Water baptism is a cardinal teaching of the Bible. It symbolizes identification with, and partaking of, Christ’s death, burial, and resurrection. Baptism is a public testimony to the inner work of regeneration.
Genuine repentance of sins and the exercise of the saving faith in Christ should precede water baptism. Anyone who cannot genuinely repent of their sins and put their trust in Christ should not be baptised. When a person becomes converted, he becomes dead – dead to sin and dead to the world. At baptism, the believer is completely immersed in a water body, signifying burial with Christ, and is raised out of the water signifying resurrection with Christ.
Every believer, in obedience to the doctrine of baptism, must submit to the ordinance to acknowledge Christ in a public way.
Baptism is conducted by taking the believer to a body of water and asking leading questions to elicit true confession of Christ before immersing them complete under water and raising them up out of the body of water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When a believer is raised from the water (in which he was immersed), he is raised to walk in newness of life. ‘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 6:4).