BAPTISM THAT SAVES

Baptism that Saves

 

1 Pet. 3:21 “The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us (not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God,) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

 

Peter gives the context for this statement by taking the reader back to Gen. 6:1 to the account of Noah to the disobedience of the angels, where people were demon possessed and Noah preached righteousness to these people. Only eight people were spared in the “ark”. Those eight were saved "through" the water in the sense that they were saved from the deadly moral and spiritual pollution that had engulfed the world after the demonic invasion.

The waters lifted up their ark of safety, even as the same waters destroyed their old world and old lives. Thus both the flood, with its ark of safety, and baptism, with its emergence from the waters of "burial" are "like figures" of the wonderful reality of the death and resurrection of Christ, as well as the death to sin and the new life of the believer.

Baptism in and of itself would at most be only a bath for washing off the filth of the flesh, but, it becomes "the answer of [or, better, "appeal for"] a good conscience toward God" (see also Heb. 9:14) when experienced as a testimony of one's saving faith in the atoning death and justifying resurrection of the Lord Jesus secured forever by Christ's resurrection.

 

Genesis 6:1 “And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them.”

 

Cf. article ARK