But you –and it is all God's doing– are in Christ Jesus: He has become for us a wisdom which is from God, consisting of righteousness and sanctification and deliverance;
And all this describes what some of you were. But now you have had every stain washed off: now you have been set apart as holy: now you have been pronounced free from guilt; in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and through the Spirit of our God.
who gave Himself for us to purchase our freedom from all iniquity, and purify for Himself a people who should be specially His own, zealous for doing good works.
For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have contracted defilement make them holy so as to bring about ceremonial purity,
Indeed we may almost say that in obedience to the Law everything is sprinkled with blood, and that apart from the outpouring of blood there is no remission of sins.
And, corresponding to that figure, the water of baptism now saves you –not the washing off of material defilement, but the craving of a good conscience after God– through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
Jesus Christ is He who came with water and blood; not with the water only, but with the water and with the blood. And it is the Spirit who gives testimony– because the Spirit is the Truth.
and from Jesus Christ, the truthful witness, the first of the dead to be born to Life, and the Ruler of the kings of the earth. To Him who loves us and has freed us from our sins with His own blood,
»My lord, you know,« I replied. »They are those,« he said, »who have just passed through the great distress, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.