buried with Him in baptism, in which you also were raised with Him through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead.  (13) And you, being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, (14) having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us.  And He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

The Apostle Paul wrote the letter to the Colossians as a warning against false teachers at Colosse who were advocating ritual circumcision, dietary laws and mediation of various supernatural powers in the creation of the world as necessary to the process of salvation.   These teachings were contrary to the gospel divinely revealed to Paul who taught the absolute supremacy and sole sufficiency of Jesus Christ.  Paul tells the faithful, both Jew and Gentile, that the moment we believe by faith in Christ, a spiritual baptism occurrs – we are buried with Him in this baptism.  This is not a baptism of water but a baptism as an act of faith and the believer is under grace, not law.  In this baptism we acknowledge that nothing in us could have ever pleased God and we bury all that we were as children of Adam.  The physical act of water baptism is not the same as the spiritual act when the believer places his/her faith in Christ.

The believer’s spiritual baptism (death with Christ) and the very real resurrection with Christ through faith enables the believer to live a new supernatural life in Christ.  No outward ceremony or ritual brings us to Christ.  Faith that saves is a firm conviction and shows itself as genuine by a changed life.  Paul does not say that a new life in Christ is created by the act of a water baptism.

So the believing sinner’s identification in Christ in His death breaks the power of indwelling sin.  We were dead because of our unregenerated nature.  The wages of sin is death and through one man – Adam – death entered the world through sin and so all sinned.  A spiritually dead person – natural man – is dominated by the world, the flesh and the devil.  But God in his mercy, through the works of Christ Jesus, gave us free grace which is life in the soul.  He made the believer right with Him and safe from eternal destruction.  This new relationship with Christ through faith means that Christ is all we ever need.  Salvation is not improvement of the old nature but the imparting of a new nature.

The moment we believe we are completely forgiven all our transgressions. Forgiveness and being made alive are two facets of the same act of divine grace.