Water baptism does not cleanse us inwardly nor does it save us. It is a testimony of our new birth and new life in Christ, which is wholly and exclusively accomplished by the Holy Spirit. Water baptism is the means by which we identify with the Lord Jesus Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by His grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, Whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith,” Romans 3:23-25a. As it is written, “To the one who does not work but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness,” Romans 4:5.

There is no life without Christ. For He is the Word of life who inhabits eternity, the Light of those who sit in darkness, in the shadow of death. He alone guides our feet into the way of peace. “He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life, and the life was the light of men” (John 1:2-4). Christ is the second person of the Trinity, God the Creator, for “He Himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:25). Rom. 11:36 says, “For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things.” Col. 1:16-17, “By Him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.”

The Lord Jesus Christ is not only the Author of biological life, but He is also the Author of spiritual life. Col. 1:19-20, “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell, and by Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of His cross.” In our natural state, we are all dead in trespasses and sin, alienated from God. And the truth of the matter is, no man can free himself from spiritual deadness by his own efforts, no one can be justified before God by his good works and merits. There is only one way to be justified before God, one way to pass from death to life: the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ – “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. No one comes to the Father except through Me”, declares the Lord in John 14:6. Life is found in Christ alone. No one can be made alive, no one can be raised from spiritual death except by the Lord Jesus, the Author of life.

Set before every human being on this planet are two ends: life and death. The end of each person depends on whether they choose to love the Lord, obey his voice and be faithful to Him until the end or not. All those who reject the Lord Jesus in this life will one day wake up to their surprise in hell. As the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Thess. 1:8-9, the Lord will inflict “vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the Gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” Their souls will be delivered to everlasting and conscious torment. Only those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, those who die to sin and live in Christ will inherit the Kingdom of God. The Lord says in Rev. 21:6-8, “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. I will give of the fountain of the water of life freely to him who thirsts. He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be his God and he shall be my son. But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death”

Under the law death reigned because of sin, but in Christ grace abounds much more. Grace reigns “through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5:21. He destroyed sin and defeated death by his atoning sacrifice on the cross. As the author of the Book of Hebrews writes, “He entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12). Thus the Lord was able to redeem the souls of his elect, He was able to raise us who believe on Him from spiritual deadness and to bring us into life eternal according to the riches of his grace. As Heb. 10:14 says, “By a single offering He has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” Christ “offered Himself without blemish to God, [to] purify our conscience from dead works [so that we may] serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14). He conquered death for us who are in Him, so that we might live with Him in the presence of our God forever. And so Paul writes in Rom. 6:8-11, “Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over Him. For the death He died He died to sin, once for all, but the life He lives He lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”

The wages of sin is death. But “whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God” (1 Pet. 4:1-2). Someone may ask: Who is he who has ceased from sin? Anyone who is in Christ. By the Spirit of Christ, we who are in Christ have crucified the flesh with its lusts. That is to say, as followers of Christ, we are dead to sin. Therefore, our heart is set on the things above, and we delight in the ways of our Lord. We are no longer governed by the basic principles of this world because we are not of the world. Rather, we put our trust in the Lord our God.

In Christ we are no longer children of wrath but sons of God. For we have been justified by his precious blood, baptised and adopted into the family of God by the Holy Spirit who has sealed us into God’s love and promises, and prepared us for all good works. In Christ we are made citizens of heaven, co-heirs with our Saviour according to the riches of his grace (cf. Rom. 8:16-17). Furthermore, we abide in our Father and He abides in us. And on the basis of our Savior Lord’s merit, which is imputed to us through faith in Him, we go to our Father in prayer, with confidence and the assurance that his ear is attuned to our cry. (cf. John 14:13-14; 15:16; 16:24).

As citizens of the Kingdom, co-heirs with our gracious Saviour, our hope is kept for us in heaven; our eternal reward dwells with our heavenly Father. As 1 Pet. 1:3-5 points it out, “According to his great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.”

In this broken world, it is impossible for a faithful Christian to escape hatred. The Lord Himself says to his disciples, “You will be hated by all for my name's sake” (Mat. 10:22). No one who identifies with Christ and follows Him faithfully can escape the hostility of the enemies of truth. Being a Christian does not put an end to our suffering in this world, it instead brings us more affliction. “For to [us] it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for his sake” as Paul writes in Phil. 1:29. We have been granted by God to share in the sufferings of our Lord, so that by suffering in the flesh we might be trained and equipped to live the rest of our days in our earthly tent no longer for the vicious passions of the flesh but for the will of God and the glory of Christ our Lord. Peter writes in 1 Pet. 4:12-13, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.”

1 John 2:6 says, “Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.” There is a clear opposition between the Kingdom of Christ and the kingdom of darkness. Those who belong to Christ have crucified the world with its evil practices and turned away from its lies and deceptions. You cannot embrace truth and falsehood at the same time. You cannot reconcile the Kingdom of light with the kingdom of darkness. You cannot worship the deities of Hinduism and have fellowship with the One True God. “I am the Lord; that is my name; my glory I give to no other, nor my praise to carved idols”, says the Lord Almighty in Is. 42:8. You cannot exalt Mary, or Buddha, or Mohammed, or any false god and call yourself a child of God. “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15). You cannot offer sacrifices and prayers to the dead or to any other idol and still be pleasing to God; for the things which you sacrifice, you “sacrifice to demons and not to God” (cf. 1 Cor. 10:20). As Paul writes in 1 Cor. 10:21, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons; you cannot partake of the Lord’s Table and of the table of demons.”

Unless one is born of God, he remains under the dominion of Satan, he remains a slave to the system of evil ruled by Satan. Our love for the world separates us from God until the moment of our conversion. For there is no unity between darkness and light; between the world and the Kingdom of Heaven there is no fellowship. There is no coherence between the holy and the profane. Between moral purity and depravity there is no harmony; there is no friendship between the world and God. People who love the world are alienated from God’s glorious presence. For, as already mentioned, “Whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God” (James 4:4). Anyone who upholds any ideology that is against Christ is an enemy of God, and he cannot inherit Christ’s Kingdom. Unless a person renounces to the abominations that are in the world because of lust, and turns to Christ in repentance and faith, Satan will continue to rule over him, and he will remain a candidate for the second death.