More on Baptism, simple version

How is it that a weaker brother will be destroyed if I embolden him to eat things sacrificed to idols (1 Corinthians 8:11)?

It is in fact a code of ethics that we are to follow in the power of the Spirit whom we receive through faith in Jesus Christ.

If that's all you see it as, you are missing out on God's best.

Why is this so hard to understand? You've answered the question yourself: "weaker brother". Paul is writing to the saved, not the unsaved. Not eating food offered to idols does not save anyone. Being born again does not require anyone to not eat meat offered to idols. I was born again long before I read the passage about meat and idols. I've never faced a situation where someone has told me that what I was eating was previously offered to an idol. I've been saved for over 50 years.

Not to steal Pilgrim's thunder, but this is what I've learned:

"Faith" is abstract. Synonyms include trust, rely, depend on. We may say that we trust God, but what does that mean exactly? My favourite definition is "hope is the mould into which you pour faith". Hope is concrete. If I have a health issue, God's word says that by the stripes of Jesus I am healed. That is something that I can have faith in.

We gain hope by revelation: Ephesians 1:18

"I ask that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you may know the hope of His calling, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints............

Faith and hope work together. Without hope, faith is aimless. Without faith, hope remains unfulfilled.

ANSWER:

What is Hope? We get hope when we receive knowledge and trust that this knowledge is true.
How is Faith like hope and how is faith different that hope? Like hope, faith has trust in the knowledge that we have received whether that knowledge is true or false. Faith is different than hope. This is described in James 2:14-16, there are three levels of faith:

1. A dead faith - It has no works.

2. A unperfected faith - It will obey God when God so commands us to do so The example given is Abraham in Genesis 15 and Abramam's faith was reckoned unto Abraham as righteousness. God knew that Abraham would obey Him.

3. A perfected faith - It is a faith that has trusted in God and obeys God like Abraham obeyed God and went to sacrifice Isaac when God commanded him to do so.

Also, faith CAN be seen, and hope CANNOT be seen.

Matthew_9:2 And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven."

Mark 2:5 And Jesus seeing their faith *said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

This also brings us to the fact that there are two different types of works: A works of faith

1Thessalonians 1:3 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of LOVE and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father,

2Thessalonians 1:11 To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power,

An example of how our faith in God works is found in Colossians 2:12:

Colossians 2:12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

Also, in the conversions in the Book of Acts, faith is NEVER in the Active Voice (something you do). We do not baptize ourselves. Someone else always baptizes us. They are doing the work.

Thank you for listening.

God bless you,
Wayne

ANSWER:

What is Hope? We get hope when we receive knowledge and trust that this knowledge is true.
How is Faith like hope and how is faith different that hope? Like hope, faith has trust in the knowledge that we have received whether that knowledge is true or false. Faith is different than hope. This is described in James 2:14-16, there are three levels of faith:

1. A dead faith - It has no works.

2. A unperfected faith - It will obey God when God so commands us to do so The example given is Abraham in Genesis 15 and Abramam's faith was reckoned unto Abraham as righteousness. God knew that Abraham would obey Him.

3. A perfected faith - It is a faith that has trusted in God and obeys God like Abraham obeyed God and went to sacrifice Isaac when God commanded him to do so.

Also, faith CAN be seen, and hope CANNOT be seen.

Matthew_9:2 And they brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. Seeing their faith, Jesus said to the paralytic, "Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven."

Mark 2:5 And Jesus seeing their faith *said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."

This also brings us to the fact that there are two different types of works: A works of faith

1Thessalonians 1:3 constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of LOVE and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father,

2Thessalonians 1:11 To this end also we pray for you always, that our God will count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the work of faith with power,

An example of how our faith in God works is found in Colossians 2:12:

Colossians 2:12 having been buried with Him in baptism, in which you were also raised up with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.

Also, in the conversions in the Book of Acts, faith is NEVER in the Active Voice (something you do). We do not baptize ourselves. Someone else always baptizes us. They are doing the work.

Thank you for listening.

God bless you,
Wayne

I agree that people need to be baptize because Jesus says "And he said unto them, go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned." (Mark 16:15-16).

Every soul that is baptized honors God and every soul that rejects baptism dishonors God. "And all the people that heard him, and the publicans, justified God, being baptized with the baptism of John. But the Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of him." (Luke 7:29-30). People, if you are in a position to be baptized, why reject the counsel of God? Rejecting God's counsel will get you eternal life in the burning flames (lake of fire) with the scribes and Pharisees. "For I say unto you, that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, Ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 5: 20).

Anyone that is not baptized is a person with their sins yet upon them, because it is the baptism that washes away our past sins. "And now why tarriest thou? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord." (Acts 22:16)

If we truly love God, then we will obey "Every word" that proceeds out of his mouth (Matthew 4:4). Baptism is one of those words. In order to be baptized, certain events must take place: You must give up a lifestyle where sin has dominion, (ruler ship) over you. Sin according to 1 John 3:4, Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression (breaking) of the law. You must be taught "The Word", before you can adhere to God's commandments (judgments\statues). These laws are found in the Holy Bible; beginning with Genesis and ending with Revelation. You must believe what the bible says and finally, you must confess that Jesus is Lord. Once this has been accomplished, you are qualified to be baptized in the name of Jesus.

Conditions, conditions, conditions. There was no New Testament on the day of Pentecost. It had not been written. You go to the other extreme. How could the Ethiopian eunuch know the book of Revelation? It was not written until about AD96.

It is not all I see it as.

However, God gives the Holy Spirit to those who obey Him (Acts 5:32).

So, seeing certain portions of the Bible as a code of ethics is expedient in order that we might be truly obedient to Him.

Are you assuming that Calvinism is the reality and that "Once Save Always Saved"?

It should be clear that even though the person is a brother, he perishes because of this thing (1 Corinthians 8:11); he is even destroyed (Romans 14:15).

I do not see someone dying physically as the result of eating unclean foods or that which is sacrificed to idols. Therefore, I interpret "perish" and "destroyed" in these verses as referring to salvation and eternity.

Hi Gideon,

Can you give me some scriptures from the New Testament that give a reason or purpose for being baptized?

Thanks very much!
Wayne

No worries.

Colossians 2:12
And having been buried with Him in baptism, you were raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.

Romans 6:3 & 4

Or aren’t you aware that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death?
We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may walk in newness of life.

We may know about being born again and having new life. That's great truth to hold onto. We also need to know the truth of our co-death with Christ. Not so many are aware of this as it is not preached, at least in my circle. Why is death so important? We are born with the sinful nature, a spirit that is dead to God. We come into this life by being born. We leave by dying. However, we are spiritually dead even as we are born. So we must die spiritually before we can be free of the old, dead spirit. This God does by including us in the death of Christ when we believe.

What do you do with the dead? You bury them. So it is with the dead spirit. By being baptised, we identify ourselves with the death of Christ and we consent, so to speak, to be buried. We do this openly so that men and angels can see that we are in agreement with God's judgement on the old nature.

God puts us into Christ when we believe. Baptism is challenging in some countries. Some Muslims and Jews will tolerate "secret" Christian family members. If the family member is baptised, the family will likely reject them.

There can be a great witness when people are baptised. This is especially true when it's not in a church building. Next Sunday, we will be going to the beach to see a young friend baptised. I'm looking forward to that.

kjv--"faith in the operation of God"

Hi Gideon,

As I understand what you are saying, our salvation occurs upon being baptized. Is that correct? I do believe this and if I am wrong, I would so appreciate any help in understanding that our salvation occurs before being baptized.

God bless you,
Wayne

I, like many others, had no real Christian background. The man who led me to the Lord did not discuss baptism. I know without a doubt that I was born again in an instant. I started going to church when I could. I avoided church like the plague before I was saved. Eventually, I attended a Baptist church. Naturally, the subject of baptism came up and I duly was baptised.

So no, baptism by immersion in water does not save us. Believing and receiving Christ saves us. There are many scriptures to confirm this and simple logic helps. A group of Australians were caught smuggling drugs in Indonesia. The punishment is death, at least at that time. Some of the offenders were born again and began to minister to other prisoners. In spite of every appeal, the death sentence was carried out on the two ringleaders. You can confirm this if you wish: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bali_Nine

Again in spite of appeals, the Christians were not permitted to be baptised. Indonesia is a majority Muslim nation. If the "baptisimal regeneration" people are correct, those who accepted Christ are now in hell. It is a false doctrine, making salvation dependent on our works rather than on God's grace. It is no better than some early Jewish believers demanding that Gentile Christians be circumcised.

I was saved in the military, during the Vietnam war time. I was not long in the actual war zone, about a week. However, according to some I would have gone to hell if I'd died during that time. Or if I'd crashed my motorbike, suffered a fatal illness or died by some other means. And that simply because I did not know about baptism. That's not what my Bible says and I stand on God's word.

Acts 10 gives the lie to that false doctrine.

".........While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard his message. All the circumcised believers who had accompanied Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles. For they heard them speaking in tongues and exalting God."

These Gentiles believed as a result of hearing the gospel. They received the seal of the Holy Spirit.

Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water to baptize these people? They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have!” So he ordered that they be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they asked him to stay for a few days.

Ephesians 1:13
And in Him, having heard and believed the word of truth—the gospel of your salvation—you were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit,

This confirms that receiving the Holy Spirit is conditional on being saved.

I have ben offered food offered to idols (Buddha)... just saying that it does still happen. I do like some of your postings just the same.

Dear Gideon,

God bless you for your thoughtful reply and the excellent point you brought up. Before trading back and forth with you some scriptures, I would like to give you how I became a Christian. The following is what happened to me.

My parents, although they were very moral people, never went to church, never prayed for our food and never talked about God. My grandmother took me to church once a year at Easter.

When I was 26 years old, I was an insurance salesman, and that September, the janitor of the building invited me to a home Bible study. I liked him and did not want to disappoint him so I accepted.

At the home Bible study, the preacher from Weed, California was there leading it. It was his intention to start a church here in the Reno area. Anyway, since I did not have a Bible, the preacher gave me one to use for that night. When I opened it up, I was "blown" away. Here was a book that had numbers by each scripture and running down the center of the page was a lot of scripture references. I told the preacher, "Who could ever learn anything out of a book like this!"

As it turned out, I liked the first Bible study and continued to come. It was now the middle of December and the preacher told us that this was the last time he would come until next spring as the winter driving that long distance was too much!
At the end of the Bible study that evening, he asked me if I would like to become a Christian. I said, I would like that."

Then he said, "Let's knell right here by the couch and say the 'Sinner's Prayer'."

I said, "What's the Sinner's Prayer?"

He said, "I will lead you in it. Just repeat it after me." “Father, I know that I have sinned and only through Jesus can I be saved. Please forgive me for my sins. I confess Jesus, Your Son as the Son of God. Please give me your Holy Spirit to dwell in me so that I can be yours forever. Amen!"

Upon finishing the prayer, the preacher said to me, "Now, Wayne, you are a Christian. God has forgiven you of all your sins and are saved and you have His Spirit dwelling in you."

I felt good and thanked him for helping me to become a Christian. After prayer, he left to go back to Week, California and it was just a couple of days before Christmas.

My brother Terry got home from Bible college just in time for Christmas. The next day, after our celebrating Christmas, when I was alone with Terry, I told him that I had become a Christian. He was excited for me and asked me, "When were you baptized?"

I said, "I don't know what you are talking about."

Terry said, "You know, immersed, dunked in water."

I said, "I still don't know what you are talking about."

Terry said, "You mean you were never baptized?"

I said, "No!"

He said, "You have to be baptized to become a Christian."

I said, "Terry, I did become a Christian when I prayed the Sinner's prayer in accepted Jesus as my Savior."

He said, "The Bible says that you have to be baptized to be saved and become a Christian."

At this time I STOPPED our conversation and I must hasten to say that I really liked my brother and the conversation we just had was not an adversarial one and I realized he said what he said out of concern.

Well, sometime earlier, he had shown a book before we had this conversation. It was called, "Strong's Exhaustive Concordance" and it had every word in the Bible in it. So I said to Terry, "Give me your Strong's Exhaustive Concordance, and I will talk to you at the end of the week.

So for the next five days, for the first time, I studied the Bible for myself. Both the preacher and my brother Terry had mentioned the word "saved". So I reasoned that I should look up every word in the New Testament that had the words:
save, saves, and saved and I should be able to get this all gured out. There were 88 places in the New Testament starting in Matthew and ending in Revelation where I found the three words, but it was not until I reached 1 Peter that I found this scripture:

1 Peter 3:21 Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ

There were just nine more scriptures that I hadn't looked at yet and I went on to examine them, too. Then I decided to look up every scripture in the New Testament that mentioned baptism because of what I read in 1 Peter 3:21. There were 84 scriptures that I looked up. When I had finished, I came to the conclusion that I was still lost in my sins and that I needed to be baptized.

In my study of the subject of salvation, I learned five things:

First, no where did anyone ever say "The Sinner's Prayer".

Second, it was never said that if we would just "Trust" in Jesus, we would be saved.

Third, I learned that when a person came to believe that Jesus was the Son of God, they never waited, but were always baptized the same day.

Fourth, baptism was done by immersion, not sprinkling or pouring water on a person.

Fifth, you have to be baptized for the right reason for the baptism to be valid.

In summary, the things that I learned came from my study in God's word. No one taught me (except the preacher who lied to me) so no one can say I was just following the "party line" of whatever denomination I belonged to.

Upon inquiry, I found a church that Friday afternoon that would baptize me. That Friday evening, they were having a New Years Eve fellowship and said that if I wanted to be baptized, they would be happy to do it. So, just after midnight on January 1st, I was baptized in accordance with what Jesus said in Mark 16:15-16 and Acts 2:38.

In March, the following spring, the Preacher came back down from Weed, California, and invited me to his motel room as he had a Bible he wanted to give to me. I went to see him with anticipation, believing that I could tell him what I had discovered in studying about salvation.

After he gave the Bible to me, I broached the subject of salvation and baptism. After just a short time, he started refuting me and his voice began to rise. I tried to tell him some more, but then he flew into a rage and told me to get out of his motel room. He roughly shoved me towards the door and opened it and then shoved me out, slamming the door behind me. Unfortunately, I never saw him again.

Gideon, thank you for your time. If you want, I would love to continue our discussion. God bless you in all that you do.

In Christ our Lord,
Wayne

I would not be surprised if I've eaten food offered to idols. I've been to many places in SE Asia. I've never been told that it was offered to idols.
Funny, I had the opposite experience. I had a Bible school for two years. We met and witnessed to a self proclaimed witch and her father. Her father was a Christian. He said that he would come to our school, and he did. I did not expect the conversation that ensued. He was of the baptisimal regeneration school of thought. He was in his 90's. He got upset when I disagreed with his theology.

I agree that an individual who receives Christ should be baptised as soon as possible. However, it is a consequence of salvation, not the means to salvation. I've been to many churches in my locality as I like to see what is going on. In reality, there is one church. The only pastor who I can fellowship with is the local Anglican. He sprinkles babies. He believes that they are born again, if the parents are born again. He has his reasons and theological justification. I don't agree. But he loves Jesus and he loves people. He is alive in Christ and that is far more important than theology.

As an aside, I knew when I was born again that something beyond my comprehension had happened. I was a different person from that moment on. I was baptised by immersion some time later. I was no different after being baptised. I was baptised because I believed it was a command to be obeyed. I'll be attending the baptism of a young man soon. He is obviously saved now.

I agree with you about all you say except that we are perfectly holy until we sin. We always have the sinful nature inside us making us impatient, for example. Then, it tends to come out in actions. That's why after the New Testament describes the "already" of salvation (Ephesians 1-3; Galatians 1-4; Colossians 1-2; Hebrews 1-11), the writers command us to strive to overcome the "not-yet" of salvation (Ephesians 4-6; Galatians 5-6; Colossians 3-4; Hebrews 12-16). Neither of those descriptions is to our credit at all, but God enables us to make progress with the "not-yet" the rest of our lives.

I will only say that if someone is not saved, that if they then get baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, remission of sins and the gift of the Holy Ghost (salvation) is absolutely promised to them.