One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism

Ephesians 4:4-6

There is one body and one Spirit¾just as you were called to one hope when you were called¾⁵one Lord, one faith, one baptism; ⁶one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

There is “one faith” (v5). This is not something disconnected from Jesus. When Paul wrote “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” he was describing realities that always went together in his mind and in his message. The one faith is not “faith in faith.” It is not the virtue of just believing in something, like what you find described in various forms of spirituality today. 

The one faith here is specifically and only a trust in Jesus and a confidence that he alone deals with our sins and makes us right with God. We need to have the conviction that Paul expressed in Galatians when he said, “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20b). The one faith described here is the link between the one Lord (Jesus) and the one baptism that he describes next.           

The fact that baptism makes this list of seven vital elements tells us much about the way it was viewed by the early church and by God himself. According to much tradition, baptism is of minor importance. Many modern commentators will write on a passage like Acts 2:38 and discuss at length repentance, the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit, but hardly acknowledge that baptism appears in the text. Sometime after the Protestant Reformation, in the wake of Luther’s teaching about “faith alone,” the idea arose that baptism belonged in the category of works that are done later, having no relationship to salvation. 

The New Testament writers never saw baptism as some meritorious work that earned anything, but they did see it as the crucial moment when the sinner said to Christ, “I’m lost; I need to die; and I need you to forgive me and raise me up.” And as Paul looked at disciples, he knew they all had this in common: they all came into the kingdom in exactly the same way. Everyone entered into Christ by submitting to him in baptism. There was not some “more sophisticated” entrance for the rich and famous. Everyone went humbly down into the water and was raised up to a new life. The “one baptism” was all about the one new birth that brought each person into Christ and into his grace.