My First Baptism

I am going to be involved in my first baptism this Sunday. Not that I am getting baptized... but I will be baptizing three girls in our church on Sunday morning. I sure hope this doesn't happen...


It is a pretty exciting thing for me... because I know these girls stories. God is really at work in each of their lives. Each has been a Christian for a while but have never been challenged or had the opportunity or wanted to be baptized. And God has brought them all to the same place... physically and spiritually... to go through this together.

So I've been thinking and reading a lot about baptism and why we do it. It seems in Scripture that baptism is an expression of repentance and faith in Christ. It is also to be done in the name of Jesus... because it like a transfer of ownership to the one whose name it is done in. Then I came across this verse in 1 Peter...

Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 1 Peter 3:21

And I paused... wondering what this says about Christian baptism. And here is where I landed. In this chapter Peter is encouraging a people who are suffering for their faith. He tells them to deal with their suffering with such good conduct that they maintain a good conscience. He then tells the stories of Noah's flood, which saved 8 people from the wickedness around them. But the reason the water saved them is that they were right with God before the water came.

The flood was a prefigure of today's baptism (KJV, NIV, NLT). So today's baptism which is a symbol of the death and resurrection of Christ... saves us. Not that the water washes off our sins... but like the flood it is an appeal from a good conscience... for those were right with God before the flood came. Today... a good conscience rests in faith in the resurrection of Jesus and the waters figuratively save people like the resurrection of Christ actually saves them.

So those who suffer for doing good for Christ should remember their baptism as an appeal from a restored relationship with God. And like the flood saved Noah and family from their generation, so those who suffer for their belief in the resurrection of Chris will be saved from their generation.