The Catechism in Questions & Answers

530. What are the effects of Holy Sealing?

In Holy Sealing, the believer is enduringly filled with the Holy Spirit. God thereby allows him to share in His being. God thus grants him His strength, His life, and His love for mankind: “The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Romans 5: 5).
The sealed believer is now the property of God. God’s Spirit has taken up His enduring dwelling place within him (cf. Romans 8: 9).
The human being is now a child of God. He has been called to be a firstling: the rebirth thus has a present effect in childhood in God and a future effect in the calling to become a firstling.
As a child of God, the believer is now an heir of God and a joint heir with Christ. The “Spirit of adoption” which is active within the human being as a result of Holy Sealing, now confidently addresses God as “Abba, Father”.
If the sealed believer gives the Holy Spirit room to unfold, divine virtues will come into being. These are described figuratively as “fruit of the Spirit” (cf. Galatians 5: 22).

Firstling: see Question 428.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...”
Galatians 5: 22-23
“For [...] you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.”
Romans 8: 15-17

The term “child of God” has various aspects:

  • All human beings are children of God because they have been created by God and can therefore address the Almighty as “Father”.
  • In the time of the Old Testament, God cared for the people of Israel like a Father. Accordingly He referred to the people of Israel as “My son, My firstborn” (cf. Exodus 4: 22-23). Israel thus enjoyed a kind of relationship of childhood with God. When Jesus spoke to the Jews in the Sermon on the Mount, He described God as their “Father in heaven”.
  • As Christians, we have been given the Lord’s Prayer, in which we confidently address God as “Our Father”.
  • Beyond that, the term “childhood in God” refers to that condition of a human being before God which is characterised by having received all the sacraments, believing, and aligning one’s life by the return of Christ. Childhood in God is attained through the rebirth out of water and the Spirit. As “children of God”, reborn believers are promised that they will be heirs of the Most High.