Official Business

Baptism is filing a petition with God. It’s submitting an appeal to God for a good conscience (as the New Revised Standard Version puts it in 1 Peter 3:21). What this means is that when you get baptized you are officially asking God to give you a clean conscience. That’s the Biblical definition of baptism: A formal request we submit to God for a renewed sensitivity to sin. In baptism, we ask God to give us a new start by him both forgiving us of our former sins, and by him giving us a new heart.

… baptism now saves you, not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience… (1 Peter 3:21; NASB and LEB)

Prior to our baptism, we called evil good and we called good evil. Without the ability to call good good and evil evil—that is, without a good conscience—we will go on sinning habitually till the day we die. If we continue in sin that means that we are bereft of any salvation from sin.

There is no salvation for someone who practices sin. This is why a person who has not obtained a good conscience is not saved. They are not saved from Hell, since that is the punishment sin incurs, and they’re not saved from sin.

Now you know why baptism now saves us. It saves us from sin because someone who has been baptized is not confused about sin anymore. They have obtained the capacity they need to triumph against temptation. They have obtained a good conscience, our victory over sin and condemnation.

Spiritual Activities

Speaking of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus said “…the words I have spoken to you are spirit and are life” (John 6:51-63), affirming that Lord’s Supper is essentially a spiritual activity. What Jesus meant is that you don’t literally eat his flesh in the Eucharist. There’s no fork or knife. You don’t need to bring a napkin. Likewise, baptism is not a literal bath. There’s no soap and there’s no shampoo involved.

When we call these activities spiritual we do not merely mean symbolic. Rather, we mean that they contain the essence of what they represent. “What does baptism represent?” you ask. The death and resurrection of Christ. The opposite of something spiritual is something superficial. Baptism is not superficial. It is profound.

Misconceptions

If your main concern on the day of your baptism is bringing your favorite towel or whether someone will take pictures, you have missed the point. Better for no one to take pictures, and for everyone to be praying fervently. If you’re worried about whether you’ll be in the Jordan River or in another favorite brook or stream, then you’ll get distracted from the goal of baptism: to be born again in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Likewise, when you take the Lord’s Supper, if you’re worried about the kind of fruit of the vine you’re drinking (be it grape juice, merlot, cabernet sauvignon, or Concorde grape) and you dispute with someone over whether we should use crackers or a matzoh—then you’re missing the point. It is not about the kind of bread or wine you consume. It’s about whether or not the body and blood of Jesus are your spiritual food and drink.

Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ? (1 Corinthians 10:16)

Means of Grace

You most definitely need bread and wine/grape juice for the Lord’s Table, and you most definitely need water for baptism. You can’t do the Lord’s Supper with beer and a pretzel and you can’t do baptism in mud. Your faith in the Word of God makes bread effective for feeding your soul, wine effective for quenching your spiritual thirst, and water effective for cleansing of your sins.

Bread, wine, and water are means of grace. God has seen it fit to use physical elements to be the means by which we receive spiritual help. They are means of grace when received by faith. Therefore, we tell baptismal candidates that they will be washed of their sins in the waters of baptism—for God’s Word says baptism now saves you, and they are called to believe those words, the Word of God.