Establishing the Lordship of Christ — Major Ian Thomas

Redemption from Egypt and the New Quality of Life

Turn back just for a moment to the book of Exodus. We saw yesterday that the Passover service that foreshadowed the death of the Lord Jesus upon the cross and his resurrection was to be celebrated year by year by the children of Israel from the time of their redemption out of Egypt.

That this was to be, in chapter 13, you will remember, in verse 9, a sign unto thee upon thine hand, a memorial between thine eyes, that the Lord's law may be in thy mouth. For with a strong hand hath the Lord brought thee out of Egypt.

It's to represent, in other words, the beginning of a completely different quality of life. It'll change the things you do, it'll change the things you think, and it'll change the things you say. Now this was in God's purpose, in bringing them out, in order that he might bring them in to that land that he had so graciously provided for them.

Canaan as the Indwelling Life of Christ

A land which we have seen does not represent heaven at any time in God's word, but represents only that quality of life that is made possible to you and to me on the grounds of redemption through the indwelling presence of a risen Lord in the person and power of his Holy Spirit as we yield our humanity to his fullness, so that we may become bodies wholly filled and flooded with God himself, the real purpose which we preach the gospel.

That man might, to God's holy satisfaction, be restored once more to that function for which he was created, by what he does and says and is and thinks, giving a valid expression of God's character. Remember, this is always to be the end product of our ministry, whether it's in counselling your own children, praying with them by the bedside, whether it's teaching at Sunday school, whether it's pastoring a church, whether it's leading some youth organisation, whether it's in your evangelistic ministry or missionary enterprise, it's not the method or the technique used, that's relatively unimportant.

It's the end product. What are you aiming at? What's the net result? Is it just reproducing you? Then you can forget it. Is it just perpetuating your organisation? Forget it. The end product must always be conformity to the likeness of God's Son, whom he did foreknow, then he did predestinate to conform to the image of his Son.

If my ministry is simply designed to make another one of me out of somebody else, that has nothing to do with the gospel. If my ministry is simply calculated to perpetuate the organisation that I belong to, that has nothing to do with the gospel.

The end product, the validity, the only way in which I can ultimately evaluate the means, method, technique that I'm using is, what is the end product? Is this giving the Lord Jesus the actual right as God now within this individual to reveal himself in their character through what they're doing, saying and are?

That's the only basis upon which you can evaluate the validity, the legitimacy and the effectiveness of whatever means you may be employing. And if the end product of the technique, method, operational plans that you have, if the actual end product is the establishment of the Lordship of Jesus Christ in utter unchallenged sovereignty in the life of some boy, girl, man or woman, then that's great.

Praise God. You're on the ball. If it falls short of that, whatever else you may be accomplishing to man's satisfaction, you'll be accomplishing absolutely nothing to God's satisfaction. He is to be the firstborn among many brethren that bear his likeness.

Would you be kind enough to shut the door behind you? It's coming. Somebody else is coming. And of course this is magnificently pictured here in what is one of the most important historical records preserved for us and authored by the Holy Spirit in the whole of the Bible.

The story of God's dealings with his people in bringing them out of Egypt, the unregenerate condition, into Canaan, the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The likeness of Christ in behavior on earth on the way to heaven.

Wilderness and Canaan: Two Ways of Living

Now, only a brief reference to this in passing because it belongs to the background of what we're discussing. How far, in point of fact, did their redemption out of Egypt change the things they did while they were in the wilderness?

Well, let's turn to the book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy chapter 12, verse 1. These are the statutes and judgments which ye shall observe to do in the land, which the Lord God of thy fathers giveth thee, to possess it, notice this very carefully, all the days that you live upon the earth.

The land was to be possessed and enjoyed all the days that you live upon the earth. Not heaven, the days you live upon the earth. There, verse 7 he says, there in that land that you are to enjoy and possess on earth, there ye shall eat before the Lord your God.

Ye shall rejoice in all that you put your hand unto. Ye and your households wherein the Lord thy God hath blessed. You're going to rejoice in everything to which you put your hand. In other words, your activity.

And this, of course, is characteristic of a man filled with the Holy Spirit. He's to rejoice evermore. And again, says Paul, rejoice. In everything we're to give thanks. We're to be unshakably confident that we're in the place where God has put us, doing exactly what God has told us.

And for this good reason, the consequences are beyond all possibility of doubt, because God knows His own business. Let me only know, of course, that I'm in the place where God has put me, and I need never ever ask Him for His blessing.

That's a sheer waste of time. That's to challenge God's integrity, and to challenge His intelligence. If I profess before God that I'm in the place that He put me, I'm in the area of obedience, and then to look up in God's face and say, bless me, and bless what I'm doing, God is likely to say, what do you think I put you there for?

Don't you credit me with any intelligence? But we don't credit God with too much intelligence, sadly enough, because although He, as I remind you, came down from heaven, though never ever less than God, to behave as though He were never ever more than man, we still, never ever more than man, always behave as though we were never ever less than God.

And by and large, by our activity, by our behavior patterns, by the way we organize things for Him, we consider Him to be our poor relative. So we keep Him business, down here, you see, and He should be profoundly thankful that He's got such competent folks taking care of His insects.

This is really the condescending way in which we run the church. And there's nothing that shocks us more than when somebody suggests that Jesus Christ really ought to be running the church. Quite fantastic.

We won't put it in those blunt terms, we simply behave it. We'd be shocked if we made it articulate, but this is the way we behave. All the days that we live on earth, we're to rejoice in everything we put our hand to.

In that land which is ours to possess and enjoy now, says He, you will not do, you will not do there, verse 8, after all the things that we do here. Where's here? The wilderness. Halfway house between Egypt and Canaan.

He says you're not going to do there, in Canaan, what we're doing here. You shall not do after all the things that we do here this day. What were they doing in the wilderness? Every man whatsoever is wrong, so it says?

No. Every man whatsoever is right. In whose eyes? His own eyes. That's the characteristic of a carnal Christian. Never fancy that a carnal Christian is simply somebody who's on the bottle, or has run off with his neighbor's wife.

That's one form of carnality amongst the leaders, unfortunately. And we've sort of learned in our permissive society to live with polygamy. Not concurrent, but consecutive. In other words, changing mates at our convenience.

We've settled for that now in a permissive society. God has never given us a proof, never will. That's one form of carnality. Dishonesty, bad temper, greed, selfishness, pride. These are forms of carnality.

But don't imagine that that's the main symptom of carnality in the believer. Carnality in the believer is insisting on doing what is right in his own eyes. Running a show for God. Carnality is evidenced by what Abraham did when he insisted on producing Ishmael when God insisted on giving him Isaac.

And Abraham insisted on producing Ishmael because he thought it was right in his own eyes. He was doing it for God. Carnality is represented by what Moses did when, with the best will in the world and moved with sincere compassion, he went out and tried to do 40 years too soon what God intended 40 years later.

And all he ended up doing was murdering an Egyptian. The taskmaster who lashed one of his Hebrew colours and was chased into oblivion for 40 years, useless to God or man. That's carnality. Carnality is the pastor who runs his church as though he was responsible instead of God.

The missionary who enters the field, rolling up his sleeves and takes over from God, the responsibilities are exclusively his. It's the evangelism committee that launches a crusade on the basis of human promotion.

Natural ingenuity, publicity stunt. That's all carnality. And yet all these folk are not insincere. Tragically they've been house-trained to this kind of procedure and do it believing it to be right in their own eyes.

But that's wilderness. That's the wilderness. It's the wood, the hay and the stubble that goes up in smoke one day to leave its perpetrator standing in a heap of ashes. Nothing of the gold, the silver and the precious stones that derives exclusively from the activity of Jesus Christ himself as God is released in your humanity and mind by virtue of a disposition that lets God actually be God, as though he were God.

And finally he is. He says you're not doing that, Lamb, what you're doing here. Every man doing what is right in his own eyes. For, he says, verse 9, you are not as yet come to the rest, the rest, and to the inheritance which the Lord your God gives you.

You see, the fullness of the Holy Spirit is rest. It's not inactivity. But it's rest. Because it's Christ's activity. When you know the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ and you're living through him every moment of every day, you're not sweating it out.

You're not carrying the burden. In all probability you'll do ten times more than most other people. But you won't feel the strain. You'll have no ulcers. And it won't bring you to the verge of a nervous breakdown.

You'll carry an immense load. Ostensibly to others as they watch you. They won't know how you do it. And you chuckle to yourself because you know you're not. He is. All you are is the humanity with which he's clothing his divine activity.

As you allow him, as then in the days of the New Testament, early church, he continues to do and continues to teach, through you, what he began to do and began to teach in his own body. Just a different body, but the same person in action.

Jesus Christ. That's the land. That's Canaan. That's Christ. That's the fullness of the Holy Spirit. So you see, the wilderness for 40 years didn't change too much what they were doing. That's why they didn't celebrate the Passover.

There was nothing really to celebrate. Because that day of redemption was a day to be remembered, not in the wilderness. It was a day to be remembered in a land to be possessed. And they hadn't entered in.

They were still sweating it out, doing what they considered right in their own eyes. But it was to change also what they thought, a memorial between the eyes. What were they thinking about in the wilderness?

Carnality and Preoccupation with Egypt

How far actually did their redemption out of Egypt change what they were thinking? Their thought patterns. What were they preoccupied with in their minds while in the wilderness? Numbers 11. It says in verse 4, and this is after their redemption out of Egypt.

They are a redeemed people. He says, the mixed multitude that was among them fell alas! And the children of Israel who wept again and said, Who shall give us flesh to eat? We remember the fish which we did eat in Egypt freely.

The cucumbers and the melons and the leeks and the onions and the garlic. So what were their minds preoccupied with in the wilderness? Milk and honey, pomegranate, the rich ripening corn, grapes. That which characterized the land.

Was that after which they hungered and thirsted and longed for and panted? Were they preoccupied with all the marvelous things that God had provided for them in the land of promise? No, that didn't preoccupy them.

What preoccupied their minds, what filled their thoughts, was the things they'd left behind in Egypt. That's carnality. That's the carnal believer. Although he claims redemption and tells all the neighbors that he's saved, he's still primarily preoccupied in his day by day living with what everybody else who's unregenerate is enjoying in Egypt.

In other words, although they were out of Egypt, they were still living in Egypt. Where? In their minds, in their thoughts, in their ambitions, in their desires. That's a carnal Christian who claims redemption, who says I'm saved, who joins a church, but is still really living in his thoughts, ambitions, activities in the land that he professes to have left.

Now they said our soul is dried away. There's nothing at all beside this manna before our eyes. And they were sick and tired of it. They said if only we could get back and enjoy the things we used to enjoy before we converted.

That's why being a carnal Christian is so pathetically unsatisfying. Because you see, you're spoiled for Egypt because you're out, and you're spoiled for land because you're on in. So you get the worst of both worlds.

Nothing satisfies you. You can never be just happy now doing the things you used to do before you were converted because the witness of God's Spirit is there. That you're God's child, you know you don't belong.

But you've never entered into that for which God has redeemed you. And as I indicated yesterday, nothing is more boring than having manna four times a day, seven days a week, 365 days in the year, for 40 years.

Of course, that was never God's intention. The Christian life was never designed in God's economy to be as colorless and tasteless and monotonous and repetitive as that. And yet, how often have we reduced the Christian life to the drab monotony of a repetitive procedure.

And we wonder why people get browned off. I wonder if your Christian life has been reduced to the drab monotony of a repetitive procedure. The nature of that procedure, of course, will depend upon the constituency you belong to.

The character of that monotonous procedure will depend, of course, upon under whose influence you have come. But it'll get pretty trying. You'll be tempted finally to say, there must be something more to the Christian life than this.

And if there isn't, I'm going back to where I belong. To the leeks and the onions and the cucumbers. Way back in Egypt. I'm constantly meeting folk like that. It's great when they come and pour out their stories and shed their tears because you know, at that stage, having become thoroughly disgruntled and thoroughly disgusted with what God never intended for them, the wilderness, they're on the threshold of something better.

They'll either at that moment go right on, or they'll go right back. I remember a girl, only just a few weeks back, I was in Salem, Oregon, speaking at the assembly of a Christian high school. And when it was all dismissed and the few were on the stage doing some rehearsals or something, a girl flipped back.

And because she was embarrassed to be seen blubbing, she dragged me into the side wings, burst into tears. A girl of about 17. I said, how long have you been a Christian? She said, I don't even know now whether I am a Christian.

I professed to become a Christian when I was a kid. But last night I told God that I was finished, I was thrashed, I was beaten. I said, if this is the Christian life, I've had it. So have you. Well, I'd been talking that morning to the kids about the real Christian life.

I said, did nobody ever tell you that when the Lord Jesus died to redeem you, he came to share his life with you? No, she's never heard that. Have you never discovered that the Lord Jesus living actually within you is the only one who can give you what it takes to live the Christian life?

No wonder she was fit to quit. And as the truth dawned upon her, how wealthy she had been all those years living in self-imposed poverty, in the abysmal ignorance in which others who had instructed her had left her.

Thinking that Jesus simply died 2 ,000 years ago, that historical act when Jesus did his thing and then left and went to heaven to leave us to sweat it out here on earth. Poor kid, she'd been struggling.

She'd tried to conform to all the projected patterns under which she had been laboring until her heart was fit to break. What a joy it is to introduce a girl like that to the fact that Jesus is alive.

Not just in heaven, but in her. In the same city, I was entertained in a family and another lady was present who told me that eight years previously, she'd given God an ultimatum, one week. Earnest church worker, genuinely converted, part of an evangelical constituency.

She said, I gave God one week. I said, if nothing happens in this week, I'm quitting, I'm finished. But in the goodness of God, she somehow got hold of the tapes of the series of meetings that I'd given on the book of Esther.

And she listened to the whole lot. And she said, I don't know what made me do it, but I switched the lights off. The menace penetrated. I lay flat on the floor and I said, God, this, this is the answer, or nothing.

And I'm prepared to let you move into my life and demonstrate your deity. You take over, as from now. It was eight years ago. Every Friday morning she has 350 ladies from the city of Salem that come to be taught the fact that Jesus is alive.

That only he can revolutionize human character. As we leave Egypt, go through the wilderness and finally arrive in Canaan and share the good things that God has provided. After a series of meetings in Phoenix, Arizona, I got a letter from the medical doctor when I arrived in California.

He'd just been able to come to three of those meetings. He didn't belong to the church. Very courteously and graciously, which I appreciated, he thanked me for the ministry of those three days. He said, I've been an active Christian worker in my evangelical church ever since I became a Christian.

For 20 years. But you're the first man in 20 years that ever told me that Jesus Christ has a role to play in the Christian life. First man that ever told me that Jesus Christ has a role to play in the Christian life.

Did he mean he didn't believe the Bible? He'd been teaching the Bible for 20 years. Did he mean by that that he didn't believe that Christ died for his sins? He'd accepted that fact when he was converted.

Did he mean by that that he didn't believe that Jesus was risen from the dead, had ascended to the Father? Of course he believed it and preached it. Did he mean by that that he didn't believe that Christ had gone to prepare a place for him that one day he'd come back?

He knew it. He was waiting for it. Languidly. But what he meant was that believing all those biblical facts, so far as he was concerned, Jesus had done his thing when he died 2 ,000 years ago and was there in heaven and had no further role to play.

Having redeemed him, having by his blood shed upon the cross, given him access into the presence of a holy God, that was his thing. And Jesus Christ now was in heaven, not the origin of his activity on earth, but simply the distant object of his activity.

He was the one in business for that person up there far away in the clouds. And he up there had no role to play in his Christian life save to be the object of it. But never the origin of it. Little wonder after 20 years he was weary.

But what an exciting letter I got when he told me the story of what happened when he let Christ loose to play that role which is rightfully his in the humanity of every forgiven sinner who died for us only that he might give himself to us so that we could let him loose.

Manna and the Dissatisfaction of the Wilderness

Now they were preoccupied with Egypt. That's what they thought about. And the manner that God provided for them is dull as ditch water. And it is. Quite frankly it is. The manner that God provides in the wilderness is as dull as ditch water.

Often it's described as our daily Bible reading. Never means that in the Bible. If I'm to assume that my daily manner is my daily Bible reading then I've got to settle for the wilderness. Was there any manner in the land of promise?

In Canaan? Uh uh. None. So if I'm to have daily manner which is my daily Bible reading I've got to settle for the wilderness because that's the only place where they ever had manner. The moment they got to Canaan as we shall see the manner ceased.

Never, never, never to be had again. Which means either one, when you're filled with the Holy Spirit you never again read your Bible or when you get to heaven you never again listen to what God has to say.

Which would be a quaint interpretation of the Bible. Turn to the Book of Exodus. Look at the 16th chapter. Middle of the first verse. On the 15th day of the second month after their departing out of the land of Egypt a redeemed people the whole congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.

The children of Israel said would to God we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the flesh part. When we did eat bread to the full we had full stomachs in Egypt for you have brought us forth into this wilderness to kill us, this whole assembly with hunger.

This is a redeemed people whom God has marvelously brought out of slavery. And then the sting and lash of the Egyptian taskmaster's whip. Then said the Lord to Moses behold I will rain bread from heaven for you and the people shall go out and gather a certain rate every day that I may prove them whether they will walk in my law or not.

And verse 14 when the dew that lay was gone up behold upon the face of the wilderness there lay a small round thing as small as the hoarfrost on the ground and when the children of Israel saw it they said one to another it is manna for they wist not what it was.

I wonder if you have a marginal translation in your bible, do you? If so you'll notice that the word manna is a word which more accurately translated says what is it? What is it? The question. Manna. In the German language it's man who.

What is it? Never tasted this before. They wist not what it was. Moses said unto them this is the bread which the Lord has given you to eat. This is something that you've never had before. This is something that you've never tasted before.

This has never previously been in your experience. Now tell me this. What is it you and I receive when we claim redemption through our Lord Jesus Christ in that we have repented toward God and humbly put our trust in him as our Redeemer and God for his sake blots out our sins like a thick cloud and says I will remember them no more for my name's sake.

What's the first thing that God does the moment your sins are forgiven? What was the promise which saith he the Lord Jesus speaking Acts 1 4 you've heard of me. John indeed baptized with water but you shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence said the Lord Jesus now that you understand the redemptive efficacy of my atoning death just as soon as I have gone back to be with my Father I will send the promise of my Father an experience that you have never had before.

You will receive the bread from heaven not the bread that Moses gave them in the wilderness which was but the shadow but the very substance in self for on the day of Pentecost you're going to receive somebody whose life you have never yet shared the Holy Spirit.

Manna is a picture of the Holy Spirit in the wilderness it's the sealing with the Holy Spirit sealed, divinely sealed. Keep the place there in Exodus 16 but turn to Ephesians Ephesians chapter 1 and verse 6 to the praise of the glory of God's grace wherein he God hath made us sinners accepted in the beloved 6th verse, 1st chapter, epistle to the Ephesians he God hath made us sinners accepted in the beloved verse 7, in whom the beloved, that's the Lord Jesus we have redemption repurchased.

How do we have redemption in the beloved, the Lord Jesus through his blood. For without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. That's where it all begins. That's the first baby word of the gospel the ABC the criterion the first premise the threshold, the door in in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace.

That's why added to their new joy the disciples received a new bible and added to their new bible the moment it became sense to them in the upper room, as some of us have been discovering in our evening sessions they had a new message repentance and remission of sin to be preached in his name, the name of the beloved among all nations beginning at Jerusalem.

Here is forgiveness, according to the riches of God's grace. That's redemption. That's out of Egypt through the Red Sea baptized into Christ as they then were baptized into Moses. But then verse 13 of the same chapter in whom the same beloved the Lord Jesus you also trusted.

After that you heard the word of truth the gospel of your salvation. You were first exposed to the fact somebody taught you. Then having taught you they exhorted you to mix those facts with faith teaching and preaching.

And exposed to the fact there came a moment in time said the apostle to these when you obeyed the gospel and you accepted redemption. And when you believed and the word after there is not after in the sense that there was a time lag it's after as in the sense of in consequence of because you claimed redemption in obedience to the gospel.

When that happened when you believed you were sealed. Sealed. How were you sealed as those who had believed. What's the only valid stamp and hallmark that God recognizes that characterizes you as a genuine believer.

The fact that a church has voted you into membership. Millions of people have been voted into church membership that have never been redeemed, never been regenerated. The fact that you've been baptized tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands millions of people have been baptized, never been born again.

That isn't the criteria, there's only one criteria the fact that you can repeat the doctrines or memorize whole chunks of the bible, no, all that's good. But it doesn't prove that you're a believer. What does prove that you're a believer.

The presence of the person by whom alone you're sealed sealed with the holy spirit of promise. Who, verse 14, the holy spirit is the earnest guarantee. An old english word stamp, hallmark forte he is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory.

The redemption of the purchased possession in this particular instance refers to the coming back of Jesus Christ to take to himself his bride, his church, his redeemed people the Lord Jesus coming back to take to himself the purchased possession.

How will he know. How will he know how many of those guilty sinners on earth have been purchased. Well because, as I indicated there are two guarantees, one every boy, girl, man or woman who's been purchased in response to their faith that obeys the gospel has their name written in the Lamb's book of life.

And secondly, every boy, girl, man or woman who's been purchased in response to their faith that let Christ redeem them, has been sealed by the presence of God. The holy spirit has been baptized into the body of Christ has come alive by the restoration to them of that life that was forfeited in Adam by the restoration of God the holy ghost the renewing of whose presence is that regeneration that constitutes new birth.

The Holy Spirit as the Guarantee of Redemption

The presence of the holy spirit is the only valid indication that any boy, girl, man or woman has been redeemed. That's why Romans 8 verse 9 tells us if any man have not the spirit of Christ he's none of him, don't kid yourself if in response to your faith in accepting Christ as your redeemer you have not received God the holy spirit somebody indwelling you, a life that you never had before.

So surprising that at first you're inclined to say man who? What is it? This is entirely new, never tasted it before. No you haven't, because the natural man received is not the things of the spirit of God they're foolishness unto him, neither can he know them.

They're spiritually discerned. But you see, the only purpose which Christ died upon the cross was that on the grounds of that cleansing which may be ours through his blood there may be restored to us by the gift of the holy ghost that quality of life for which man was created God's life.

That's why Galatians 3 13 and 14 that I've quoted to you before spell it out so loud and clear. Galatians 3, 13 and 14 Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law. There's redemption, there's the shedding of blood.

There's forgiveness that's out of Egypt. Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law being made a curse for us cursed is everyone that hangeth on a tree. That, to this end, verse 14 not that we might go to heaven not that we might escape hell.

That's purely incidental. That, verse 14, Galatians 3 that, the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ. In other words, that everything that God had in mind when he made this pledge in the covenant to Abraham that in his seed Jesus or the earth should be blessed might be fulfilled in your experience and mine we want to know then what God had in mind when he made that pledge to Abraham and the balance of that 14th verse of Galatians 3 tells us what God had in mind that, the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles through Jesus Christ.

That, we might receive the spirit of promise. In other words, the purpose which Jesus has redeemed us being made a curse for us upon the cross is on the grounds of that redemption. God may restore to us, God the Holy Spirit that our bodies may be holy filled and flooded with God himself.

Our bodies on earth become the temples of the living God and we may be fitly framed together once again as a habitation of God by his spirit, that is the gospel. And any gospel that invites boy, girl, man or woman to be reconciled to God other than on the basis that he as God reinvades their personality and occupies their humanity in the person of God the Holy Ghost, that he might call the shots is a deliberate fraud a patent, a patent deception.

And to perpetrate that kind of deception to perpetrate that kind of fraud in any other line of business would land you in jail. But this is the gospel that's being preached as though all the significance of Christ's birth, life, death and resurrection was that he did his thing two thousand years ago to get sinners out of hell and into heaven.

And once they opted for that they're saved, period, anything after that is a luxury optional as though it didn't really matter so long as their names are on our church register. That's nothing to do with the Bible.

That's not the gospel sealed with the Holy Spirit. Galatians the law of chapter 3, verse 24 the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ that we might be justified by faith. The law teaches us that we're guilty sinners so that convicted of our sin we turn to Christ to be justified on the grounds of his atoning death.

After that faith has come, verse 25 we're no longer under a schoolmaster. You're the children of God not because you deserve it not because of the color of your skin not because your parents were religious but because of your moral option exercised in obedience to the gospel.

You are the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ by the Holy Ghost 1 Corinthians 12, 13 we're baptized by the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ.

Spiritual Baptism and the New Birth

You and I are members of his body only when the Holy Spirit present within us has credited us with his resurrection life as the seal that our sins have been forgiven. And as many of you as have been baptized into Christ that's not water baptism.

That's spiritual baptism. Of which water baptism is only an outward evidence just a symbol utterly in itself worthless unless the spiritual content is there in response to faith nobody was ever made a child of God by baptism.