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12 When they baptized you, it was like God buried you with Christ.[a] And God also raised you to a new life with Christ. You believed that God has great power to do that. You believed that God raised Jesus to life after he died. Because you believed, God raised you to have a new life.

13 At one time, you were dead in your spirits, because of the wrong things that you did. God had not cut off your old nature. You did not belong to his people. But now God has caused you to become alive with Christ. He has forgiven us for all the wrong things that we have done. 14 We are guilty of many wrong things that are against God's laws. But Christ died on the cross on our behalf. He paid the debt of our sins. It is like he has destroyed the list of all the debts that we should pay to God.

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Footnotes

  1. 2:12 Baptism shows what God has done when we believe in Jesus. We have been united with Christ. Our old life has died and God has given us a new life. When Christ died and they buried him, it is like our old nature also died with him. When God raised Christ after death, it is like he raised us to a new life. This is all true if we are united with Christ as believers. Then, what happened to him also happened to us. Now we have a new nature and a new life, because Christ died as a sacrifice on our behalf and he rose again after death. See also Romans 6:1-4.