I wish to reveal to you how we were reborn and renewed in baptism. I will speak, brethren, in the words of our Lord, lest you should possibly think that because of the elegance of my words I was indulging in literary effects. My object is merely to help you understand the doctrine of this mystery. My sole desire is to teach you, for I seek not my own glory. Glory belongs to God alone.
Concern for you is what prompts me, and especially for those of you preparing for baptism, and I ask myself if it is possible for me to succeed in analyzing such a happy event.
I will reveal to you, then, the original state of paganism and the spiritual transformation wrought by faith and the pardon of God given in baptism. And if these words penetrate your hearts, as I hope, then you will admit that no previous sermon was so beneficial for you as this one.
Man Before Baptism
Understand, then, dearly beloved children, the state of death in which man was placed before baptism. You surely know that ancient account of Adam’s return to his parent earth, and of the condemnation which imposed the law of everlasting death upon him, and how death reigned over all his descendants in virtue of the same law from Adam to Moses. But under Moses one people was chosen, namely the seed of Abraham, to see if they would be capable of keeping the law of justice. Meantime we were all held under the bondage of sin that we might be the prey of death, destined to eat of the husks and be the keeper of animals, that is to accomplish unclean works under the influence of the bad angels. Under their rule it was not permissible to do or to know justice; to obey such rulers was in the nature of things. Now listen to how we were liberated from their power and from this death.
After Adam sinned, as I have said, he was delivered to death by the Lord’s words, “Dust you are, and unto dust you shall return” (Gen. 3:19). This condemnation was transmitted to the whole human race. For all had sinned at the prompting of nature as the Apostle says, “as by one man sin entered, and by sin death, and so death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). Such, then, was the reign of sin and it led us in captive chains to death—death that would last forever. Nor was anyone conscious of this sin before the time of the Law, as the Apostle tells us: “For until the law was” promulgated sin was not imputed, that is, was not apparent; it revived with the coming of the Law (Rom. 5:13). Now it was clearly seen, yet the intervention of the Law was of no avail because practically no one observed it. The Law said, “you shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not covet.” However, covetousness and all its attendant vices endured, and so before the Law sin killed with a sheathed sword, while after the Law it was unsheathed in broad daylight.
What hope remained for man? Without the Law he perished because he could not recognize sin. Under the Law he perished because he ran into sin with open eyes. Who then could free him from death? Hear the words of the Apostle, “Unhappy man that I am who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” And he adds, “The grace of God by Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 7:24-25).
The Work of Salvation
What is grace? It is the remission of sins. Grace, then, is a gift. Christ has come and taken human nature, and this nature He has restored to God, pure and free from the domination of sin. Isaiah says, “The virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and shall name him Emmanuel. He shall be living on milk and honey by the time he learns to reject the bad and choose the good” (Is. 7:14-15). And again, about the child himself, “he had done no wrong nor spoken any falsehood” (Is. 53:9). With this guarantee of innocence Christ first undertook to restore our dignity and to do so in sinful flesh; then the devil, the father of the sin of disobedience, who had formerly deceived the first man, began to be impatient, to be agitated and in trepidation. For he was going to be vanquished by the abrogation of the law of sin, by which alone he had held sway, or could hold sway, over man. He armed himself for a spiritual showdown with the sinless one. But his first attack showed the same speciousness as his victorious assault on Adam in the garden. As if he were solicitous about the power of heaven he said, “If you are the Son of God, say that these stones be made bread” (Matt. 4:3). The tempter hoped that He would yield to the temptation out of shame so as to conceal that He was the Son of God. And lo, the devil does not keep silent, but suggests that He cast Himself down on high, saying that He would be received by the hands of the angels to whose care He was entrusted by the Father to be carried on their shoulders, lest He should dash His foot against a stone. The Lord would be able to prove that the Father took these precautions about Him and the devil pressed Him to place His reliance on them.
The serpent, again crushed, as if he were retreating from the contest, promises the same kingdoms of the world which he had promised to Adam. But in all these combats the enemy got the worst of it, subjugated by a power from on high, as the prophet said in addressing the Lord, “You will reduce the hostile and rebellious, and I will look on Your heavens, the work of Your hands” (Ps. 8:3-4).
The devil ought to have yielded; but he does not give up yet. He suborns the scribes and Pharisees and the whole clique of his impious accomplices, resorting to his well-known stratagems, and excites them to anger. Therefore they resorted to different methods and hypocritical poses, hoping, like the serpent, to deceive the followers of the Lord. When this was of no avail they finally attacked openly like brigands with the excruciating torments of the passion. Their hope was that, under the distress of humiliation or grief, He would do or say something unjust, thus destroying the humanity which He bore and His soul would be abandoned in hell. For His enemies had but one desire, to hold Him as a sinner: “Now the sting of death is sin” (1 Cor. 15:56), says the Apostle. Christ kept good: “who did not sin, neither was deceit found in His mouth” (Is. 53:9; 1 Pet. 2:22), as we have said already. This was also proved true when He was led to punishment. This was then His victory, to be condemned in spite of His innocence. In fact, the devil had received all power over sinners, and this same power he had claimed over the Just One. This was his great mistake, to arrogate in regard to the Just One rights which the Law had not recognized as his. Whence the word of the prophet to the Lord: “that you may be justified in your sentence, vindicated when you condemn” (Ps. 50:6).
According to the words of the Apostle, “He has discarded the Principalities and Powers. He made a public spectacle of them and led them as captives in His triumphal procession” (Col. 2:15). This is why “God has not abandoned his soul to the nether world and has not let His Holy One see death” (Ps. 15:10). That too is why, trampling underfoot the sting of death, He raised Him in His own flesh the third day, to reconcile human flesh with God and restore it to eternity, after the defeat and death of sin.
But if He alone conquered, what did it profit the others? Listen briefly. The sin of Adam had passed to the whole human race: “as by one man sin entered into this world and by sin death: and so death passed upon all men” (Rom. 5:12). The justice of Christ, then, had to pass on all the human race. And just as Adam had caused the destruction of his descendants by sin, so Christ, by His justice, would bring life to the whole race. The Apostle makes the point, saying: “For as by the disobedience of one man, many were made sinners; so also by the obedience of one many shall be made just … as sin has reigned to death, so also grace might reign by justice unto life everlasting through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:19, 21).
The New Adam
Someone, perhaps, will object: The sin of Adam deservedly passed to posterity because they were born his descendants. But how are we born from Christ so that we can be saved through Him? If you stop thinking in terms of the flesh you will understand our birth from Christ and His paternity in our regard. In these last days Christ took a soul and body in the womb of Mary. It is this flesh which He has come to save. He did not abandon it in hell, but joined it to His own spirit, making it His own. This is the marriage of the Lord, joined to the flesh of man—a great mystery uniting the two—Christ and the Church—in one flesh (cf. Eph. 5:32). This marriage, under the influence of the Holy Spirit, come down from heaven, has given birth to the people of God. Thanks to a heavenly seed inserted in the substance of our souls, we take form in the womb of our (spiritual) mother and, once we issue from her womb, we are vivified in Christ. And so the Apostle says: “The first man, Adam, became a living soul; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit” (1 Cor. 15:45). It is also by His priests that Christ engenders life in the Church, as the Apostle confirms: “for in Christ Jesus did I beget you” (1 Cor. 4:15). It is the seed of Christ, that is to say the Spirit of God, which produces through the priest’s hands the new man, conceived in the womb of his mother and born in the baptismal font under the auspices of faith. In fact he who does not believe and is not prepared to be born of Christ, he who has not received His Spirit will not appear integrated in the Church.
A new birth through baptism! We must, then, believe in the possibility of our (spiritual) birth. Philip in fact said, “If you do believe, you may be baptized” (Acts 8:37). We must receive Christ so that He may give us birth, as John the Apostle says, “But to as many as received Him He gave the power of becoming sons of God” (Jn. 1:12). But this cannot be brought about without the bath of water and the sacrament of anointing which the bishop administers. The bath of water purifies us from our sins. The holy anointing pours down the Holy Spirit on us. This double blessing we obtain through the actions and words of the bishop.
So, it is the whole man that is reborn and renewed in Christ, “in order that, just as Christ has arisen from the dead through the glory of the Father so we also may walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4), in other words, we must reject our former vices, namely service of idols, cruelty, fornication, luxury, and the other vices of flesh and blood in order to practice a new Christian morality by the Spirit—faith, purity, innocence, chastity. “Therefore, even as we have borne the likeness of the earthy, let us bear also the likeness of the heavenly …. The first man was of the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven, heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:49, 47).
If we act in this manner, dearly beloved brethren, we shall die no more. For even if we are dissolved in this bodily life, we will live in Christ as He Himself has assured us, “He who believes in me, even if he die, shall live” (Jn. 11:25). In a word, we are assured, on God’s word, that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all the saints of God live. For God says concerning them, “Now He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him” (Lk. 20:38). And the Apostle says of himself, “For me to live is Christ and to die is gain. I desire to depart and to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:21). And elsewhere he says, “Always full of courage, then, and knowing that while we are in the body we are exiled from the Lord for we walk by faith and not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:6-7).
This, dearly beloved, is the burden of our faith: “If with this life only in view we have had hope in Christ, we are of all men the most to be pitied” (1 Cor. 15:19). Earthly life, as you yourselves see, for man and beast, domestic animals, and the birds of the air is of the same span, or even longer for the animals. What is special to man is what Christ has given him through His Spirit—that is, life everlasting, on condition, however, that he sin no more. For just as death is the penalty of sin, and virtue the way to avoid it, so life is conserved by virtue and lost by vice. “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is life everlasting in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 6:23).
Remember above all else, little ones, that as we have said already, all races once given over to the principalities and powers of darkness are now freed through the victory of Jesus Christ our Lord. It is He who has redeemed us, “forgiving us all our sins, cancelling the decree against us, which was hostile to us. Indeed, He has taken it completely away, nailing it to the cross. Disarming the Principalities and Powers, He displayed them openly, leading them away in His triumphal procession” (Col. 2:13-15). He released the captives and broke our bonds, as David has said, “The Lord sets captives free; the Lord gives sight to the blind; the Lord raises up those that were bowed down” (Ps. 145:7, 8). And in another place he says, “You have loosened my bonds. I will offer to you the thank-offering” (Ps. 115:7, 8).
The Life of the Baptized
Freed from our chains, when we rally round the standard of the Lord through the sacrament of baptism, we renounce the devil and his angels whom we previously served. Let us not serve them any longer, delivered as we now are by the blood and the name of Christ. For if, in the future, someone forgets himself and does not take any account of his salvation, but returns to the service of devils and to “the weak and needy elements” (cf. Gal. 4:9), he will carry again his old fetters, that is to say, the chains of sin. “And the las state of that man becomes worse than the first” (Lk. 11:26), because the devil will chain him more firmly, like a captured fugitive. And Christ will be unable to suffer more for him because “having risen from the dead He dies no now more” (Rom. 6:9).
Therefore, my dearly beloved brethren, we are washed but once; we are only liberated once; we are only received once into the immortal kingdom. It is only once that “Happy is he whose fault is taken away, whose sin is covered” (Ps. 31:1). Hold firm, then, to the gift received, safeguard your joy, and do not commit further sin. Preserve yourselves pure and innocent for the day of the Lord. The rewards which await the faithful are great and unlimited: “eye has not seen or ear heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2:9). Await these rewards, strive to obtain them by the works of justice and the longings of your soul. Amen.
*Reproduced from
Baptism: Ancient Liturgies and Patristic Texts, edited by André Hamman (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1967), pp. 67-73.
