“When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.” Proverbs 16:7. Because the king was walking with the Lord, the fear of the Lord filled the nation and the country round about Judah.

Walking according to Ephesians 4:32 won’t make us Christians, but consistently refusing or failing to walk that way makes others wonder whether we are Christians.

My Shepherd knows all my wants and needs, and He has gone to prepare a place for me (Jn. 14:1-6). What more could I possibly desire?

No true believer will deliberately make a conscious decision to slip away from his or her relationship with God. But we can drift away a little bit at a time, like an unsecured boat.

Malachi 4:4-6 “Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments. Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” 

What difference does it make that baptism is an ordinance? To borrow an expression from Paul the Apostle, “Much every way.”

“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3,4)

In the four gospels and the Acts, baptism refers to the practice of literal water baptism. It is for those who have come to know Christ as Savior. When we reach the New Testament’s epistles, however, baptism often refers to something other than water baptism...but we must understand water baptism for 6:3 to make sense. 

For a number of reasons, I believe the Bible shows us that it is.

Acts 8:26-39 is a case study involving conversion and baptism. The eunuch’s question for Philip was, essentially, “Is there any reason why I shouldn’t be baptized?” Philip clearly answered the question by putting the eunuch to a test: “If thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest [be baptized]” (8:37).