Now we come to the part that is critical to our correct orientation to salvation.

You must repent, you must turn away from your life in the world and begin to serve God.

You must be baptized in water as a sign of your repentance. Water baptism portrays two facts: it shows you now have taken your place with the Lord Jesus on the cross; it shows also that you are now part of the resurrected Lord Jesus and have risen with Him to the right hand of the Father. From now on you must regard yourself as dead to sin and the world and risen with Christ into the Kingdom of God.

The individual who has accepted the false gospel, that Jesus Christ came to save us from Hell apart from any change in our personality, goes through life waiting until he dies so he can go to Heaven. Meanwhile he tries to do good but fails more often than not. He has not been oriented correctly to the Christian salvation.

The individual who receives the true Gospel, that Christ came to save us from sin, goes through life as one who is dead to this world but who is living daily in Christ at the right hand of the Father.

The believer who pictures himself as forgiven and ready for Paradise is not undergoing the daily transformation that of itself is salvation. He is waiting for death to verify and establish his salvation, not being changed into a new creature in the present hour. He has a wrong vision of the Father's purpose and program.

The believer who pictures himself as dead with Christ and risen with Christ is overcoming sin each day. He counts himself as dead and risen. He experiences every kind of tribulation so that through these he might press into the Kingdom of God.

Salvation is a process of continual judgment and deliverance from sin. This is why Peter speaks of fiery trials and then tells us it is difficult even for the righteous to be saved.

Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: (I Peter 4:12)

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? And if the righteous scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear? (I Peter 4:17,18)

The purpose of the fiery trials is that we might cease from sin. They are Divine judgment on our sinful personality.

Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; (I Peter 4:1)

These comments from the fourth chapter of I Peter make little sense in terms of the view of the Gospel as deliverance from Hell when we die. But if we view salvation as the working out of our dual position of crucifixion with Christ and resurrection with Christ, and tribulation as being a judgment on our crucified adamic nature, then the fourth chapter of I Peter makes perfect sense.

To be continued.