‘You were
sealed with the promised Holy Spirit’ (Eph. 1:13)
We may ask whether this image of the seal in
Eph. 1:13 really does refer to baptism. But the context seems to admit of no
doubt on this question. We can, in fact, note how precisely St Paul
distinguishes in this verse between the different stages of the pagans’ coming to
salvation: first evangelization then faith, and finally the intervention of the
Spirit who marked the believers for the full redemption. This spiritual sealing
certainly does seem to refer to a specific act, which followed preaching and
the awakening of faith and which admitted the pagans into the Church. It is
thus an act of Christian initiation.
The seal of which St Paul is here speaking is
simply the presence of the Holy Spirit in the Christian faith—an active
presence, which imprints the character of holiness that is of consecration to
God—on the Christian. What we can learn of this baptismal consecration from the
preceding texts is that it set the Christian apart from the unjust world, and
made him a son of God and an heir to the promise. Here Paul is specifying, very
forcefully, that baptism admits the Christian to the people of God. The language
of the whole passage is significant. In it, we see the most characteristic ideas
of the theology of the covenant appear one after the other: after references to
the blessing and to election come references to the promise, the inheritance,
the redemption and the people which God had acquired for himself. All the
religious privileges of the old Israel are transferred to the Christians, the
true beneficiaries of the blessings promised in Abraham to all the nations of
the world. And it is the Holy Spirit who signs the baptized for the
inheritance, and already communicates the first fruits of it to them by his own
presence. Sealed with the seal of the promise in order to be the true spiritual
posterity of Abraham, Christians are again marked by the Spirit for the full
redemption on the day when God will finally carry out his promise and will give
the full possession of the inheritance to those who belong to him. (D Mollat, “Baptismal
Symbolism in St. Paul,” in Baptism in the
New Testament: A Symposium [trans. David Askew; Baltimore, Md.: Helicon
Press, 1964], 63-83, here, pp. 79-80; such eschatological interpretation of the
“sealing” of the Holy Spirit is noted elsewhere in Eph 4:30 [see ibid., 80])
