One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism

Our Lord Jesus Christ is unique in the history of mankind in that He is the perfect and sinless Lamb of God without spot or blemish, like us in every way, that is perfectly and totally human with a complete human nature, and yet without sin (Hebrews 4). Our Lord is True God and True Man in One Person - to be more precise, He is One Divine Person, God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, with two natures, human and divine. Therefore, as Redeemer and Saviour of the world, he came not to be saved but to save the human race. Jesus Christ is God and does not require salvation - He imparts it. But the salvation He imparts is nothing less than making us the 'partakers of the divine nature' (II St Peter 1.4), Jesus comes to make us the children of God by adoption and grace; He comes to infuse His own Divine Life and sonship into us, making us with one with Him and thus one with the Holy Trinity. Because salvation consists not only in freedom from sin and forgiveness of sins both original and actual, that is, forgiveness both of the sin we inherit from Adam and that obtains in us because we are human, and the sin we personally commit, but also in being made one with God, Our Lord instituted a mean by which He might take his own human nature, sinless and glorified, and impart it to us, implant it in us. We are united to Christ in His human nature and in His death and resurrection through Baptism (Romans 6).

We are saved from sin, yes, but more, for communion with God. The initial instrument which Our Lord instituted for imparting the grace of His Incarnation to human beings through their own humanity is Baptism. The sacraments do not only symbolise the conferral of grace; they symbolise what they cause and cause what they symbolise. They are more than symbols of God's previous action upon our souls - they are effective or efficient causes of grace. They do what they symbolise. God uses them as instruments and channels to convey His own life to us. The sacramental principle is based on the Incarnation: God became man and assumed human nature in order to make man one with God. Now Christ takes the sacraments and conveys through them that same human nature which He perfected and redeemed. We get a 'human nature transplant' through the sacraments, because the sacraments are the physical way by which God, who became physical for us, communicates Himself to us. We do not have to become something different or other than human to be saved - grace now comes to us through the sacraments, which allow us to receive grace in our capacity as human beings. As Saint Leo the Great says, Our Lord's visible presence on earth has now passed into the sacraments. The sacraments are Christ Himself acting to save and sanctify us, Christ made visible under the mystic elements and signs of the sacramental order.

When Our Lord became Man, He used the visible and outward and material, His human nature, to convey and give the inward and supernatural and spiritual, His divine life - today, after the Ascension, this is precisely what He does in the sacraments: He uses the material as the vehicle of the spiritual. In Christ, the one now communicates the other...

As the Holy Fathers teach: In the waters of His own Baptism, Our Lord was not saved from sin, for He was sinless, nor were His sins washed away - as the Sinless One stepped into the Jordan to be baptised, He Himself sanctified the waters by His power to become the mean by which our sins are washed away. Now Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost own and use the waters of Baptism to cleanse us from sin and give us grace. 'Repent all of you and be baptised for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the Holy Spirit' (Acts 2).

The Baptism of Our Lord by Saint John Baptist in the Jordan River is a theophany or Christophany, a revelation or manifestation of Christ as God. The Holy Trinity is revealed in the action of Jesus' Baptism - the Father speaks, the Spirit descends in the form of a dove and lights upon the Son, Who stands as God revealed in human flesh. The Holy Trinity conveys and reveals Himself in Jesus' Baptism to show that when we are baptised we are made the sons of God, filii in Filio, sons in the Son, and partakers of the Holy Trinity. In Baptism we 'put on Christ' (Galatians 3) and we enter the life of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost (St Matthew 28). We are revealed to be Trinitarian and the sons of God by grace and regeneration in our own Baptism. In Baptism we become by grace what Christ is by nature. We are identified with Christ and we become one with Him. 'Baptism doth now save us...' (I St Peter 3).

St John 3.16 is often prooftexted to assert that one only need exercise a mental assent or personal faith in Christ in order to be saved by Him without concern for the Church or sacraments. In theology this is called prooftexting, lifting one passage out of Scripture and establishing it as truth apart from, or even divorced from, other Scriptural passages that illuminate the passage in question and bring it its true meaning. The passages of Scripture must always be read in context, contextually within the pericope and book in which they are found. St John 3.16 is a classic example. The answer to the question is St John 3.5, which is part of the same passage and provides its proper context. 'Verily, verily I say unto you: unless one is born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.' Our Lord clearly associates the power and effect of belief in Him with the new birth by water and the Holy Ghost, which the Church has always known to be Baptism (BCP 297).

Baptism is the new birth, the Laver of Regeneration (Titus), the Cleansing of the Washing of Water by the Word (Ephesians 5). Indeed we must have personal faith in Our Lord in order for His grace to be effective in our souls and for His grace to bear fruit, but personal faith is never separated from the action of grace found in the sacraments, which confer and infuse the grace of justification and salvation. The new birth given by water and the Holy Ghost, the outward sign and inward grace of Baptism, infuses into our souls the three gifts that last forever and make it possible for us to have communion with God: faith, hope and love (I Corinthians 13).

Through the theological virtues of faith, hope and love we can trust in God, have confidence in God and be united in charity to God. The infused virtues and graces of Baptism make it possible for men fully and completely so to believe 'that all that believe in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.' Faith itself is a gift from God, a grace given by God to men without the merit or deserving of men. No one can create or engender saving faith in oneself. It is sola gratia, grace alone. Baptism is sola gratia, grace alone. Baptism is the Sacrament of Faith, which supernaturally gives us the gift of saving Faith and unites us to the Faith of the Church unto salvation. 'Faith' is not merely a personal or subjective experience, or an individual act of trust or assurance in God, it is the power and virtue given by God to the whole Church, the total Christ, Head and Members, whereby we are all joined together into the Mystery of Christ as One Body. Baptism inserts us into the Faith of Christ, which is possessed and proclaimed in the unity of the Family of God.

God often leads adult persons to faith before Baptism through what is called prevenient grace, 'the grace that goes before,' the grace of God given to men so that may come to Our Lord. This prevenient grace is a wonderful mystery and gift of God and is orientated towards its fulfilment in the grace of Baptism. For infant children, baptised as they are before the age of reason, it is the Faith of the Church that actualises baptismal grace in them. Children can be baptised and exercise saving faith in the baptismal act because it is the Church, the Mystical Body of Christ, the Sacrament of Christ in the world, which believes in them, for them, and through them...