I wonder if any of you have ever thought you were dying - its a scary experience. Or if any of you have been in a dangerous situation and have been saved from it.

One of the most valuable thoughts for the Day when on an Oak Hall skiing holiday was what to do in an avalanche. If you’re buried by snow what do you do. The answer is to spit. It will help you find out which way up you are.

Generally people know whether they are dead or alive. That does not always follow in a spiritual sense.

Peter seems to write outrageously when he writes......Saved by Baptism 1 Peter 3.21

What does he mean? These are my reflections, please reflect and draw your own.

A. The Flood Waters a Type of Baptism

The context that this verse comes is in a section of the letter which is speaking about suffering v8ff. Peter writes of the suffering of Jesus and writes of his death, what followed this, and his resurrection. It is within this context, that Peter makes the analogy of what happened to Noah and his family during the flood and what happens in baptism.

Gen 6 describes the outrageous state that the world had got itself into and God’s grief, resulting in the judgement of the flood. Noah was the exception to the rule and God wanted to save him from destruction. Noah was commanded to build an Ark.

When it comes to sharing our faith a lot of people find this difficult, well for Noah he had a huge visual aid. People must have thought he’d gone crackers. yet the flood did come. And when it came you were either in the Ark or out of it. God shut the door Gen 7.16

Baptism too is a decisive act. It is a declaration of faith in Jesus, it is saying that Jesus is Lord of my life, or that Jesus is the Boss. It is a recognition that when Jesus died, we died too, so that when he was raised from the dead that also was our resurrection. Spiritually as Christians we shall never die.

The water was not or is not magical. In the days of Noah it was fearful, because Noah was living in a land locked location. It was where you went for sunshine rather than for sailing. So to have such rain was certainly far from the norm, bringing with it cataclysmic effects. Noah and his family lived because they got in the Ark.

The water of baptism is not magical. Baptism is a response made as a result of faith in the person of Jesus with the recognition of Jesus and all that he has done.

It was after the listeners believed Peter’s message concerning Jesus and their contribution to his death that they believed in Jesus and were baptised. In other words baptism is not some magical act but one which is made in response to faith in Jesus.

3. Describes Cleansing Gen 6.7, Acts 2.38, 22.16

i. Cleansing of the earth - A new start was required

ii. cleansing of the person. Baptism is a washing , for the inside of a person, linked in with this is the pledge of a good conscience (1 Peter 3.21) - the promise to live for Jesus.

For those in the Ark this was the beginning of a new life. The waters meant that their world was going to be a very different place.

Similarly Paul writes of anyone being in Christ, being a new person. transformation is in process, their world and their world view has changed.

Baptism is therefore part of the salvation process and as such saves. It is not the mechanical act but rather the fact that this is associated with a real encounter with Christ in the water. For the hearers in Acts 2.their conversion was actually taking place as they were being baptised, they were a turning to God and away from all that had been wrong in their lives, they were experiencing forgiveness , which was only possible through Christ’s death but visually expressed by the waters of baptism running right over them.

Their baptism was also a call to Godly living . In other words baptism has ethical connotations. It is a time to assert the Lordship of Christ in our lives. A time for getting sorted so to speak.

For many of us we have been baptised long ago but the ramifications continue for us today.