I'm disconcerted by people who seem to be suggesting that you should find certainty in your own certainty. You'll never find certainty by looking into yourself, or your own feelings. Your feelings are fickle, fleeting, and frail.
You do trust in Christ, that's what faith is.
But if you try and find certainty by examining your own feelings, how you feel, or how "sincere" you think you are you will always be disappointed. Because we are unreliable. We are failing. We are unstable and sinful. You and I will always fail, we will always struggle, we will always be insufficient. That's why we can't look at ourselves or to how we feel.
We have to, instead, turn to the Word of Christ, the Gospel itself. Christ crucified and risen from the dead, your sins freely forgiven. Yes, your sins have been forgiven, that's what the Gospel says. To you.
Have you ever been baptized Countryangel? If you have then you have absolute assurance in Christ. For by our baptism we have been washed clean of all our unrighteousness, born again by the Holy Spirit, having received the Holy Spirit, become crucified and dead with Christ, and alive together with Him to new life.
Here is what the Scriptures say,
"Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit." - Acts 2:38
"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.
For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." - Romans 6:3-11
"As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." - Galatians 3:27
"He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy, through the water of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." - Titus 3:5
"And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ," - 1 Peter 3:21
In your baptism you belong to Christ, and if Christ's you are God's. You have God the Father as your Father. You are a daughter of God, and a joint-heir with Christ Jesus your Lord. You can therefore boldly declare that you are baptized, and there is no power above or below the earth or on the earth that can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ.
Am I saying you're not saved if you haven't been baptized? Not at all. But look to the promises which God has attached to Baptism in Scripture, look not to the internal things of your heart, but to the external things of God, to His Word and His Sacraments. There is Christ, always, without question. For God has promised these things, and He is reliable and unfailing, Faithful even when we are faithless.
-CryptoLutheran
Shame on your for posting all those scriptures out of context and trying to make them say water Baptism brings salvation:
in Acts 2:38 the King James bible reads correctly:
"Repent, and be baptized for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the holy ghost."
the word for there could also be translated "because of", the Greek word is the word eis, and does not always mean"in order to receive"
for example, "I want to jail FOR stealing. " does not mean I went to jail in order to get stealing.
In one of the Gospels Jesus said the people repented at (the greek word eis) the preaching of Jonah.
The Holy Spirit very carefully and exactly selected the words that He used. There is a Greek preposition
hina which means "in order to," or "so that." That is not the preposition used in Acts 2:38. That Greek preposition
hina is used in the New Testament according to
Young's Analytical Concordance and translated one time
albeit, one time
because, one time
so as, twice as
so that, and 542 times as simply
that and
to the intent one time and
to the intent that one time. So, if Peter had meant "baptized that ye may receive the remission of sins," he would have used that Greek preposition. The Greek terms are very exact.
Romans 6:3-5 tell very clearly the intent of baptism, its form and meaning. It is a burial, a planting (not a birth): "Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. for if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." So baptism pictures the burial and the resurrection of Christ and our participation in His death and burial. We count the old man dead and buried. We are raised up to live a new life because we have a new heart. Baptism thus is a picture, a ceremony with a definite meaning.
Notice also that twice in verse five it is called "the likeness of his death," and "the likeness of his resurrection."
Now does "baptized into Jesus Christ" mean that baptism puts us in Christ? Again your trouble is in the little preposition
into. It is the translation of the Greek word
eis, used some 1800 hundred times in the New testament. It is an indefinite preposition of reference. it is variously translated in, at, unto, toward, et cetra. the simplest meaning is "referring to," or "with reference to." So, Romans 6:3, "...that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized referring to Jesus Christ were baptized referring to his death."
And in Galatians 3:27 the meaning simply is, "For as many of you as have been baptized referring to Christ [or pointing to Christ] have put on Christ," that is, have publicly and symbolically acknowledged Christ.
You see, we have an exact copy of that use of the word in 1 Corinthians 10:1,2, "Moreover, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant, how that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all passed through the sea; And were all baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea," And that "baptized unto Moses" again uses the little preposition
eis, so the Bible says, "baptized
eis Jesus Christ," "baptized
eis his death," and baptized
eis Moses." So if baptism puts the penitent sinner into Christ, then all the nation Israel were put into Moses. If the one is literally put into, then the other is literally put into. In this inspired Scripture, God uses exactly the same language.
But if you take the way the word is used throughout the New Testament and as an indefinite preposition of reference, then the Israelites were baptized crossing the Red Sea, surrounded by the cloud and the sea, were baptized with reference to Moses and his leadership just as a Christian is baptized with reference to Moses and his leadership just as a Christian is baptized with reference to Jesus Christ, pointing to His death and resurrection. We ought to use terms like the Bible uses them and we ought to mean what the Bible means. and to take it that these Scriptures contradict the other plain statement, that one who believes in Christ is already saved and has no condemnation, is misusing the Word of God. No Scripture ever contradicts another Scripture, if it be rightly interpreted.