Walking with St. Paul Baptism makes us heirs ‘in hope of eternal life’

Nov 24, 2008

For St. Paul, the importance of baptism cannot be underestimated. At what might be considered the most important series of events for his own life, i.e. his conversion and subsequent three days of blindness and hunger and thirst, he is taught baptism’s significance by Ananias. Ananias says to the future St. Paul: "Saul, my brother, the Lord has sent me, Jesus who appeared to you on the way by which you came, that you may regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit" (Acts 9:17).

The Lord commanded Ananias to lay hands on him "that he may regain his sight" (Acts 9:12). So, "Ananias went and entered the house; laying his hands on him…Immediately things like scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight" (Acts 9:17, 18).

But how was he to be filled with the Holy Spirit? "He got up and was baptized…" (Acts 9:18). Being baptized means being filled with the Holy Spirit, being filled with the very life and love of God, the third person of the Trinity.

St. Paul would say to the Christians in the region of Galatia: "When the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to ransom those under the law, so that we might receive adoption. As proof that you are children, God sent the spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying out, ‘Abba, Father!’ So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God" (Galatians 4:4-7).

Please notice St. Paul’s emphasis on God the Father’s plan of salvation to send his eternally begotten Son, so he might also send the gift of love between the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit.

Why would the Father do this? "So that we might receive adoption." So that we might become children of the Father, able to say in truth to the first person of the Trinity, "Abba, Father!"

As a result of becoming true children of the Father, through the Son and the Holy Spirit, we also become heirs to an eternal inheritance. The baptized persons inheritance is eternal life in the midst of the life-giving love of the Trinity, where we will "…have life, and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).

St. Paul makes perfectly clear that baptism is integrally linked to salvation. "But when the kindness and generous love of God our savior appeared…he saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he richly poured out on us through Jesus Christ our savior, so that we might be justified by his grace and become heirs in hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:4, 5b-7).

We must always remember that salvation is certainly being saved from something (sin and death), but more importantly it is being saved for something and someone (divine sonship and the three persons of the Trinity).

Also, by receiving the Holy Spirit in baptism St. Paul makes clear how this also allows us to share in the life of Christ, who suffered, died, rose and ascended for our salvation. "Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life" (Romans 6:3-4).

St. Paul also says to the baptized of Colossae, "You were buried with him [Christ] in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead" (Colossians 2:12).

In baptism we do not merely metaphorically participate in the death and resurrection of Christ. In baptism we metaphysically participate, share in, the actual death and resurrection of Christ. Our very nature is changed definitively through baptism. "So whoever is in Christ [through baptism] is a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold, new things have come" (2 Corinthians 5:17).

St. Paul has even more to say about baptism.

He says to those in Corinth, "…now you have had yourselves washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God…Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ?...Do you not know that your body is a temple of the holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?" (1 Corinthians 6:11, 15, 19).

Through baptism we are saved, sanctified (made holy), justified (put in a right relationship with the Father), made members of the body of Christ and made actual temples of the Holy Spirit because we have the Holy Spirit within us.

Along with St. Paul we must contemplate, drinking deeply, the depth of these mysteries through prayer. As well, we must take in how this reality of being baptized must absolutely change how we live our lives.

As St. Paul says, "you are not your own." We are the Father’s. We are Christ the Son’s. We are the Holy Spirit’s. You and I must "…live in a manner worthy of the call you have received, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another through love, striving to preserve the unity of the spirit through the bond of peace: one body and one Spirit, as you were also called to the one hope of your call; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all" (Ephesians 4:1-6).

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