in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time”. (1 Peter 1:3-5) The inheritance to which Honest Heart is now begotten is an incorruptible inheritance, which is the divine nature.  This means that if he is faithful unto death, faithful to his part of the contract, he is certain to be born upon the divine plane, for the reason that Jehovah is always faithful to his part of the contract; and so Jesus says:  “Be thou faithful unto death and I will give thee a crown of life".—­Revelation 2:10.

[336]Any one thus presented by Jesus to the Father, Jehovah, justified, accepted and begotten, is designated in the Scriptures as a new creature.  “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature:  old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) There is now a newness of life, which does not result from being transferred to another climate, but from being given a new dominating factor in our lives, namely, the will of God.  Honest Heart, or whoever takes this step, now has new hopes, new aims, new ambitions, new aspirations, and new ideas.  He is not looking for earthly honor and glory; but he is looking forward to the time when he might be forever with the Lord in his kingdom and be a part of the seed of Abraham according to the promise, through which the blessings of mankind will come.

[337]This one is now dead from the standpoint of a human being, as the apostle Paul puts it:  “Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God”. (Colossians 3:3) The new creature now must be renewed, refreshed and invigorated and strengthened by knowledge, not by ordinary knowledge; but by an acquaintance with God’s will and a deep appreciation of his plan. (Colossians 1:9) The world cannot know anything about this; only those who are in the relationship with the Lord.  The whole world lies in the wicked one. (1 John 5:19) But now the new creature in Christ is admonished to be not conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of his mind, that he might prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.—­Romans 12:2.

[338]The one begotten is begotten by the spirit of God, the holy spirit.  He is also anointed.  This anointing is received by reason of coming into the body of Christ.  He is baptized into Christ’s death; therefore baptized into Christ’s body.  To be baptized means to be immersed.  To be baptized into Christ’s death means to be immersed into the death of Christ.  And so the Apostle puts it:  “Know ye not, that so many of us as are baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?  Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death:  that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3,4) Baptism in water is merely a symbol of the real baptism.  It would do no one any good to be baptized in water unless he had first undergone the real baptism by being immersed into Christ.