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| Volume 22 Number 3 March 2020 | Page 12 |
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| Volume 22 Number 3 March 2020 | Page 12 |
Aaron J. Cozort
Change is natural when a child is born. So, it is true for a Christian. A Christian is not to be born in the watery birth of baptism and then continue in his old lifestyle of sin and wickedness. A Christian’s washing of regeneration in baptism and renewing by the Spirit of God should result in a drastically different individual than before he died to sin (Titus 3:5).
What things are supposed to change when one becomes a Christian? One item that should change is the mind; it is supposed to change because the person living inside of you is supposed to change. Ephesians 4:23 says, “And be renewed in the spirit of your mind. And that you put on the new man which was created according to God in true righteousness and holiness.”
When a person is baptized into Christ, he dies and is resurrected again to a new life. He comes up out of that water a new person. He’s supposed to change. The new Christian is supposed to think differently. Before baptism, a person might consider his life to be without value. A person might think that the physical body is all that makes up one’s existence. After baptism (because it wasn’t to clean the physical body but to cleanse the spiritual body), a new Christian should readily understand that he has a spirit (inner person) that is alive in addition to and separate from the body.
Before baptism, a person might consider his evil deeds to be of no great consequence. Especially if a person considered this physical existence to be all that there was to life, the consequences of committing wicked deeds or sins could never be any greater than death and the end of this physical life. Yet, the Scriptures make it clear that the end of this life is just the beginning of eternity, which begins with judgment. Hebrews 9:27 reads, “And as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment…” Second Thessalonians 1:6-9 reads:
Since it is a righteous thing with God to repay with tribulation, those who trouble you, and to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power.
When you were baptized, did you come out and begin living a new life? Or, did you go back to the old one? Think about that today.
Ernest S. Underwood
“For I am the Lord, I do not change” (Malachi 3:6). We serve an unchanging God.
We live in a society today that has adopted a philosophy of political correctness, making whatever changes it has to in order to please as many as possible. In such a world of changes, it is good to know that we have a God who does not change. Let’s look at some ways in which He does not change.
Are you prepared to meet this unchanging God?