Some of you were once like that; but you washed yourselves clean, you were consecrated, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
This is the God to whom you owe your being in Christ Jesus, whom God has made our 'Wisdom,' that is, our righteousness and consecration and redemption;
to the church of God at Corinth, to those who are consecrated in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, as well as to all who, wherever they may be, invoke the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their Lord no less than ours:
whom God the Father has predestined and chosen, by the consecration of the Spirit, to obey Jesus Christ and be sprinkled with his blood: may grace and peace be multiplied to you.
let us draw near with a true heart, in absolute assurance of faith, our hearts sprinkled clean from a bad conscience, and our bodies washed in pure water;
that their eyes may be opened and that they may turn from darkness to light, from the power of Satan to God, to get remission of their sins and an inheritance among those who are consecrated by faith in me.'
Now we are bound always to thank God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God has chosen you as the first to be reaped for salvation, by the consecration of your spirit and by faith in the Truth;
and from Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead, and the prince over the kings of earth; to him who loves us and has loosed us from our sins by shedding his blood —
I said to him, "You know, my lord." So he told me, "These are the people who have come out of the great Distress, who washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
but since we know a man is justified simply by faith in Jesus Christ and not by doing what the Law commands, we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus so as to get justified by faith in Christ and not by doing what the Law commands — for by doing what the Law commands no person shall be justified.
Baptism, the counterpart of that, saves you to-day (not the mere washing of dirt from the flesh but the prayer for a clean conscience before God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ
Besides, Scripture anticipated God's justification of the Gentiles by faith when it announced the gospel beforehand to Abraham in these terms: All nations shall be blessed in thee.
I tell you, he went home accepted by God rather than the other man; for everyone who uplifts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be uplifted."
How much heavier, do you suppose, will be the punishment assigned to him who has spurned the Son of God, who has profaned the covenant-blood with which he was sanctified, who has insulted the Spirit of grace?
For an angel used to descend from time to time into the bath, and disturb the water; whereupon the first person who stepped in after the water was disturbed was restored to health, no matter what disease he had been afflicted with].