Bible (New Testament): English Standard Version

A religious ritual central to Christian worship, baptism is usually practiced as an immersion, sprinkling, or washing with water and is a rite of entry into the Christian faith. It is attested to throughout the New Testament, having already developed as a common ritual before Jesus’s public ministry began. It was used by John the Baptist as a sign of repentance and commitment to God, likely derived from the Jewish tradition of ceremonial washings for purification. Jesus underwent baptism and commanded his disciples to use baptism as an ongoing Christian practice. Paul interprets baptism symbolically as an act of sharing in the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Christ is a title applied to Jesus of Nazareth, a Greek translation of the Hebrew term mašíaḥ, which means “anointed one.” The Messiah was a much-anticipated figure in Second Temple Judaism, believed to have been prophesied at many points throughout the Old Testament. The Messiah was conceived to occupy a royal office as King David’s heir and, by some accounts, to exercise priestly functions on behalf of his people. The Messiah was interpreted as the climax of God’s plan for Israel; the Messiah’s coming would change everything, not just for Israel, but for the whole world. The New Testament identifies Jesus as the Messiah, filling the royal role in his descent from King David and his ascending to reign, exercising priestly functions in offering his own sacrificial death for the sins of his people, and opening a new stage of God’s plan by proclaiming salvation for all the nations.

“Church” is a translation of the Greek term ekklesia, which means “assembly.” It refers to the community of Christians and specifically to each local gathering of Christians. Contrary to its modern usage, the New Testament term does not refer to a building, but to the group of people who constitute each Christian fellowship.

In the ancient world, a covenant was a common form of binding contract, often made between kings or nations. The Bible refers to God’s relationship with his people in terms of covenants, and the New Testament refers to several of these: the covenant of circumcision (made with Abraham and his descendants), the covenant of law (made with Moses and the Israelites), and the new covenant established by Jesus. Jesus describes the sacrifice of his body and blood as the signs of the new covenant, and Paul uses the same terminology to describe God’s offer of salvation through Jesus Christ.

A disciple is someone who follows a leader and learns from them. It was common in Jesus’s day for rabbis to have a circle of disciples who followed them and learned from their teachings. Jesus uses that model in appointing 12 of his followers to be his disciples. The New Testament most commonly refers to those 12 men when it speaks of disciples, but it is possible to use the term in a more general sense to refer to any follower of Jesus (Matt 28:19).

The term “gospel” is used in two distinct ways in the New Testament studies, either in reference to one of the first four books of the New Testament or to the overall story of God’s work through Jesus Christ. “Gospel” is an English rendering of the Latin translation of the Greek term for “good news.”

Grace is one of the most important theological concepts in the New Testament, appearing prominently in Paul’s articulation of the gospel. Grace refers to the unmerited favor of God, granted to people through the salvific work of Jesus Christ. The grace of God is an active principle in the life of a Christian, providing everything necessary for sanctification and growth in virtue.

In Christian theology, the Holy Spirit is the third member of the Trinity, along with the Father and the Son (Jesus), all of whom share the same divine nature. While the full development of the doctrine of the Trinity does not find its final articulation in the New Testament, the roots of this doctrine are present throughout its books. The Holy Spirit appears in several important ways in the New Testament, including a manifestation at Jesus’s baptism in the form of a dove, and again at the day of Pentecost, accompanied by the Spirit’s traditional symbols of wind and flame. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the new church (in apparent fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecy of Joel 2:28-29), and the Spirit’s ongoing presence in the Christian community was taken by Paul to be one of the definitive signs of the new covenant.

Justification is one of the key theological concepts in the New Testament, and it refers to an aspect of salvation. In biblical Greek, a single word serves to cover the English concepts of both righteousness and justice, so justification can refer to the process of making someone righteous or setting something right. Paul appears to use both senses in his epistles, using justification to speak about the process by which Christians are declared righteous (having been cleansed of their sins through the sacrifice of Christ) as well as the process by which their broken relationship with God is set right again.

At the heart of Jesus’s teaching is a message about the kingdom of God: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the gospel” (Mark 1:15). This term refers to the Jewish expectations surrounding the coming of the Messiah, who would usher in a new period of world history that would lead to the direct reign of God over a union of heaven and earth. The New Testament presents this expectation as coming true in an incipient way through Jesus and his ministry. Jesus fulfilled the sacrificial death required for his people’s salvation, thus opening a way to live in the anticipation of the coming fullness of God’s kingdom. The church, then, is a manifestation of the inaugurated kingdom of God, but not its completion, which is still to come.

The law is referred to throughout the New Testament, appearing most prominently in the teachings of Jesus and the epistles of Paul. Most such references have to do with the Old Testament law, which is a broad term for the commands of the covenant God made with Moses, most of which are found in the Old Testament books of Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy. One of the main questions addressed by the early Christian movement was the extent to which the law still applied to Christians. Jesus taught that his ministry fulfilled the law but did not abolish it. In the Pauline tradition, Jesus’s sacrificial death fully satisfied the purposes for which the law existed—namely, the forgiveness and purification of God’s people—and thus Christians were no longer required to keep all the law’s ritual commandments.

A parable is a pedagogical (instructive) form of storytelling like a fable. Parables tend to be short and have symbolic or allegorical aspects aimed at relating a moral lesson or religious principle. Jesus uses parables as one of his main teaching methods, and some of the most famous stories from the gospels are parables, such as the parable of the Good Samaritan and that of the Prodigal Son.

The term “resurrection” in the New Testament refers to one of two things: either the resurrection of Jesus, or the future resurrection of Christians at the end of history. Resurrection was one of the ancient Jewish expectations of the last days, after the Messiah’s coming—the raising of the dead to new life in restored bodies fit for a heavenly existence. The fact that Jesus rose from the dead was seen as a definitive proof of his messianic identity and a promise pointing to the certainty of Christians’ future resurrection.

The gospel of Jesus is frequently articulated in terms of salvation—that is, the act of being saved from something. In its Old Testament context, salvation usually referred to the deliverance of God’s people from the power of their enemies. In the New Testament, the enemies from which people are delivered are the powers of sin, death, and evil spiritual forces such as Satan. Jesus’s death and resurrection are portrayed as the acts by which sin is atoned for, death is overcome, and Satan is rendered powerless, all of which leave Christians liberated from their effects and free to experience eternal life in relationship with God.