The plain truth is that, unless a person’s heart has been touched by God, sins – whether respectable or otherwise – are vastly more attractive than Christ-likeness.

No wonder that so many hesitate for years, perhaps for ever, before embracing the Christian religion when, to do so, sincerely and wholeheartedly, means trying to be a new kind of person.  And this requires making a determined and persistent effort to say goodbye to grudges, to send all vile thoughts packing as soon as they present themselves, to curb evil temper and evil speaking, and in penitence to seek God’s forgiveness for these and every other moral failure; and so “to follow the example of our Saviour Christ, and to be made like unto him…” (1).

And being made like him means sharing his attitude of goodwill towards all, and bringing forth in one’s own thinking and life the fruit of his own character – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.  It means being the sort of person that St Paul described when he said, “...once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light.  Live as children of light – for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true” (NRSV, Ephesians 5:8,9).  In a word, it means no longer to be the plaything of one’s lower nature, but to do and be what the all-holy God requires, and to dedicate to him a purified soul and a Christ-like life.

That is the calling of every Christian, for as Our Blessed Lord himself has told us, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me” (NRSV, Luke 9:23).

Reference

Church of England (1662) Book of Common Prayer.  The Ministration of Public Baptism of Infants to be used in the church.  Available from: 
http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/book-of-common-prayer/public-baptism-of-infants.aspx (Accessed 29 August 2011) (Internet).