“if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). Baptism is a burial, and we rise to newness of life (Rom. 6:4). But the new creation is a resurrection, not a reset; we know because of the scars. Just as the resurrected Christ bears the mark of his wounds—his “history” with the Roman Empire—so the new self in Christ is the resurrection of a self with a past. The “I” is saved only if this me with this bodily history rises to new life. If all that I’ve lived through was simply erased by grace, then “I” am lost rather than redeemed. If all that I’ve become and learned and acquired
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