings, all of us infallibly had to pay off the wages of our sins with our own lives. Therefore, to save us from this certain death and give us new life, Jesus bore all the sins of the human race on His body through His baptism, and He laid down His own life for us by shedding His blood on the Cross. In short, Jesus Christ has saved us from all our sins by ransoming us with His own blood and life.
Jesus Did These Things for Us Because He Is Our Savior
The mother that I told you about had no choice but give up her daughter for adoption to rescue her from abject poverty. Likewise, we had no choice but drift away from God because we had fallen into Satan’s temptation and sinned against God. Because of our sins, it was inevitable for us to be alienated from God. However, the Lord could not just leave us alone like this, but He had to come to this earth in order to save us. God the Father therefore sent His only begotten Son to this earth, made Him receive baptism to accept all the sins of the world, and with the water of this baptism of His Son, cleansed everyone into a completely sinless being. In other words, God has restored us from sinners to be once again His own children through the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
Water is priceless. Without water no one can survive. Just as water is indispensable to our physical lives, so is the water baptism of Jesus Christ also indispensable for everyone to be born again. You should also realize here that even if you have already been born again, you must continue to believe in the baptism of Jesus Christ, or otherwise you will be defiled once again and estranged from God.
Even though all of us were destined to die for our sins, Jesus Christ came to this earth as our Savior, and He has saved such wicked sinners like us through the water of His baptism and the blood of the Cross. That is why there is nothing that we have to do by ourselves to reach our salvation. All that we have to do is just believe in the work of salvation that Jesus did on this earth to deliver all sinners. It is by being baptized and dying on the Cross in our place that Jesus has resurrected us from death. Moreover, Jesus Christ is now sitting at the right hand of God the Father, and He is offering the gift of salvation to whoever believes in Him and accepts the gospel of the water and the Spirit into the heart. Like this, the Lord has offering the gift of the remission of sins to all who believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit.
The gospel of the water and the Spirit proclaims that Jesus bore all the sins of each and every human being in this world by being baptized on this earth, and words cannot express just how thankful I am that Jesus has given us this true gospel. How about you then? Do you believe in the baptism of Jesus, that the Lord bore all the sins of your entire lifetime through His baptism? It’s because Jesus is your Savior that He did this for you.
I was so moved by that documentary that my eyes all welled up and I shed a lot of tears. As an English proverb says that blood is thicker than water, the bonds of family are indeed stronger than anything else in the world. But even stronger than the family bonds is the love of salvation that Jesus has brought to us by delivering us through His baptism and blood. Although we had no choice but to be alienated from God completely in our past, because Jesus has given us the greatest salvation in this world, we have now been reconciled to God.
Jesus Himself has blotted out all our sins by being baptized out of His volition, and He has broken down the wall of separation blocking us from God by being crucified and condemned for our sins in our place. Therefore, all who believe in this Truth have now restored their relationship with God as His own children. Thanks to the gospel of the water and blood of Jesus, man’s relationship with God has now been restored. Our Lord has reinstated us to our original condition, when we had walked with God in the Garden of Eden as creatures made in the likeness of His image.
Indeed, even though the love between a parent and a child is great, our God’s love for us is so much greater than this love that it cannot even be compared. Although a mother may even die for her child to save her child’s physical life, she cannot save her child from all sins and trespasses. In contrast, God our Creator has saved us all by laying down His life for us. As the Lord has saved us like this, we have been born again thanks to the gospel love of the water and the Spirit. God is love, and He is our Savior. The baptism of Jesus is absolutely important to the entire human race.
Without water we cannot survive in this world. The baptism of Jesus and His death on the Cross are equally indispensable to our salvation, for if Jesus had not received His baptism, then we could not have become sinless even if we believed in the blood of Jesus. But very fortunately for us, Jesus was indeed baptized for us. So, even though we all have many shortcomings, because we believe in the water of Jesus Christ and His blood on the Cross, we can still come to the presence of God to pray to Him and praise Him. Even though our flesh is full of shortcomings, our heats are now completely clean, and therefore we are all able to praise God and worship Him as His own children. All of this is possible because our Lord has saved us perfectly through His water and blood.
Sadly, however, many Christians in this world believe in the blood of Jesus alone. These misguided Christians think that they won’t be condemned if they just believe in Jesus’ blood. But if one believes only in the blood of Jesus, this can only mean that this person’s sins still remain unresolved and intact in his heart. Just as the world would turn all dirty without water, our sins would still remain intact in our hearts if Jesus were not baptized. Our hearts are therefore made completely sinless only if we believe in both the baptism of Jesus and His blood on the Cross; if we otherwise do not believe in them both, then our hearts would still remain sinful even as we believe in Jesus ardently.
How about you then? Do you also believe that Jesus was baptized for your sake? Do you believe in the gospel of the water and the Spirit, which proclaims that Jesus was baptized to make you and me sinless? Do you believe that you have become completely sinless by trusting in both the baptism of Jesus and His blood on the Cross, and that you have been completely saved from the punishment of your sins?
Indeed, our salvation was not reached through our own works, but it was reached by believing in the baptism of Jesus and His blood on the Cross, and it is on account of this faith that we could meet with God and become His own children.
I give all my thanks to God!
This sermon is also available in ebook format. Click on the book cover below.
Copyright © 2021 by The New Life Mission