Saved Through Water

 “(I)n which a few - that is, eight souls - were saved through water: this same baptism, thus pictured before, now saves you as well - not as a removal of dirt from your flesh, but as the appeal of a good conscience unto God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. 1 Peter 3

1 Peter 3:8-4:6 has to be taken together as a single thought. Here Peter is making a legal and covenantal argument. The Christian is to live in obedience to God so that when accusations are brought against him by others God the Righteous Judge will be able to declare on the man’s behalf in His court and come to his defense, acting sometimes both as judge and executioner. This presupposes a number of things. Maybe the most prominent and often neglected is the fact of God’s actively being involved in history as a regular and constant reality. Not only does He do this in keeping the planets in orbit, or in making food grow up from the ground, or any other aspect of nature, but He is also actively, constantly, judging and responding in the affairs of men. He raises up some rulers and puts others down. And he acts on behalf of His children when they cry out to Him to do so - and even occasionally when they don’t. He acts for His own glory but also as He is bound in covenant with those He has set apart for Himself. Sometimes He acts by delivering His children immediately when they are suffering unjustly. But as Peter talks about, sometimes He allows the persecution to persist for a long time. Just as Jesus suffered unjustly in His sojourn here, so must we, as we walk the path of salvation He has laid out for us. Either way, the time will come when eventually we will be delivered, either in our death or when Christ returns to rid the world of evil for good and to make all things new.

The point of Peter’s thought with regard to Noah is that justice had to be carried out because the world had grown wicked enough for God to do so. It was through water that God saved Noah’s family. And God also saves us through the water of Baptism. There is no hint here that this water is somehow not water, that this is merely symbolic language for an action carried out by the Holy Spirit apart from real physical water. Just as the Spirit used real water in saving Noah, so He uses real water in saving us. It’s worth saying as well that in neither case is the word “saving” meant in some metaphorical way, in Noah’s or our case either one. Deliverance from the persecution of evil people during our earthly sojourn is not merely symbolic of God’s salvation of our souls when we die. It is the manifestation in this present life of the salvation procured by Jesus’s death and resurrection. God rescued Noah from a wicked world when He brought him through and destroyed evil mankind by the flood. And the point of the passage here is that God will do that for all His children when they look to Him to make a righteous judgment on their behalf. God’s heavenly court is always in session.

This is why I have rendered the phrase “the appeal of a good conscience toward God” the way I have. Some major translations, like the ESV, seem not only not to know how to handle the Greek phrase all by itself, but also don’t understand the larger context in which the verse sits. Peter is echoing an earlier statement from vs. 16, a part of the same flow of thought. The ESV also flubs the translation of the word “sarx”. Somehow they chose to translate the same word as “flesh” in vs. 18 while translating it as “body” here. But that obscures Peter’s deliberate parallel. The idea of Jesus “being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit” is meant to parallel “not as a removal of dirt from your flesh, but as the appeal of a good conscience unto God”. Baptism is the application of Christ’s resurrection to the believer, thus resulting in a good conscience. This is why Peter quickly follows the latter phrase with “through the resurrection of Jesus Christ”. The importance of baptism isn’t that it washes physical dirt off of a person - it isn’t that kind of bath. Rather, it is a legal, covenantally binding ceremony between God and that individual. The person who has been baptized can then go into God’s law court at any time and say to Him, “I am your covenant child. We are legally bound to each other. Please act in space and time on my behalf.” The person who has been baptized has partaken of the work of Christ, and therefore has been, and will be, saved - that is, delivered not only from his own sin, but from the sins of those around him. Peter ends vs. 22 the way He does for that reason. None of the forces of the spiritual realm are above His control. He has authority over all. And when His children call on Him, He acts (Ps. 18).