Baptism: A Covenant for a Way of Life

At the heart of our life as Episcopalians is Baptism. Before we are members of a particular congregation, before we take on a ministry, before we understand all the complexities of Christian faith, we are baptized into a people and a way of life.

The Book of Common Prayer describes Baptism with remarkable clarity:

“Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the Church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.”
— The Book of Common Prayer, p. 298

There is a great deal contained in these two sentences.

Baptism is full initiation. There are no different degrees of membership in the Body of Christ. Baptism does not begin a process through which we eventually earn our place in the Church. Through water and the Holy Spirit, God has already welcomed us completely.

Baptism is initiation into Christ’s Body, the Church. We are not baptized into a private relationship between “me and Jesus.” We become part of a people—a community stretching across cultures, nations, generations, and centuries. We inherit a faith entrusted to us by those who came before us, and we accept responsibility for passing that faith on to those who will come after us.

And the bond God establishes is indissoluble. Our belonging ultimately rests not upon the strength of our faithfulness but upon the faithfulness of God. We will question. We will struggle. We will change. We will make mistakes. Yet God continues to claim us and call us more deeply into the life begun in Baptism.

This is why the Baptismal Covenant matters so much. It describes what life within this relationship looks like.

Receiving a Faith and Making It Our Own

The Baptismal Covenant begins with the Apostles’ Creed. Before we promise to do anything, we first locate ourselves within the story of God.

We confess faith in God as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer: the God who creates and loves the world, who is revealed to us in Jesus Christ, and whose Spirit continues to move within creation and human history.

These ancient words remind us that Christianity did not begin with us. We have received a faith handed down through generations of people who prayed, questioned, struggled, worshiped, doubted, hoped, and sought to follow Jesus.

Yet the Creed is not simply a statement about something that happened long ago. The story of creation, incarnation, resurrection, forgiveness, and new life continues to unfold in the stories of our own lives. We inherit this faith, wrestle with it, deepen our understanding of it, embody it in our own time, and entrust it to those who come after us.

Then come five questions. Together, they offer us a pattern for Christian life.

And after every question we give the same answer: “I will, with God’s help.”

That final phrase may be the most important. The Baptismal Covenant is not a declaration of our own strength. It is an acknowledgment that the life to which we are called is possible only through grace.

“Will you continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers?”

Our first promise roots us in community.

Christian faith is not something we do alone. Salvation is not simply about “me and Jesus.” Jesus proclaimed, “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” The Christian life is about joining God's work of bringing that Kingdom more fully into our common life.

That requires other people.

We need people with whom we can ask questions, wonder, disagree, learn, pray, celebrate, grieve, and discern. We need people who challenge our assumptions and people who remind us of hope when we have difficulty seeing it ourselves.

This is why gathering matters. Worship matters. Holy Communion matters. Prayer matters. Christian formation matters. Fellowship matters.

At Saint Asaph’s, we seek to create spaces where people can bring their whole selves—their faith and doubt, certainty and questions—and explore together what faithfulness to the Gospel looks like in our lives and in this particular moment in history.

We also commit ourselves to making room for others. The table around which we gather is never meant to become a private table for those already inside. Christian community continually expands its circle of welcome.

“Will you persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord?”

This promise begins with an uncomfortable truth: evil is real.

But Christianity does not permit us to locate evil exclusively somewhere outside ourselves. Jesus repeatedly directs our attention inward, toward the human heart.

Our calling, therefore, is not to imagine ourselves as the righteous people fighting all the bad people in the world. It is to develop the humility necessary to examine ourselves honestly.

Where have I caused harm? Where have I failed to act? What prejudices have shaped my thinking? What injustices have been committed on my behalf? What systems benefit me while diminishing someone else? Where have fear, pride, anger, greed, or self-interest distorted my relationships and decisions?

The Baptismal Covenant does not demand perfection. In fact, the words “whenever you fall into sin” assume that we will fail.

What it demands is honesty, repentance, and return.

Repentance is more than feeling sorry. It means turning around. It means changing our thinking, our behavior, and sometimes the structures in which we participate.

We are called to be peacemakers, not merely peacekeepers. Keeping the peace can mean avoiding conflict so that everything remains comfortable. Making peace may require confronting what is wrong so that genuine reconciliation, justice, and healing become possible.

“Will you proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ?”

The Gospel is something we speak, but it is also something we embody.

We proclaim the Good News whenever our words and lives reveal something of the love, mercy, justice, forgiveness, generosity, and hope we have encountered in Christ.

This happens in worship and service, certainly. But it also happens in our homes and workplaces, in our neighborhoods and relationships, in how we use our resources, in what we give our attention to, and in the choices we make when no one is watching.

Our common life at Saint Asaph’s is itself part of this proclamation. When we welcome a stranger, teach a child, care for our property, tend a garden, sing, pray, serve our neighbors, offer hospitality, advocate for justice, or simply notice that something needs doing and offer our gifts, we help make the Gospel visible.

Evangelism is not simply convincing someone else to believe what we believe. It is living in such a way that people can encounter through us something of the life God desires for the world.

“Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?”

Christianity makes an extraordinary claim about human beings: every person bears the image and likeness of God.

That includes the people we love and the people we find difficult. The people whose lives resemble ours and those whose experiences we struggle to understand. The successful and the struggling. The familiar and the stranger.

It also includes ourselves.

To seek Christ in all persons requires learning to look through eyes transformed by faith rather than accepting the judgments the world teaches us to make about ourselves and one another.

What would change if we genuinely approached another person expecting to encounter something of God?

This does not mean pretending that every action is good or that harmful behavior should be ignored. Loving another person sometimes requires truth-telling, boundaries, accountability, and change. But it means refusing to reduce any human being to their failures, usefulness, status, possessions, politics, identity, or the worst thing they have ever done.

Our task is to help create conditions in which God's image can flourish—in ourselves and in one another. We invite each other into the lifelong process of becoming more fully the people God created us to be.

“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

The final promise follows naturally from the one before it.

If every person bears God's image, then every person possesses a dignity that cannot be earned and should not be taken away.

This has consequences.

Christian love cannot remain merely an attitude of goodwill toward others. It requires us to ask whether our communities, institutions, laws, economies, churches, and social structures actually honor the dignity we proclaim.

Where people are oppressed, excluded, exploited, dehumanized, or denied the opportunity to flourish, Christians are called to seek change.

That means being honest about systems of oppression and about the ways we participate in or benefit from them. It means seeking liberation not only for others but also for ourselves, because systems that diminish another person's humanity ultimately diminish our own.

It also means refusing to answer hatred with hatred.

Jesus' command to love our enemies is among the most difficult dimensions of Christian discipleship. Respecting someone's dignity does not require agreeing with them, excusing wrongdoing, or abandoning the pursuit of justice. It means refusing to deny their humanity even while resisting what is harmful.

That is the transforming power of love: not passive acceptance, but a force capable of creating something genuinely new.

A Covenant We Keep Becoming

The Baptismal Covenant is not a checklist of beliefs and behaviors that we complete. It describes a life into which we continually grow.

We gather and learn.

We resist evil, fail, repent, and begin again.

We proclaim the Gospel.

We seek Christ in one another.

We work for justice and peace.

We honor human dignity.

And then we return to the font, to the table, to prayer, and to one another, remembering that none of this depends upon our strength alone.

This is one reason we renew the Baptismal Covenant throughout our life together. We need to hear these questions again because the world changes and we change. The promises remain, but what faithfulness requires of us must continually be discerned.

At Saint Asaph’s, these promises offer us more than words for the liturgy. They provide a framework for asking who God is calling us to become as individuals and as a parish.

How are we building genuine Christian community?

What evil are we being called to resist?

How does our life proclaim Good News?

Whom are we learning to see differently?

Where does justice require our action?

Whose dignity are we being called to defend?

These are baptismal questions.

And we ask them secure in the promise with which we began: the bond God establishes with us in Baptism is indissoluble.

God has claimed us. God continues to call us. God is still at work within us.

So, when asked whether we will undertake this extraordinary way of life, we can answer—not because we believe ourselves capable of accomplishing it alone, but because we trust the One who has called us: I will, with God’s help.