To Think God as Love

‘In former times slaves were branded on the back with their master’s name. In your baptism God laid hold upon you, called you by your name and stamped you as ever after — His own. Through the word and act of man in your baptism, the brand, “property of God” was stamped upon you. The [...]

By baptism we are made partakers in the death of Christ. Through our baptismal death we have been condemned to death and have died, just as Christ died once for all. [...] The daily dying of the Christian life is merely the consequence of the one baptismal death, just as the tree dies after its roots [...]

‘Being baptized is being immersed in Jesus Christ, going into the depth of Jesus Christ, and rising from that depth with his life wrapped around us in the Holy Spirit. And being immersed in Christ, breathing his breath, living with his life, is having first and foremost a share of his relationship with the one [...]

‘But if God’s future has arrived in Jesus, how do we get in on the act? From the very beginning, the church has answered: baptism and faith. (Confirmation, as I expect most of you know, is how people who were baptised as infants make the baptismal promises good for themselves.) Sometimes people worry about baptism [...]

In this talk, Wright explains that the sacraments of the Lord’s Supper and baptism are the reverse of speech-acts; meaning sacramental performance provides us with a “word” to communicate a truth otherwise (almost?) incommunicable.