This is the one who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ. He didn’t come by water only, but by water and blood. The Spirit is a truthful witness about this, because the Spirit is the truth.
I answered, “Sir, you know.” He said, “They’re the ones who’ve come out of the time of terrible suffering. They’ve washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.
and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first to rise from the dead, the ruler over the kings of the earth. Jesus loves us and has set us free from our sins by his blood.
The water of the flood is a picture of the way that baptism now saves you too. It doesn’t save you by washing the dirt off your body. Instead, it’s your way of promising God that you’ll keep a clear conscience by the same power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
The blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a young cow are sprinkled on people the law calls unclean in order to make them holy. Then they’re considered clean on the outside.
Some of you used to do things like that. But you were washed and made holy and right with God in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
Because of what God has done, you belong to Christ Jesus. He has become God’s wisdom for us. He makes us right with God, he makes us holy, and he sets us free.