Accepting the Good News
We must accept the Father’s invitation to be His faith-sons now, with a promise of being adopted as spirit sons and daughters in the heavens. We undergo water baptism as symbolic of our entry into the spiritual brotherhood of sons and daughters of the Kingdom, and we undergo the ongoing baptism into Christ’s death as described by Paul where we live our lives and worship the Father as Jesus did:
“What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?"
– Roman 6:1-3
“Therefore we were buried with him through our baptism into his death, in order that, just as Christ was raised up from the dead through the glory of the Father, we also should likewise walk in a newness of life. For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall certainly also be united with him in the likeness of his resurrection; because we know that our old personality was impaled with him, that our sinful body might be made inactive, that we should no longer go on being slaves to sin. For he who has died has been acquitted from his sin.”
– Romans 6:4-7
“Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.”
– Mark 8:34-35
For those of us who have already been baptized in water, we must go on following the Lamb wherever he goes (Revelation 14:4), into the Kingdom of the Heavens where he is preparing a place for us:
“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going.”
– John 14:1-4
This is the good news that God the Father and Christ Jesus want us to know!
