WATER THAT BOTH SAVES AND DESTROYS

WATER THAT BOTH SAVES AND DESTROYS

“Which sometime were disobedient, when once the longsuffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water. 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.” 1 Pet 3:20-21

Peter gives the context for this statement in vs. 21 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.

Does this mean that one must be baptized to be saved? Positively NOT. My own translation of this verse: "Which water also you as an antitype now saves, even baptism, not of flesh thrusting away filth but of a good conscience, an approval to God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”  Dying to the flesh and letting the spirit give the direction. The spirit needs to be made alive again so that it might lead. Water baptism presents proof that this awakening has happened. Christ was the first-fruits of this way of (life) leadership and gained the approval of the Father and declared thus through the resurrection from the dead (Rom 1:4). It is a coming out of death to new life and a new direction whereby the body is made whole by correct decisions being made thereby the conscience is enlightened and knows the approval of God and to God by following the leadership of Jesus Christ the Redeemer and His Spirit.