Along with this older teaching, a further and kindred significance is now given to the baptismal rite. It denotes the soul’s affiance to its Lord. As the maiden’s bath on the morning of her marriage betokened the purity in which she united herself to her betrothed, so the baptismal laver summons the Church to present herself “a chaste virgin unto Christ” (2 Cor. xi. 2). It signifies and seals her forgiveness, and pledges her in all her members to await the Bridegroom in garments unspotted from the world, with the pure and faithful love which will not be ashamed before Him at His coming. For this end Christ set up the baptismal laver. Upon our construction of the text, the words “that He might sanctify her” express a purpose complete in itself--viz., that of the Church’s consecration to God. Then follow the means to this sanctification: “having cleansed her in the water-bath through the word,”--which washing, at the same time, has its purpose on the part of the Lord who appointed it--viz., “that He might present her to Himself” a glorious and spotless Church. At the end of verse 27 the sentence doubles back upon itself, in Paul’s characteristic fashion. The twofold aim of Christ’s sacrifice of love on the Church’s behalf--viz., her consecration to God, and her spotless purity fitting her for perfect union with her Lord--is restated in the final clause, by way of contrast with the “spots and wrinkles and such-like things” that are washed out: “but that she may be holy and without blemish.” We passed by, for the moment, the concluding phrase of verse 26, with which the apostle qualifies his reference to the baptismal cleansing; we are by no means forgetting it. “Having cleansed her,” he writes, “by the laver of water _in_ [_the_] _word_.” This adjunct is deeply significant. It impresses on baptism a spiritual character, and excludes every theurgic conception of the rite, every doctrine that gives to it in the least degree a mechanical efficacy. “Without the word the sacrament could only influence man by magic, outward or inward” (Dorner). The “word” of which the apostle speaks,[144] is that of chapter vi. 17, “God’s word--the Spirit’s sword”; of Romans x. 8, “the word of faith which we proclaim”; of Luke i. 37, “the word from God which shall not be powerless”; of John xvii. 8, etc., “the words” that the Father had given to the Son, and the Son in turn to men. It is the Divine utterance, spoken and believed. In this accompaniment lies the power of the laver. The baptismal affusion is the outward seal of an inward transaction, that takes place in the spirit of believing utterers and hearers of the gospel word. This saving word receives in baptism its concrete expression; it becomes the _verbum visibile_.