I'm getting baptized this Sunday.

I can hear the gasps.  What?  He isn't baptized?

No, I'm not.  But I want to be saved.  Mark 16:15-16 says:

15And He said to them, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature.
16He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who does not believe will be condemned."

Well wait a gosh darn minute!  Are you saying that you need to be baptized to be saved?  Because that's what I'm hearing.  And didn't you say earlier that you are not saved by works, but by believing in Jesus?

And I would respond, did you read the scripture there?  It says, "he who does not believe will be condemned," not "he who is not baptized will be condemned."  So baptism isn't necessary to be 'saved' from condemnation.  What, then, am I being saved from, as this passage is obviously NOT talking about eternal salvation or going to heaven or any of that?

The quick and dirty answer is, the world.

See, there are only three things we really struggle against in this world.  One is the world, which is Satan's dominion, and basically the substitute for life in Christ.  One is the flesh, which is our own bend towards sinning.  The last is Satan himself.

There is a defense provided by God against each of these things, and God's way is the only way to succeed against any of them.  You may say you're a good person all by yourself, but then you'd be a liar, and lying is bad.  And even if you really thought you were a good person, you really want to smack me right now for making the assumption that you thought you weren't a good person and that you were a liar, and smacking people is also bad.  So now you're stuck.

Okay, that's not really why you're stuck.  But if you don't think you need help to be a good person, you can just stop reading right now.

Anyway, so here's what God's provided to equip us against Satan, the flesh, and the world.

Satan is already defeated.  Satan was defeated when Jesus came back to life.  That was it for him - all his authority over Christians was taken away.  That's not saying we don't hand it right back to him on a regular basis, but that's free will for you.  Before Jesus rose, there wasn't a choice.

The flesh, though, is a different matter.  The flesh is a constant enemy, until we're dead.  However, in this day to day, present always battle, the weapon against it is the Holy Spirit which was given to us when we were saved, that tells us how to obey God, and gives us power over the flesh.  However, it's always going to be a struggle.  It will never be easy to conquer the flesh, but we have power against it in the Holy Spirit.

The last thing is the world.  The world is big, powerful, and we all have to live in it, even if it's not our true home.  The world works with the flesh to tempt you and draw you into it's substitutes for what God offers.  It's the cubic zirconia to God's diamond.  Cheap, worthless, but nobody notices.

Some day Jesus will come back to the earth and defeat the world.  For now though, the only thing we can really do is show the world that it's not our Lord anymore - that Jesus is our Lord, and we are going to obey Him now.  The first thing Jesus asked us to do is to be baptized and show the world our faith in Him.

It's time to start obeying.