The sacrament of baptism is one of the seven Orthodox church sacraments. In this rite, a person becomes a member of the Church of Christ.
The sacrament of baptism was established by the Lord and Savior Himself, Jesus Christ. In the Gospel of Matthew there is clear evidence not only of the establishment of the sacrament as such, but also of the name in whose name one should be baptized. Thus, the Gospel of Matthew ends with Christ's covenant with the holy apostle, which says that the latter should go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Further, it tells about the need to teach people everything that the Lord announced. After this instruction, Jesus Christ ascended to heaven.
The sacrament of holy baptism was already performed in the times of the apostles. From the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament, it is known that the baptism was performed by the apostles themselves. Thus, the Apostle Philip performed baptism (as the book of Acts of the Apostles speaks about), and the Apostle Paul speaks of himself as the performer of the sacrament of baptism over several families. Also in the Holy Scriptures there is an indication of the baptism of the Apostle Peter to the family of Cornelius the centurion.
After the apostles, bishops and priests began to perform the sacrament of baptism. In proportion to the great growth of Christians, the apostles themselves could no longer cope with the performance of this sacred rite. Gradually, the institution of the clergy appears in the Christian Church, in which the apostolic reception is directly traced through the laying on of hands and the performance of another sacrament - ordination to the priesthood.
