This brief Credo paper will explain how the Holy Spirit is intimately integrated in a supernatural and mystical experience and participation in the sacraments beyond the intellectual understanding of the historical events that the Church remembers when they participate in the sacraments. The Westminster Confession of Faith limits the sacraments to baptism and the Lord's Supper and sacraments are denoted "signs and seals of the covenant of grace.”
The Holy Spirit plays a central role in the sacraments and adds to the intellectual experience of the sacraments. At times in Church history the sacraments have been reduced to mere symbols of remembrance but Calvin points out that when we interact with the sacraments we are in fact participating with the Holy Spirit and Christ.
The Holy Spirit uses the sacraments as a means of grace and thus is essential as we are born again; or born from heaven. The means of grace are those things through which God gives grace and the sacraments (Baptism and the Lord’s Supper) are a way in which God bestows grace on humanity.
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In the sacrament of baptism, the Holy Spirit incorporates us into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. As we are submerged in the water we mystically experience and enter into the death of Christ and as we arise we again mystically experience and enter into the resurrection of Christ. During the rising out of the water we are also immediately initiated into the Church or the body of Christ. It thus becomes the initial union with Christ. Those that are baptized also are regenerated into a new creature as we experience the remission of sins through