Why do we need to
be baptized?
By
Fr. ROY CIMAGALA,
roycimagala@gmail.com
January 11, 2021
IF as a human person we
already are created in God’s image and likeness, why do we need to
be baptized? Isn’t it a redundancy to be baptized since we cannot
help but be God’s image and likeness as early as upon our conception
in our mother’s womb? Doesn’t the fact that we have intelligence and
will, even if still in the stage of potency at the start of our
existence, prove that we are already God’s image and likeness? Why
do we still need to be baptized?
The answer to these
questions may require some thorough explanation. And we can begin by
affirming that indeed we have been created in God’s image and
likeness. That was what happened when God decided to create man
through the creation of our first parents, Adam and Eve. They came
to being in the perfect condition of what is known as the state of
original justice, where no sin entered into the scene yet. They were
created holy.
But we know what happened
in Paradise, the place where our first parents were first placed to
be tested if what God wants them to be is also what they would want
to be. They flunked the test, and thus became alienated from God.
They lost that original holiness and everything that went with
it—immortality, integrity, impassibility, etc. The original image
and likeness of God was damaged and needed to be recreated.
Though having flunked the
test and deserving some punishment, they were not completely
abandoned by God our creator. Instead, a very complex plan or
economy of salvation was launched by God, so to speak, to rescue
mankind. This took place when the Son of God became man, started to
preach and do many good things, and finally paid for our sins
through his passion, death and resurrection.
This time, our continuing
creation and testing would need that we be conformed to the
God-made-man, the pattern of our humanity and the redeemer of our
damaged humanity, Jesus Christ. And this conformity of ours to
Christ starts to take place at the sacrament of baptism which was
instituted by Christ himself through his own baptism in the River
Jordan.
With baptism, we have
Christ as the pattern of our salvation, the way, the truth and the
life, embedded, so to speak, in our life. That is why we need to be
baptized. It is to recover our original dignity as true children of
God, his image and likeness, meant to participate in the very life
of God.
With Christ, we can
receive the supernatural grace that would enable us to attain our
ideal state. It would not be enough for us to know God with our
intelligence and to love him with our will, without God’s grace
through Christ.
We need to clarify and
emphasize the importance and necessity of baptism since there is now
a trend to downplay this sacrament in our life. But even before that
problem came to be, the usual issue is that many people do not
realize the implications of the sacrament—that we need to duly
correspond to the abiding redemptive action of Christ all throughout
our life.
We have to be aware that
once baptized we commit ourselves to vitally identify ourselves with
Christ, which is going to be a lifelong process!