I once sat down with Pastor Jim Nutter carrying the full weight of everything I had done wrong.
“Jim, I was baptized when I was twelve years old,” I confessed. “I have been real bad since then, and I want to get baptized again.”
He paused before asking one question that drove straight through my shame:
“Why? Do you think God made a mistake the first time?”
That stopped me cold.
I had been looking at God’s promise through the wreckage of my own behavior. Since I had failed, I assumed His covenant must have failed with me. I thought I needed to climb back into the water and start the whole thing over, as though my sins had caught God off guard and made Him regret the agreement.
They had not.
God knew every wrong turn I would take before I ever took the first one. He knew every hole I would dig, every wall I would hit, and every ridiculous attempt I would make to hide the damage. My rebellion did not reveal anything to Him that He had somehow missed in the fine print.
That did not make my sin harmless. I still needed to repent, confess what I had done, and return to the Lord. Grace does not excuse rebellion or erase every earthly consequence. Repentance meant returning to the God who had already called me—not pretending Christ needed to purchase me all over again.
Baptism was my public confession of faith, but the water was never stronger than the blood of Jesus. I was sealed by the Holy Spirit after believing the gospel. That seal rested upon God’s faithfulness, not my ability to walk through life without stumbling.
I did not need another baptism to make God’s promise stronger. I needed to remember that His promise had never become weak.
We sometimes behave as though salvation were a lease that God tears up whenever we scuff the floor. It is not. Jesus paid the entire price. When we fall, we do not rebuild Calvary, renegotiate the covenant, or ask Christ to finish what He forgot to complete. We repent, get back on our feet, and trust the work He already finished.
Our failures may be enormous, but they are not greater than the blood of Christ. Our shame may shout, but it does not outrank the Word of God. When the past insists that we have been discarded, the gospel answers that salvation rests upon the faithfulness of the Savior—not the spotless performance of the person He saved.
God did not make a mistake when He called me.
I made plenty afterward.
My mistakes never became powerful enough to turn His faithfulness into a mistake of its own.
“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise,” —Ephesians 1:13
—Jeff Wager
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