By His spoken Word, God brought into existence all creatures and assigned to each one usefulness, and to all a purpose: to glorify their Maker – each according to the ability He has given them – and to rejoice in Him alone. In other words, as creatures of God, the purpose of our lives is to glorify God and glory in Him – He is the object of our worship and the object of our joy. We are here on earth to exalt God, to display His beauty, and to delight in His person and works. The key verses that substantiate the affirmation that we exist for the glory of God are from Isaiah 43:6b-7, where God says: “Bring My sons from afar and My daughters from the end of the earth, everyone who is called by My name, whom I created for My glory, whom I formed and made.” 

The attack on the soul by the evil world system today stands as the culmination of a long-standing battle. Nowadays, more than ever before, the world has managed to make its abominable practices more appealing by decriminalizing them. Drug use, homosexuality, transgenderism, prostitution, bestiality, the killing of babies in the womb, and many other dark practices condemned by the Lord are legalised in many countries today, in defiance of the decree of the Creator God. Thus says the Lord in Leviticus 20:10-21, “If a man commits adultery with the wife of his neighbor, both the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death. If a man lies with his father's wife, he has uncovered his father's nakedness; both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. If a man lies with his daughter-in-law, both of them shall surely be put to death; they have committed perversion; their blood is upon them. If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall surely be put to death; their blood is upon them...

 The baptism of the Holy Spirit is what defines the identity of God’s elect. It is the baptism of regeneration, the mark of Christ's ownership over those whom God, before the foundation of the world, predestined for adoption as sons. Without the baptism of the Holy Spirit, we remain spiritually dead, alienated from God and hostile toward Him.

The baptism of the Holy Spirit is what seals our union with Christ; it is in fact what makes us Christians – as the Scripture says, “Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to Him” (Romans 8:9b). The Spirit quickens us and enables us for all good works and perseverance in the faith. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit within us is what distinguishes us from the rest of mankind, that is...

Unlike water baptism, which can be accessed by almost everyone, the baptism of the Holy Spirit is exclusively for God’s elect. It is administered by God to those whom He chose in eternity passed as an inheritance to His Son, according to the riches of His grace.

 The baptism of the Holy Spirit is the act by which the Holy Spirit, at salvation's birth, unites God’s elect to the body of Christ by taking residence in them and empowers them for spiritual growth and perseverance in the faith. By this sovereign and supernatural act of God, the Holy Spirit brings us from spiritual deadness to life in the Spirit and produces in us repentance and faith in Jesus Christ the Son of God.

Christ instituted water baptism so that those whom the Father had predestined for adoption in eternity past, and for whom the Son died and who would be raised from spiritual death by the Holy Spirit, might identify with the Son in His death, burial, and resurrection. That is to say, water baptism must be administered to everyone who is brought from death to life by the Holy Spirit of grace and is led to repentance and faith in Christ, being justified “by the blood of His cross” (cf. Colossians 1:20).

   The authority to baptize new converts has been given by Christ to the ministers of the Gospel. As the Head of the Church, Christ has instructed them to make disciples and to baptise them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

The sacrament of baptism was instituted by the Lord Jesus at the beginning of His earthly ministry as a sign of the new covenant, a symbol of the internal reality of rebirth brought about supernaturally by His Spirit. And it symbolises one’s death to sin and newness of life in Christ.

Water baptism is the means by which we identify with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. It is a public affirmation of one’s faith in Christ, a testimony of one’s union to Christ. Water baptism symbolizes the death of the old self and the new life that we live in and for Christ. It follows spiritual baptism and serves to affirm the internal work of regeneration initially accomplished by the Holy Spirit.

Regeneration is a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit who, through the agency of God’s Word, according to His sovereign will and grace, convicts people of their sinfulness, of the coming judgement, and of their need for Christ at His appointed time, and implants in their hearts love for and faith in the Son of God.