m Him; as having
a nature so full of corruption that "From the sole of the foot even unto
the head there is no soundness in it, but wounds, and bruises, and
putrifying sores"; and as having a character in the grip of such enmity
against God that by nature he "loves darkness rather than light."

This indicates that man is =past improvement= in his natural state, for no
improvement is possible in the dead.

The Bible therefore speaks, not of the improvement, but of the burial, of
the old life, and of resurrection, by the power of a new nature, to newness
of life.

Hear what it says:

We were buried with Christ 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.

There is a large section of the Church that understand this passage to
refer to immersion in water in confession of faith in Christ. Not that they
believe that immersion has anything to do with saving us, for they do not,
but that it is the divinely appointed symbol or picture of the salvation
that has already become a reality in the life.

To an immersionist, therefore, when a believer is buried with Christ in
symbol in his baptism, and raised again in symbol of resurrection, he
confesses, among other things, that by his first birth he is so completely
dead that there is nothing left to do with him but to bury him, and his
willingness to be buried in the grave of Christ has been met by God with
the gift of the risen and incorruptible life which is in His Son, and by
which he is now enabled to walk in newness of life.

And so an immersionist cannot be a consistent evolutionist. For when an
evolutionist is immersed, he is either perpetrating a meaningless travesty
on immersion, or else he is denying the whole doctrine of evolution. For
immersion certainly does not picture a step in the progress of the living,
but rather the burial of the totally dead. Immersing churches that have
gone over to the evolutionary position should therefore be consistent and
nail up their baptistries.

But another large portion of the Church believe that the above passage does
not refer to immersion in water, but rather to the statement:

For by one Spirit have we all been baptized into one body.

They regard it as referring to the inward, spiritual union with Christ
which takes place in the new birth, rather than to an outward act. For in
the moment of regeneration,