But how Constantine lived his Christianity is quite revealing. In delaying his baptism for twenty-five years—until he was nearing death—what was Constantine saying? Wasn’t he saying that he couldn’t really be a Christian until he was dead? Wasn’t he saying that ultimately his Christian faith was for the afterlife and not for this present life? And wouldn’t Jesus and the Apostles call that an enormous falseness? Jesus didn’t preach a gospel for the dead; Jesus preached a gospel for the living and said, “Let the dead bury their own dead.”[17] When Jesus commissioned his disciples to proclaim the
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