Good Monday morning to everyone out there listening, thanks for listening to the podcast.

We're going to start this week with a question from an anonymous listener who right tend to

ask this.

Hello, Pastor John, and thank you for APJ.

My question is this.

Can you tell me if Paul says in Colossians 2.12 that faith causes regeneration or is it

the other way around?

Does regeneration, the new birth, cause faith?

I can't seem to make sense of this text, but it seems to answer the question, I'd love

your help.

Thank you.

Well, Colossians 2.12 is a very precious verse for me personally, not because it describes

how I was raised from spiritual death to life in Christ, but because it became a crucial

text for me at a moment in my life in Germany, 50 years ago this year, in a time of controversy,

over baptism, this verse, Colossians 2.12, shed light for me on the question, would I be a

Baptist and continue to believe that only believers should be baptized or would I shift and embrace

infant baptism?

Colossians 2.11 and 12 say, in Christ, you were circumcised with a circumcision made without

hands by putting off the body of flesh by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried

with Him in baptism in which you were raised with Him through faith.

So underline that phrase, through faith, in baptism you were raised with Him through faith

in the powerful working of God who raised Him from the dead.

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