Evil

Unfortunately this great human family, into which we are all born, is very sinful.  There is evil all around us.  Quite apart from the wars and fighting which break out in the world from time to time, people in our own district lie and cheat and hate one another and many have no use for God at all.  So, at the very beginning of our lives, we find ourselves surrounded by bad influences.

But that is only half the story.  When we were born, we were born with the seeds of evil in the centre of our own souls, the result of that time long ago when human beings first sinned and fell away from God.  As we grow up these seeds of evil come up and appear in the form of nasty thoughts and words and actions.

The New Birth

So we start our life with a big handicap, with evil in the world around us and the seeds of evil in our own souls.  In fact, as soon as we were born we needed a fresh start altogether, and we were given this fresh start when we were baptised.  At our Baptism we became members of God’s Christian Family, the Church, with all its good influences.  And at the same time our souls were closely united with Jesus himself who cleansed and strengthened us with his own life and power.  So our Baptism marked an entirely new beginning for us.  Whereas before we had evil without and evil within, we now have good without and good within.  Jesus calls this great change a new or second birth.  “…no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born (again) of water and Spirit” (NRSV, John 3:5).

This new start, of course, is even more noticeable in the case of adults who are baptised after having committed many actual sins.  By their Baptism, provided they are repentant, all their sins are forgiven, the past is wiped away and they begin to serve God in newness of life.  That is the meaning of Baptism by immersion or dipping.  As the person goes under the water, so all the bad in his or her life is buried and that person rises again from the water to share the life of Our Risen Lord himself.

The Catechism puts all this in these words:

“Question.  What is the inward and spiritual grace (of Baptism)?
Answer.  A death unto sin and a new birth unto righteousness: for being by nature born in sin, and the children of wrath, we are hereby made the children of grace”. (1)

Born into sin means born with the seeds of evil in our souls (original sin); the children of wrath means that we were born in a state with which God could not be pleased; the children of grace means that, by our Baptism, we were given grace, the free gift of God the Holy Spirit.

This New Birth is also called Regeneration, which means the same thing.