Quote:
Originally Posted by rgcraig
Couldn't put it any better than Bro. Goss has - - it's just the way I believe it.
This is from an article titled “The Blood Covenant” by Howard A. Goss which appeared in the June 1954 Pentecostal Herald, pages 6 and 10
... repentance brings the blood of Jesus to a sinner’s heart to wipe out and cleanse him from all sin, he should then be baptized in water as a confession of his faith in the atonement...
When a sinner fully repents and confesses before God, the blood of Jesus atones for his sins , and cleanses his heart from all sin, and when he is clean then only is he a fit subject for water baptism. After that comes the promise “…you shall receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost…” ( Acts 2:38)
The blood and power of the Lord Jesus is the only source of regeneration or the New Birth. Water baptism alone has no power to remit sins, else we could baptize infants as do the Catholics. The Roman Catholic teaches regeneration by water baptism, but it is not according to the Word of God. A candidate for baptism in water should be baptized BECAUSE THE BLOOD has cleansed, remitted, forgiven his sins, and not in order to get them remitted, as WATER ALONE CANNOT WASH AWAY SINS. The old hymn goes:
What can wash away my sins,
Nothing but the Blood of Jesus. |
I'd rather stick with the Word than a man's faulty hermeuntics.
Luke 13:3 "I tell you, Nay: but, except ye
repent,
ye shall all likewise perish."
1 Peter 3:21 "The like figure whereunto even
baptism doth also
now save us..."
Romans 8:9 "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you.
Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his."
His coming, as a man, was in order to be the perfect sacrifice and to become our Kinsman Redeemer. It doesn't negate anything preached in
Acts 2:38. It only reinforces it.