With this session we turned the corner to stand in the dazzling bright light of God's saving grace in Jesus Christ. Having just been immersed in the dark night of human sin we hear a desperate and necessary question: "Who can save you?" If there is anything we learned in the last three sessions it's this: "I cannot save myself."

The idea of "being saved" is central in this session, but what does it mean to the young teens in your group? Often people have a very limited or even wrong idea of what it means to be saved. It's not just a way to get to heaven or to get rid of a guilty conscience. It's far deeper and broader.

Salvation is being born into a whole new way of life (John 3:5-8). It involves giving up old loyalties (to self alone) and committing ourselves to a new loyalty (to Jesus). It involves turning away from a broken, destructive, and sinful way of life into a life of freedom, obedience, and love. It involves abandoning the old pattern of living for new way of thinking, acting, feeling, and being.

Your group may not fully grasp this broad understanding of salvation. Still, it's important to open the doors and windows and let your young teens breathe the fresh air of God's grace and dip their toes into the big ocean of God's salvation.

How are we saved? Q&A 7 says, "Only Jesus Christ can save me." This is dramatically portrayed in the story about John the Baptist. John is the forerunner sent to "prepare the way for the Lord." His approach is very similar to the catechism's. In his preaching John the Baptist confronts people with their sin. It's not an attractive message (it would be hard to gather a congregation by calling them a "brood of vipers"!).

At the same time, though, John calls the people to repentance, to turn from their sinful ways and to live according to God's will. John's baptism was the sign of that commitment to repent, to begin a new way of life. But this wasn't enough. The people needed something more; they needed a Messiah, a Savior. They even wondered if John was that savior. John forcefully told them that he was not the Messiah: "I baptize you with water. But one who is more powerful than I will come. . . . He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire."

Then something truly wonderful happens. Luke's gospel describes it like this: "When all the people were being baptized, Jesus was baptized too." Jesus, the perfect Son of God, stood in line with all those repenting sinners to be baptized by John. "As a true human being, although without sin, and also true God," Jesus took on himself the weight of human sin. He began to do it here in his baptism, and he completed that work on the cross.

That's why God affirmed him so wonderfully at his baptism. "You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased." So too, when we are baptized and in our baptism united with Christ, God adopts us as his children, the sons and daughters he loves.

Baptism is the sign and seal of our crossing over from death to life, from sin to righteousness, from slavery to freedom. It's the sign and seal that our salvation comes in and through the perfect Savior Jesus Christ.