Jesus appeared to the eleven and said to them, "Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.  The one who believes and is baptized will be saved; but the one who does not believe will be condemned.

Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved.  We do the believing and the baptizing, God does the saving.  But how exactly does this occur?  How can the simple act of having water poured over us and our belief that Jesus is God's Son be the means by which God save us us from the justifiable condemnation which is ours through sin?

Our baptism, a one-time event with water, is the means by which the Holy Spirit enters our lives and takes us down into the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ.  We will suffer in life.  For the believing, baptized Christian this suffering has redemptive value for themselves and for others.  It has redemptive value because it comes from the same Spirit of Redemption which drove Christ into the desert, the same Spirit which caused Christ to learn obedience from what he suffered.  It is therefore forever bound to the redemption wrought by the blood of the Spotless Lamb since we are now part of that sacrificial lamb.

Through our belief and baptism we have opened the door of our heart to suffering.  This is the one definitive act of our life which transports the meaning of our brief life on this earth up into eternity.

We have been baptized once but we must continue to believe.  Let us realize that by doing so we will suffer, and that suffering is our being saved.