Incidentally, we can see clearly in retrospect that baptism, being required of both Jew and Gentile, was intended by Christ to be the lasting sign of initiation into the church. Under the providence of God and the teaching and leadership of the apostles, circumcision was “fading away,” along with the rest of the cultus of the Old Covenant. The decisive point in this was the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70, and the subsequent transformation of the church into a largely Gentile assembly.
