OC | Question 74 & 75

74. How does baptism remind you and assure you that Christ’s one sacrifice on the cross is for you personally?

In this way: Christ instituted this outward washing 205 and with it gave the promise that, as surely as water washes away the dirt from the body, so certainly his blood and his Spirit wash away my soul’s impurity, in other words, all my sins.206

^ 205. Acts 2:38
^ 206. Matt. 3:11; Rom. 6:3-10; 1 Pet. 3:21

75. What does it mean to be washed with Christ’s blood and Spirit?

To be washed with Christ’s blood means that God, by grace, has forgiven my sins because of Christ’s blood poured out for me in his sacrifice on the cross.207 To be washed with Christ’s Spirit means that the Holy Spirit has renewed me and set me apart to be a member of Christ so that more and more I become dead to sin and increasingly live a holy and blameless life.208

^ 207. Zech. 13:1; Eph. 1:7-8; Heb. 12:24; 1 Pet. 1:2; Rev. 1:5
^ 208. Ezek. 36:25-27; John 3:5-8; Rom. 6:4; 1 Cor. 6:11; Col. 2:11-12