Emphasis Preaching Journal

Baptism makes living the Christian life easy. Americans do not want to believe that. Two 2013 polls by the Gallup organization revealed that most of us link religion and morality, so that as we have become less religious (more secular) we have become less moral. But this lesson makes clear that morality is just a happy by-product of faith and of being baptized. What we have here is as Martin Luther once wrote (quoting Augustine) "a complete description of the man who has been placed under grace..." (Luther's Works, Vol. 25, p. 308).