Good Morning All,
Romans 6:4; “We were buried therefore
with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
Every so often, I like to
mess with the minds of my confirmands and test them; nothing serious, just a
little something to keep them off guard.
I realize that it might be somewhat cruel, but the goal is to get them
to think and to begin to understand what faith is. This is partly because of trying to teach
them to listen to Scriptures and not to the current “pop theology” that makes
its way into the media now and again.
So, I asked them, “When do
you receive eternal life?” They paused
for a moment and then began to respond.
The most common answer was, “when you die.” This was the favorite answer. When we die, we go to heaven and get eternal
life. One threw in, “when Jesus
returns.” I think he smelled a trap and
didn’t want to follow the others too quickly.
So, we danced around it a little more and we started looking at
different Bible passages and came upon this one. So now we started talking about Baptism and
what we receive from God’s gift.
At Baptism, we receive the
forgiveness of sins. This is the start
of our eternal life. It is here when we
enter into God’s kingdom. We walk in
newness of life, a life that is recreated and restored into God’s loving family
forever. We don’t have to wait until we
die; we can savor and enjoy God’s wonderful gift of eternal life from the very
start. After Baptism, we are saved and
given the gift of eternal life. It is ours;
we have it in our possession, but we are not fully utilizing it yet. We sometimes call this the “now but not yet”
belief. We are now saved; we live by
grace in God’s kingdom, but we do not yet have its full glory; that is yet to
come to us. But we have eternal life; we
have already received this wondrous gift from God it is ours today, right now;
we do not have to wait until later we have it now and we can begin to
participate in the life right now. WE
have fellowship and communion with God through the Holy Spirit. We have the ability to communicate directly with
our God as he is our dear father. He is
not some vicious and cruel judge; he is a loving and kind God who wants you to
be with him forever including right now.
We don’t have to wait until
tomorrow or the next day, we can celebrate right now. We have his blessing of eternal life right
now. The gift of eternal life is with us
right now, so savor the fruits right now!
Father of all wondrous
mercy, through your grace we have eternal life.
You give this to us through the washing and regeneration that we receive
because of your promised mercy. Give us
the renewed spirit that we may live with you in glory ever after. In Jesus’ precious name we pray, amen.
God’s Peace,
Pastor Bret
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