Baptism. What the symbolism means.
The act of baptism itself does not save a person. It is the correct understanding of what it means and how to apply it that is important.
With all feasts and ceremonies, we need to understand what they mean, and not just do them over and over and think that is what God wants.
With the ceremony of baptism, the curse we all get from Adam and Eve gets erased, as you vow to accept Christ’s death in your stead, and put off your old person by faith and put on the new person in the image of Christ. In this way you get a do over.
For this reason Paul said in 2 Corithians 5. that ” 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new. 18 Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us this ministry of reconciliation, 19 to witness, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us this word of reconciliation”.
So what it means to be “in Christ” is to NOT be in Adam, or the old sinful self that lives according to the flesh
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We are part of a new race of humans in the fashion of Jesus Christ. A whole new race being born again, or born from above. (John 3)
It is not what a person is on the outside that matters to God but the inside. This is why Paul said “26 For you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one (and the same value) in Christ Jesus”.
Baptism and the re-gifting of the Breath of God we call the Holy Spirit.
Adam and Eve were told of the forbidden fruit, “in the day you eat you will die” and they did. At the beginning God breathed into Adam and he became a living being. He lived because the breath of God is His Holy Spirit. When he ate the apple The Holy Spirit left and he became dead to the things of God, because the breath of God departed.
At your confession you received that same Holy Spirit, the breath of God and became alive again. You got what Adam lost when he became dead and now you are alive. This is what Baptism symbolizes.
And because Jesus was fully man and fully God, we can be like Him in our human body and interact with God the way Jesus did. That is why scripture says that “in Him dwells the fullness of the Godhead body, and you are complete in Him who is head over all”. Because this is the gift of God that makes us like Him. Godly. Since God made all His creatures “beget according to kind”. We can understand that we are His kind. “A kind of firstfruits of His creation”.9
This is salvation and the resurrection as we understand from the baptism vows, that Adam fell and the resurrection is a reversal of the fall. To be raised back up. And because Adam had no breaks, bruises or cuts and needed no ambulance, it was not his body that fell. Because it was in the spirit of the mind, we can understand that the mind is where this all takes place, and why we are called to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind”.
The resurrection has nothing to do with our body or second coming events, or life after death. It is the body that is “from dust to dust”. And “flesh and blood does not inherit the Kingdom”. But the re-spirited mind of faith does.
We return to the condition humanity was before the fall, being raised in the place Adam fell called the spirit.
We have the Holy Spirit and are already restored to a human type that God said “it is good, very good”.
This is what we need to know about baptism. After all there are many people who may not have the opportunity or ability to actually get submerged. So that is just a subjective formality. But the act itself is just a reinforcement.
This is why “The Kingdom of God is at hand.
