The Water Cleanses Us

Book of Acts: 8:27 Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship
8:28 and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah.
8:29 Then the Spirit said to Philip, "Go over to this chariot and join it." 8:30 So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, "Do you understand what you are reading?" 8:31 He replied, "How can I, unless someone guides me?" And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him.
8:32 Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this: "Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter, and like a lamb silent before its shearer, so he does not open his mouth. 8:33 In his humiliation justice was denied him. Who can describe his generation? For his life is taken away from the earth." 8:34 The eunuch asked Philip, "About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?" 8:35 Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus.
8:36 As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?" 8:38 He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him.

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Of course that mere water can not clean our conscience and can not free us from sin. However water has extraordinary qualities and a great role in religious tradition on all continents. Among them there is the memory of the Great Deluge, remembered by all tribes on Earth in a way or an other. It is really a sad tragedy that the nations of the Earth were obliterated, but it was sent not only as a capital punishment to the cruel and literally man-eating humanity, but also as a cleaning substance.

The Gospel of Matthew even compares the Flood to the coming of the Son of Man, saying in chapter 24 that “For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.”

The oceans or the seas or lakes or rivers may take lives unfortunately but on the bright side water is associated with life itself, as we know that at least intelligent life on Earth can not exist without water.

It is stated by the United States Geological Survey that in some organisms, up to 90% of their body weight comes from water. Up to 60% of the human adult body is water. According to H.H. Mitchell, in the Journal of Biological Chemistry,that the brain and heart are composed of 73% water, and the lungs are about 83% water. The skin contains 64% water, muscles and kidneys are 79%, and even the bones are watery: 31%.
We must be amazed by the importance of the role water plays in maintaining and creating life on Earth and probably on many other planets, in the visible or hidden universe, as well.

Also, in the spiritual tradition, major religions of the world hold water in a high spiritual esteem, and as it looks like not without a reason.

It happened in the eighties, that a Bashkirian Energy Healer person migrated to the Western hemisphere and started a holistic practice under the umbrella of giving life coaching advices to people, because he did not have western medical license.
Nonetheless, he asked the patients about their problems, asked only for their hands and their pulse to touch it. Then usually he gave them a bottle of water what he touched, as well, in order to drink the water for recovery. When he was asked what he was doing, he said that he put the information of the recovery into the water by his touch. Of course that almost nobody believed him, but many patients recovered from their sicknesses.

It is not known that the recoveries happened because they would have happened anyway, or indeed the drinking water in the bottle transported the healing energy to the body. Maybe he was not authentic, maybe he was really, a healer.

Nonetheless, the New Testament is clear that there really do exist certain people, blessed by God with the spiritual gift of healing, as it is also written by the Apostle Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 12 that “for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, … And God has placed in the church first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, gifts of healing, helps, gifts of leadership ”, etc.

We do not want to compare Jesus to an unrenowned Bashkirian entrepreneur, that is for sure, however the water molecules in the ritual of the Baptism does not have a spiritual power by themselves to give spiritual new birth to baptized people. It works only, because Jesus says so.
As a spiritual device to help create a new life in the soul, it was ordered by Jesus.

That is why the Ethiopian Eunuch was asking for water, summarizing the situation, that now I understood that the Messiah, promised in the Scriptures, has already come. It is Jesus, and according to his ordinance, I must be baptized to have a part in him and in his salvation. We have the commandment, we have an officiating Apostle, Philip, I have repentance and faith in my heart. Only the water is missing. Where is the water then for the baptism?

The Baptism by water is a spiritual ordinance, which requires the word of Jesus, requires real water, occasionally open water like a river or a lake or a pool, occasionally just a cup of poured water as a sign, and it also requires repentance in the heart and faith in Jesus. By the word of Jesus, the water sign in the ritual of Baptism transmits the spiritual information required to the act of the ritual, where by Faith we receive the blessing of Heaven, through a visible action of the grace of God. Although nowadays the human participation is represented by the parents of their children, however they are expected to renew the baptismal oath at the time of the confirmation or at the time of the profession of the faith.

It is indeed a very simple but also very powerful ritual, because the very Spirit of Jesus is attached to it, as he said in the Gospel of Matthew that “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ”.

Even blessed by the words of Jesus, however, the mere water baptism does not work, at least, so to speak, according to its full potential, until we receive it with full faith.

And also there is major addendum to it, that baptism is not the end of the progress, but the humble beginning of a new life, as Jesus also explained the purpose of the baptism, as he continued the establishment of the institution of baptism by saying that “and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

As weak and fallible disciples that are not able to keep the commandments on our own, by the sacraments of the Baptism and the Holy Communion Jesus empowers us with the presence of his own Spirit to reject evil and serve God. May His name be praised for ever, according to the richness of his blessings and the renewal of the world,

AMEN.