Paul's Passing Thoughts

Unbelievers know more about salvation than church attenders because unbelievers understand the new birth intuitively. They know it is an exchange for the life they presently have for another life. This is why the gospel is rejected. This may include not wanting to lose present desires that they have.

Those primed for salvation want to escape desires that enslave them. They hate their present life, and pick up the cross and follow Jesus to the baptism of death to the old self. But they also follow Jesus in the baptism of resurrection and new birth. This is a one-time occurrence that seals the believer until the day their body is also redeemed.

Church orthodoxy explicitly teaches that you need church because you are the same person that you always were; you are saved because the Spirit supposedly showed you that you need church. Most unbelievers know better.

When one is baptized in church, the pastor says you die in the likeness of Christ and are resurrected in his “likeness.” It’s not a likeness, it’s sameness.