I should hope and pray that the Holy Spirit, who indwells me, will help me to be an active member of my Christian community, participate in worship, continually repent and return to God, proclaim the faith, love and serve God and my neighbor, and seek justice and peace.
Because it is a sign of God’s promise that they are embraced in the covenant community of Christ’s Church. Those who in faith and repentance present infants to be baptized vow to raise them in the knowledge and fear of the Lord, with the expectation that they will one day profess full Christian faith as their own.
Two things are required: repentance, in which I turn away from sin; and faith, in which I turn to Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord and trust the promises that God makes to me in this sacrament.
The inward and spiritual grace is death to sin and new birth to righteousness, through union with Christ in his death and resurrection. I am born a sinner by nature, separated from God. But in Baptism, through faith in Christ and the gift of the Holy Spirit, I am made a member of Christ’s Body and adopted as God’s child and heir.
he outward and visible sign is water, in which candidates are baptized “in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.”
They were not ordained by Christ as necessary to salvation, but arose from the practices of the apostles and the Early Church, or were blessed by God in Scripture. God clearly uses them as means of grace.
Other rites and institutions commonly called sacraments include confirmation (2 Timothy 1:6–7; Hebrews 6:1–2), ordination (Numbers 8:9–14; 27:18–23; 1 Timothy 4:14), marriage (Genesis 2:18–24; Matthew 19:4–6; John 2:1–11), absolution ( John 20:21–23; Acts 2:37– 41), and the anointing of the sick ( James 5:14). These are sometimes called “sacraments of the Church.”
The two sacraments ordained by Christ that are “generally necessary to salvation” (1662 Catechism) are Baptism and Holy Communion (also called the Lord’s Supper or the Holy Eucharist). These are sometimes called “sacraments of the Gospel.”
I should receive the sacraments by faith in Christ, with repentance and thanksgiving. Faith in Christ is necessary to receive the grace of the sacraments, and obedience to Christ is necessary for the benefits of the sacraments to bear fruit in my life.
A sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. God gives us the sign as a means by which we receive that grace and as a tangible assurance that we do in fact receive it.
I should live in joyful expectation of the fullness of my transformation, soul and body, into the likeness of Christ. In the midst of suffering or in the face of hostility and persecution, I am sustained by the hope of a new heaven and earth, freed from Satan, evil, suffering, and death.
I know that it will be an eternal life of joyful fellowship with our triune God, together with all his saints and angels, singing his praises and serving him in the renewed creation.
Because I put my hope in God’s resurrection of my body, I should honor and care for it. I should refrain from any violence, disrespect, or sin that would harm, demean, or violate either my body or the bodies of others.
They will be fully renewed and glorified in the image of Christ, perfected after the manner of his own resurrected and ascended body.
When the risen Lord Jesus returns to judge the earth, he will raise all the dead to bodily life. The wicked will then receive eternal condemnation, and the righteous eternal life in the glory of God.
Because sin and death now corrupt this world, my body will degenerate and die. But, by the will of God, my soul will be with the Lord, and I will rise bodily from death when Jesus Christ returns to judge the living and the dead.
Holy Scripture tells me that my body, though tainted by sin, was created good, bearing the image of God and endowed with great dignity. Therefore, from the moment of conception to natural death, every human body and every human life should be cared for, protected, and loved.
No. God’s common grace can be seen in his provision for all people. “He makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). However, he shows his saving grace by granting salvation to those who place their faith in Christ.
No. God wants to redeem every aspect of my life, and his grace in Christ is at work in all of it.
No. God gives his grace freely and enables me to receive it. Everything I do for God should be in response to his love and grace made known in Christ, for “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us,” and “we love because he first loved us.”
God gives me grace in Christ for the forgiveness of my sins, redemption from sin’s power, healing of sin’s effects, and growth in holiness, to my final transformation into the likeness of Christ.
Grace is God’s undeserved gift of his love, mercy, and help, which he freely offers to us who, because of our sin, deserve only condemnation.
rusting in God’s continual forgiveness, I should live in continual thanks, praise, and obedience to him; and as I have been loved and forgiven by God, so I should love and forgive those who sin against me.
By virtue of Christ’s atoning sacrifice, in which I put my trust, God sets aside my sins, accepts me, and adopts me as his child and heir in Jesus Christ. Loving me as his child, he forgives my sins whenever I turn to him in repentance and faith.
All sin is opposed to the righteousness of God and is therefore subject to God’s holy condemnation; yet God in his mercy offers me forgiveness and salvation from sin through his Son, Jesus Christ, the only Savior.
All sin is opposed to the righteousness of God and is therefore subject to God’s holy condemnation; yet God in his mercy offers me forgiveness and salvation from sin through his Son, Jesus Christ, the only Savior.
Sins are intentions, acts, or failures to act that arise out of my corrupted human nature and fall short of conformity to God’s revealed will.
Through union with Christ, as celebrated in the sacrament of Holy Communion, the Church on earth participates with the Church in heaven in the eternal worship of God.
I live as a member of the communion of saints through faith in Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit by gathering to worship God with my fellow Christians, by praying for and encouraging one another, and by coming to one another’s aid in times of trouble, sickness, or grief.
The communion of the saints is the fellowship of all those, in heaven and on earth, who are united in Christ as one Body, through one Spirit, in Holy Baptism.
