Another
Coffee Break:
Going Beyond, Part 4
November 28, 2014
Dealing with the formulaic
approach to water baptism has been the bane of the church world. It has caused sincere, committed believers in
Christ to lose sight of how critical this foundation is to their being able to
"go on beyond" into the realms that await. The formulaic approach has blocked many
believers from going on into the dimensions of the Spirit that Jesus Christ has
simply because they never availed themselves of the law of liberty that comes
with water baptism.
Let's
pick up where we left off last week (and I'm running a bit long again today in
order to finish this picture of water baptism):
In
writing to the Romans, Paul says, “Don’t you realize that those of us who have been
baptized — immersed — into the Anointed
One and His Anointing have been baptized into His death?” (Romans 6:3, RAC Translation and Amplification)
Let
me pick up again with the amplified translation from Romans 6 that we used in
our last time of sharing on Baptism.
And
Paul continues: “Therefore,
and as a consequence thereof, we are buried and put into the grave through
baptism so that our old man sees death.
It follows, therefore, that in the same way Christ was raised up from
the dead by the visible Glory of the Father, we also should walk and live
renewed and refreshed (with His breath) of life.” (Romans 6:4 RAC Translation and Amplification)
Here’s
where Paul spells things out in specific detail.
“For if we
have been planted together, germinating as seeds in the likeness and form of
His death, we shall also spring forth in (and with His) resurrection: Knowing this, that our old man and
corrupted DNA is crucified with him, that the body (of law) of sin might be
annulled and destroyed in order to free us from having to serve and be under
the Law of Sin and Death.
“For he who
has died is freed from sin (and the laws which determine that which is sin). Now if we are truly dead with Christ, we
believe and know that we shall also live with Him:
“Knowing
that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death has no
more authority, dominion, control or power over Him. For when He died, He died killing off
sin and death once and for all: and by virtue of the fact that He lives, He
lives in and for the destiny and purposes of God.” (Romans 6:5-10, RAC Translation and Amplification)
I
have a question for you.
WHAT
in any of these statements Paul makes gives folks the idea that they need to go
back and continually repent for events that were not actually a part of their
lives? Let’s take something we’ve come
to refer to as “generational repentance.”
This
teaching and practice stems from a principle established under the Law of Moses
in which God made it clear that the sins of the father were passed on to the
children of the fourth generation — and in the case of children born outside of
wedlock, to the tenth generation.
First,
let’s take a look at the Law of Moses, and what God originally said concerning
the sins (or iniquities) of the fathers:
Exodus 20:5-6: “Thou shalt not bow down
thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God,
visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and
fourth generation of them that hate me; And showing mercy unto thousands of them
that love me, and keep my commandments.”
Numbers 14:18: “The Lord is
longsuffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by
no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation.”
Deuteronomy 23:2-3:
“A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even
to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the
Lord. An Ammonite or Moabite shall not
enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to their tenth generation shall
they not enter into the congregation of the Lord.”
Now,
here’s the other side of this picture:
Deuteronomy 7:9: “Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God,
the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and
keep his commandments to a thousand generations.”
I Chronicles 16:15-17: “Be ye mindful always of his covenant; the word
which he commanded to a thousand generations; Even of the covenant which he
made with Abraham, and of his oath unto Isaac; And hath confirmed the same to
Jacob for a law, and to Israel for an everlasting covenant.”
The
phrase which occurs in Exodus 20:6:(showing mercy unto thousands of them that love me) really misses it
in our English translations. Even under
the Law of Moses, the generation of “them that love me” was free from the
generational curse of the sins of their fathers. We can better translate this phrase out of
Hebrew like this: “showing
mercy unto thousands of generations of them that love me.”
Put
in the same context as the first part of what God was saying to Israel,
“I the LORD
thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the
children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And
showing mercy unto thousands of generations of them that love me, and keep my
commandments.”
It
may not be immediately clear at first glance, but what God was saying to Israel
was this: “Even
though your father, and your father’s father may have lived under the
generational curse of your ancestor before them, because they did not turn to
me and continued in the ways of their fathers, you are free from that curse and
the iniquities which had been visited upon your fathers because you love me and
keep my commandments.” (RAC Translation
& Amplification)
If
that was true under the Law of Moses, how is it that we still find it necessary
today to drag up the sins of our fathers when we have a Covenant in Christ
Jesus which has freed us from the Law of Sin and Death?
Let’s
put this another way.
For
all those who are in Christ Jesus, we were with Him when He was hanging on the
Cross! All of our sins, along with the
sins of our fathers, our grandfathers, our great-grandfathers, and every
generation before them came upon Jesus as He hung there. When He died, He took those sins with Him to
the grave.
During
the three days his body lay in the grave, He took our sins, our iniquities, our
sicknesses, our infirmities, our diseases and the curse of death that hung over
the human race and laid them all at Satan’s feet!
THAT,
folks, is exactly what happens with us in water baptism when we are buried with
Him! We are with Him. We are IN
Him! EVERYTHING of our past — including
the sins of our fathers, and the iniquities visited upon us as a result — gets laid
at Satan’s feet. He gets back what He so
treacherously dumped on us!
Now
comes the Resurrection! Listen to how
the apostle Paul puts it as he writes to the Philippians.
Philippians 3:8d-11: “That I may win Christ, And be found in him, not
having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through
the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith: That I may
know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his
sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; If by any means I might attain unto the
resurrection of the dead.”
Do
you see it? In water baptism we are in
Him — NOT in our own (self) righteousness which gets measured by the Law with
its penalties and curse. Rather, we are
in Him by, through and because of His faith; and that faith comes from Father
God by means of the anointing that is in Jesus.
The
objective here is that — as Paul puts it — we have know and have the revelation
of Him, His onoma, His
character and makeup. But there’s much,
much more! It isn’t simply that we have
a revelation of Jesus in water baptism: we also receive a revelation of the
miraculous power and might released in His resurrection.
And
still there is more!
We
get to be a partaker of the sufferings He endured — the beatings, the stripes,
the disfigurement that occurred when His beard was ripped out of his face, the
unutterable pain that occurred when the crown of thorns was shoved into His
skull.
How
are we a partaker of those sufferings, you ask?
By receiving what He paid for on our behalf when all that took
place. Every single stripe of the
cat-o-nine tails that ripped the flesh on His body represents a disease or an
infirmity that He took for us.
The
disfigurement that took place when His beard was ripped out, leaving loose
flesh hanging from His face, His chin and His neck paid for the disfiguring
injuries that men and women suffer in today’s so-called “advanced” society as a
result of diseases or accidents of one kind or another.
The
pain and suffering that occurred with the planting of the crown of thorns into
His skull paid for all of the mental anguish, the torment of our minds, the
agonies we suffer with the thoughts of the past, the concerns of the present
and the future.
Are
you now beginning to grasp the significance of getting to “know the fellowship (Greek: koinonia: partnership and participation with) of His sufferings?” We partner with
Him; we partake of those sufferings by being IN Him when we are immersed in the
waters of baptism.
Let
me pause here for a minute to take you to Isaiah’s prophecy concerning Jesus:
Isaiah 53:3-5: “He is despised and rejected of men; a man of
sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him;
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he
hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken,
smitten of God, and afflicted. But
he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the
chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”
Isaiah
was able to see some 700 years or so into the future, and what he sees is
exactly what took place with Jesus’ suffering, the betrayal, all that He took
upon Himself, and all that He accomplished on our behalf.
But
Isaiah also saw far into the future to our present day. Here’s how the Hebrew text describes the
picture:
He is
disdained and scorned, and considered as having ceased to exist by men: a man
of anguish and pain, and has known grief by seeing and experiencing it; and we
hid as it were our faces from Him; He was disdained and scorned, and we
maliciously fabricated, invented and treated His suffering and death as void.
Surely He
has suffered and accepted as His own our maladies, our anxieties, our
calamities, our disease and sicknesses, and carried our anguish, pain and
grief: yet we fabricated and maliciously invented His being stricken violently,
beaten, punished, wounded and slaughtered as if by God -- choosing to believe
that God browbeat, demeaned and looked down upon Him.
But He was
broken and profaned for our rebellion, our revolt, our apostasy and our
[religious] quarrel against God; He was crushed, oppressed and smitten, and
(emotionally) broken into pieces for our perversity, our evil, our mischief,
sins and faults; the breaking and ridiculing of our peace, our welfare, our
prosperity, our health and our safety was upon Him; and with His bloodied and
blue wounds we are cured, mended, repaired and made thoroughly whole. (Isaiah 53:3-5, RAC Translation &
Amplification)
You
see the difference in the picture, don’t you?
Isaiah is actually seeing how the world today treats Jesus, despite all
that He did on our behalf! The world —
and a whole fistful of folks who call themselves Christians — still consider
that God demeaned and looked down on Him.
So many folks today treat His death as null and void when and where it
applies to every aspect of their lives.
Jesus left NOTHING undone!
Listen
to how Paul finishes with his explanation of what takes place. He wraps all of this up with this phrase: “being made conformable
to His death.”
There’s
a 64-dollar word for you! Conformable. It comes from the Greek word: summorphos. It translates literally to: being jointly formed; fashioned with and like.
Understand? We are jointly formed with Jesus Christ INTO
His death. He dies. We die with Him. The old us is dead. What used to exist of us is now nothing more
than a corpse. Jesus has died and is
buried in a tomb. We have been formed
INTO Him so that as He died, so did we.
In
the same way that Jesus’ death finished the past, the sin, the sufferings, the
diseases and everything that went with the curse that came upon the human race,
our having been jointly formed and fashioned like Him, means that our past —
and all the consequences of the sins, the iniquities of our fathers, the
diseases that have plagued us, the infirmities of our flesh, the poverty that
came with the curse — and death itself! — has been finished IN US!
But
that’s only the first part of baptism.
That’s the dying and burial part.
But we don’t remain in the grave!
The power of the Resurrection has been made available to us. Here’s what Jesus said about it when He was
talking to Martha:
John 11:25-26: “I am the resurrection,
and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me
shall never die. Believest thou this?”
Paul
deals with this when he writes his letter to the Ekklesia in Ephesus:
Ephesians 2:4-7:
“But God,
who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath
quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made
us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might show
the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ
Jesus.”
It
couldn’t be any clearer! We were dead
with our lives measured by the Law of Sin and Death. But Jesus incorporated us with Him when He
died. We were woven into His being so
that when He died, carrying our sins, we died at the same time.
We
didn’t exit Him, and He didn’t eject us when He was raised from the dead. Paul uses an interesting word in the Greek
text when he says that God “hath quickened us together with Christ.” The Greek word in this instance is: suzoopoieo, and it means: to reanimate, or to make one alive together (at the same time). But our resurrection doesn’t stop with our
being raised from the dead (what which occurs when we are raised out of the
water). Father God continued the
“raising up” together IN Christ, and has made us to sit together — WITH Him, and IN Him — in Heavenly places, in the anointing of the Anointed One,
the Lord Jesus Christ!
THAT, my friends is what
takes place when we are baptized in water!
Again, if you are in
need of healing -- especially if you have some terminal disease or prognosis of
a very short time to live from the doctors -- please join our prayer conference
calls on either Monday or Wednesday of each week at 7:00 PM Eastern. Once
again, the number to call is (805) 399-1000.
Then enter the access code: 124763#.
To get into the queue for prayer, when Randy opens the call up for
everyone, hit *6-1 on your keypad. Let us minister to your need for healing!
Blessings on you!
Regner
Regner A. Capener
CAPENER MINISTRIES
CAPENER MINISTRIES
RIVER WORSHIP CENTER
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Sunnyside, Washington 98944
Email Contact: Admin@RiverWorshipCenter.org
Our book, A
Tale of Two Brides, published by Destiny Image, is available on
Amazon.com as an E-book: http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Two-Brides-Relationship-ebook/dp/B00BSV6HZC/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1363139096&sr=8-8&keywords=A+Tale+of+Two+Brides#_
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