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There is one thing any child of God should know.

Without a sacrament there is nothing that can be accessed to give us birth and to keep us in Christ. From confession to Eucharist; it is all that grace needs to abound in us. Otherwise we are forging our own course and walk that does not amount to the will of God. A simple choice should be backed by a simple agreement and we are drafted in to the kingdom of God. A simple dipping in the baptismal pool we instantly die and are born again. It is in the simple every day things that men do for fun or just to be leisurely that grace did find hold to express the unseen love and life and kindness of Christ to grow us in to Him in all things. So, the sacraments do not outwardly carry much weight as they resemble the act of every day things. Yet inwardly we access the life of God and it is dispensed abroad upon all the children of the kingdom of God.

2 Corinthians 5:17-20 KJV Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.

Without the sacrament of baptism we cannot be born again; for we have to die in the water to live again or be born again. Yet one would ask, is not water baptism like just going out for a swim. And that is the mystery of a sacrament; that we do every day things but with a hidden elaborate spiritual significance and meaning. Meaning grace chose the simple every day things for Christ to express the hidden things of the spiritual through the Holy Spirit. And we continually eat and drink of Him to have the life everlasting abiding in us. Yet it is the sacrament of marriage that makes two one in Him, by our Confession we are washed by His blood. So the sacraments are the dispensing of God's graces to humanity through His Son Jesus Christ. We recognize that the Sacraments have a visible and invisible reality, a reality open to all the human senses but grasped in its God-given depths with the eyes of faith. When parents hug their children, for example, the visible reality we see is the hug. The invisible reality the hug conveys is love. We cannot "see" the love the hug expresses, though sometimes we can see its nurturing effect in the child.

The visible reality we see in the Sacraments is their outward expression, the form they take, and the way in which they are administered and received. The invisible reality we cannot "see" is God's grace, his gracious initiative in redeeming us through the death and Resurrection of his Son. His initiative is called grace because it is the free and loving gift by which he offers people a share in his life, and shows us his favor and will for our salvation. Our response to the grace of God's initiative is itself a grace or gift from God by which we can imitate Christ in our daily lives.

Sacraments Of Christianity: Abridged Version

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