Apologies for being a bit sporadic in posting on this series on baptism. We’ll keep making progress, as best we can. The last passage we looked at was Colossians 2. Let’s move on to 1 Peter 3. Here’s the pertinent section:

“For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit, through whom also he went and preached to the spirits in prison who disobeyed long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also—not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand—with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him.” (1 Peter 3:18–22)

It’s an interesting analogy, using the Old Testament in a way that most of us wouldn’t. Suffice it to say that Jewish hermeneutics allowed for more freedom in interpreting a text than most of us find comfortable. I don’t have a problem with that when it comes to New Testament writers, for I believe them to be inspired.

Note that Peter doesn’t focus on the saving ability of the ark that was built. He instead mentions the water. Then he compares that water to the water of baptism, saying that baptism also saves.

When we read commentators, this is where things get weird. The troublesome phrases tend to be: “not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience toward God.” Peter is saying that the saving power of the water of baptism is not it’s physical power (i.e., the water isn’t magic), but it’s spiritual power.

But some take Peter to be denying the necessity of baptism in water. (Truly amazing, since the imagery behind all of this is water!) Revisionists will say, “Aha! It’s not about the removal of dirt from the body. That means it’s not ‘water baptism’ he’s talking about. It’s spiritual baptism, our conscience appealing to God.”

Funny thing is, I’ve never met any person who practiced baptism who thought that the point was cleaning dirt off the body. Peter is merely emphasizing that the power of this physical act lies in the faith behind it, the same thing that Paul said in Colossians 2. It is the resurrection of Jesus that truly saves; our baptism in water is our connection with that resurrection, as Paul said in Romans 6.

That’s why I don’t get bent out of shape regarding what water we use. I’ve baptized in rivers and lakes. I’ve baptized in a bathtub. I’ve baptized in swimming pools. I’ve baptized in baptisteries of every shape, size, and color. The water is not the important thing.

I also don’t worry about who baptizes. The power is not in the hands of the one(s) helping the person go under the water. Nor do I worry about the minutiae. If their big toe was sticking out, I don’t feel like we have to dunk the person again. The water isn’t magic nor is the act, though they will probably appear so when viewed by outsiders. We know that the faith of the person, the heart appealing to God, is the engine behind baptism. None of it matters without God’s power and our belief in that power.

Baptism now saves us. Not because the water magically makes us clean. No, it’s because our symbolic burial and resurrection are an appeal to God for cleansing, an intentional connecting ourselves with the resurrection of Jesus and its power.