+II. It is to be invested with the character of Christ.+--"For as many as have been baptised into Christ have put on Christ" (ver. 27). For if Christ is Son of God, and thou hast put on Him, having the Son in thyself and being made like to Him, thou wast brought into one kindred and one form of being with Him (_Chrysostom_). To be baptised into Christ is not the mere mechanical observance of the rite of baptism; the rite is the recognition and public avowal of the exercise of faith in Christ. In the Pauline vocabulary baptised is synonymous with believing. Faith invests the soul with Christ, and joyfully appropriates the estate and endowments of the filial relationship. Baptism by its very form--the normal and most expressive form of primitive baptism, the descent into and rising from the symbolic waters--pictured the soul's death with Christ, its burial and its resurrection in Him, its separation from the life of sin, and entrance upon the new career of a regenerated child of God (Rom. vi. 3-14). +III. Implies such a complete union with Christ as to abolish all secondary distinctions.+--"For there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female; for ye are all one in Christ Jesus" (ver. 28). All distinctions of nationality, social status, and sex--necessary as they may be in the worldly life--disappear in the blending of human souls in the loftier relationship of sons of God. The Gospel is universal in its range and provisions and raises all who believe in Christ to a higher level than man could ever reach under the Mosaic regimen. To add circumcision to faith would be not to rise but to sink from the state of sons to that of serfs. Christ is the central bond of unity to the whole human race; faith in Him is the realisation by the individual of the honours and raptures of that unity.