But, if you are already a Christian, then there is no need for you to be baptized again in order to receive the Holy Spirit – you already have the Spirit! And if this is true of you today, I rejoice in the mercy and grace that God has lavished on you in Jesus Christ.
The path to receiving the Holy Ghost is to exercise faith in Christ unto repentance. We can become clean through qualifying for the effects of the Savior's Atonement. The covenants offered in baptism by authorized servants of God bring that cleansing.
The Holy Ghost: The Power and the Gift
Cornelius received the Holy Ghost before he was baptized, which was the convincing power of God unto him of the truth of the Gospel, but he could not receive the gift of the Holy Ghost until after he was baptized.
Scripture records that the early believers, upon being baptized in the Spirit, began to glorify God in languages unknown to them but imparted by the Holy Spirit. Tongues is the same evidence today when believers are baptized in the Spirit. All believers, when they are baptized in the Spirit, will speak in tongues.
The Bible says, “Building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost” —Jude 20. Speaking in tongues stimulates faith and helps us learn how to trust God more fully. For example, faith must be exercised to speak with tongues because the Holy Spirit specifically directs the words we speak.
Tongues, then, are a sign, not for believers but for unbelievers; prophecy, however, is for believers, not for unbelievers. So if the whole church comes together and everyone speaks in tongues, and some who do not understand or some unbelievers come in, will they not say that you are out of your mind?
It “symbolizes death, burial, and resurrection, and can only be done by immersion” (Bible Dictionary, “Baptism”). Going under the water represents the death and burial of Jesus Christ, but it also represents the death of our natural selves (see Romans 6:3–6).
We Must Be Baptized for the Remission of Our Sins
The Apostle Peter taught, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins” (Acts 2:38). Following Paul's conversion, Ananias said to him, “Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins” (Acts 22:16).
Canonical gospels
Jesus is considered the first person to receive the baptism with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus during his baptism and anointed him with power.
For some people, the Holy Ghost may cause them to feel overwhelmed with emotion and moved to tears. For others, tears rarely or never come. And that's okay. For them, the Holy Ghost may produce a subtle feeling of gratitude, peace, reverence, or love (see Galatians 5:22–23).
The seven gifts of the Holy Spirit are wisdom, understanding, counsel, fortitude, knowledge, piety, and fear of the Lord. While some Christans accept these as a definitive list of specific attributes, others understand them merely as examples of the Holy Spirit's work through the faithful.
Given once for all, Baptism cannot be repeated. The baptisms of those to be received into the Catholic Church from other Christian communities are held to be valid if administered using the Trinitarian formula.
There are five universal symbols of baptism: the cross, a white garment, oil, water, and light. Other familiar symbols include the baptismal font, scriptural readings and prayers, and godparents.
Speaking in tongues can be understood as a spiritual gift from God, during which a Christian begins speaking a language that is not known to him or her. This can be an earthly language or a “heavenly dialect.” When a person speaks in tongues, they are said to be filled with the Holy Spirit.
While Jesus told Nicodemus, “Amen, Amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit” (John 3:5), he did not set baptism as a hindrance to salvation but just the opposite. We so often judge things by human standards, but God is not restrained by our standards.
In this case, baptism is an outward symbol of an inward reality, and all Christians absolutely must be baptized after they place their faith in Jesus Christ for salvation from their sins. When we trust in Jesus, we are saved and we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
He said: All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.
We believe we must be baptized and receive the gift of the Holy Ghost (through an ordinance called confirmation) to be saved in the kingdom of heaven. The Savior taught, “Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God” (John 3:5).
Baptismal regeneration is the name given to doctrines held by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Lutheran, Anglican churches, and other Protestant denominations which maintain that salvation is intimately linked to the act of baptism, without necessarily holding that salvation is impossible apart from ...
Baptism is a symbol of Christ's burial and resurrection. Our entrance into the water during baptism identifies us with Christ's death on the cross, His burial in the tomb, and His resurrection from the dead. A Brand New Life: It is a symbol of your new life as a Christian.
First, Southern Baptists cannot permit its missionaries to pray in tongues because what the latter claim is the biblical gift is not. The biblical gift of tongues was always “a legitimate language of some people group,” so the policy declares.
glossolalia, also called speaking in tongues, (from Greek glōssa, “tongue,” and lalia, “talking”), utterances approximating words and speech, usually produced during states of intense religious experience.
If God requires every believer to speak in tongues and if this experience is an evidence of having the ministry of the Holy Spirit at work in your life, then speaking in tongues becomes necessary for every professing believer, regardless of whether he or she has been baptized by immersion in water (Matt 28:18-20).