Is 1 Peter 3:21 All Wet?

…the patience of God kept waiting in the days of Noah, during the construction of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through the water. And corresponding to that, baptism now saves you — not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience — through the resurrection of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 3:20-21, NASB).

Once when I referred to this passage to show the role of baptism in God’s plan of salvation, a friend of mine objected. He said I had wrongly assumed that “saves” in verse 21 means salvation from sin and judgment.

I asked, “Then what does it mean?”

His response was essentially, “Well, it doesn’t mean that.”

Doesn’t it? Thayer’s Lexicon says “save” in the New Testament means “to keep safe and sound, to rescue from danger or destruction; to deliver.” Of course, what one is being saved from varies with the context. But Thayer also notes how the word is usually applied to Christians: “to save in the technical biblical sense; negatively, to deliver from the penalties of the Messianic judgment…; positively, to make one a partaker of the salvation by Christ” (610).

So 1 Peter 3:21 says that when a believer is baptized, he is delivered from some danger and brought to safety. Peter likens baptism to the rescue of Noah’s family in the ark “through water” (verse 20). Noah and his kin were saved from death in the flood, and through baptism we are saved from something at least as dangerous. But from what?

Look again at the context. The flood which Noah and his family escaped wasn’t just any flood — it was God’s judgment on sinful mankind. Since baptism “corresponds” to that, it follows that baptism saves us from the same thing — the penalty of God’s judgment.

Peter could hardly mean anything else. The salvation referred to certainly isn’t deliverance from persecution, affliction, sickness, physical death, or even temptation. The rest of the epistle shows that the very Christians to whom Peter wrote were suffering such things. And he says that baptism saves now. What could he have in view but our being saved from our past sins and brought into fellowship with God? Peter’s statement here is in perfect harmony with what he said to his troubled audience at Pentecost: “Repent, and let each of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).

The reason for my friend’s objection is that he, like many people, denies any connection between baptism and salvation. But 1 Peter 3:21 makes that connection so clearly that one can only remove it by changing the meaning of “saves” in that verse. And as we’ve seen, nothing in the passage gives us any reason to do so.

Of course, the act of baptism by itself could save no one. It is Jesus’ atoning death, burial, and resurrection that provide the basis of our salvation. But it is through baptism that the believer is united with Christ in the likeness of His death and raised to walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4-5). Peter’s own statement confirms the connection between baptism and the saving work of Christ: “baptism now saves you … through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”

Have you put your faith in Christ and been baptized into Him?

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