There are strong, passionate, but differing convictions among Christians about the subject of baptism, but they can’t all be true. So, the problem has to be with the understanding and interpretation of God’s Word. In this lesson, we learn of God’s progressive revelation through Scripture regarding baptism, culminating with the Holy Spirit’s spiritual baptism that instantly places every believer into Christ and the one Body. Today, under grace, salvation is by faith alone in Christ’s finished work with no water ceremony required; the true cleansing is by His shed blood.

It is an unspeakable blessing of God to be baptized into Christ by the Holy Spirit, which unites us with our Savior and His death, burial, and resurrection, and also with one another in the Church, the Body of Christ. This episode examines Ephesians 4:4-6, which declares that in “the unity of the Spirit” there is “one baptism”—not with water, but by the Holy Spirit, which instantly places us “in Christ.” This same baptism unites every believer—Jew or Gentile, bond or free, male or female—as equal members, making us one in Him and motivating us to glory in, and stand for, this extraordinary grace.

God desires that the Church looks to the “standard” of the doctrinal unity of the Spirit, and its truths, to bind our hearts together. This episode breaks down the seven foundational doctrines outlined in Ephesians 4:4-6, which the Apostle Paul instructs the Body of Christ to keep, guard, carefully attend to, and take a stand for. In doing so, this unity of truth unites us according to what God is doing today for His Church, in this age of grace.