Week 3
Day 3

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Baptism and Confession of Faith

The Second Use of Baptism

I have come a Light into the world, that everyone who believes in Me should not remain in darkness. (John 12:46)

TCR 681. The second use of baptism is that the Christian may know and acknowledge the Lord Jesus Christ, the Redeemer and Savior, and follow Him. This second use of baptism, which is to know and acknowledge the Lord, the Redeemer and Savior Jesus Christ, inseparably follows the first, which is introduction into the Christian Church and insertion among Christians in the spiritual world. And what is this first use but a mere name unless the second follows? Is it not really like a subject who attaches himself to a king, and yet repudiates the king’s laws or those of the country, and yields allegiance to a foreign king and serves him? ...In a word, to have the name of being a Christian, that is, of belonging to Christ, and yet not acknowledging and following Him, that is, living according to His commandments, is a thing as empty as a shadow, as smoke, or as a blackened picture; for the Lord says:

Why do you call Me Lord, and do not do the things that I say? (Luke 6:46, seq.).

TCR 721 These two sacraments, baptism and the holy supper, are like two gates to eternal life. By baptism, which is the first gate, every Christian is let into and introduced into what the church teaches from the Word respecting the other life. All of this teaching forms the means whereby man can be prepared for and led to heaven. The second gate is the holy supper, by which every man who allows himself to be prepared and led by the Lord is admitted and introduced into heaven. There are no other universal gates.

These two sacraments may be likened to... building a house, and dwelling in it; also to the course of a man’s instruction from childhood until the period when he becomes independent and exercises his own judgment, and his subsequent rational and spiritual life. One period must precede, that the second may be attained; for without the former the latter is impossible.

These illustrations make clear that baptism and the holy supper are like two gates through which man is introduced to eternal life; and that beyond the first gate there is a plain which he must pass over; and that the second is the goal where lies the prize to which he has directed his course.

TCR 1 The faith of the New Heaven and of the New Church.... Let it be known that in the New Heaven, which the Lord is now establishing, this faith is its preface, gate, and summary.

TCR 2 The faith of the New Heaven and of the New Church in its universal form is as follows: The Lord from eternity, who is Jehovah, came into the world to subjugate the hells and to glorify His Human; and without this no mortal could have been saved; and those are saved who believe in Him.

This is called the faith in its universal form, because this is the universal principle of faith; and the universal principle of faith must be in each thing and in all things of it. It is a universal principle of faith that God is one, in essence and in person, in whom is a Divine trinity, and that He is the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ.... To believe in the Lord is to have confidence that He saves; and as only those who live rightly can have this confidence, this, too, is meant by believing in Him.

TCR 3 The singulars of faith on man’s part are:

• (1) God is one, in whom is a Divine trinity, and the Lord God the Savior Jesus Christ is that one.
• (2) Saving faith is to believe in Him.
• (3) Evils should not be done, because they are of the devil and from the devil.
• (4) Goods should be done, because they are of God and from God.
• (5) These should be done by man as if by himself; but it should be believed that they are done by the Lord in man and through man.

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