“19 After being made alive, he went and made proclamation to the imprisoned spirits — 20 to those who were disobedient long ago when God waited patiently in the days of Noah while the ark was being built. In it only a few people, eight in all, were saved through water, 21 and this water symbolizes baptism that now saves you also — not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a clear conscience toward God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ, 22 who has gone into heaven and is at God’s right hand — with angels, authorities and powers in submission to him” (1 Peter 3:19–22)
Tomorrow, I will be leading our latest baptism service at Kingsgate Community Church (Great Yarmouth). As part of my preparation I’ve been meditating on this wonderful quotation from Peter J. Leithart’s wonderful book ‘Baptism: A guide to life from death’:
“Baptism is an adoption ceremony. The wood of Jesus’ cross grows into a new ark, and every baptized person joins the eightfold family of a new and greater Noah. Outside the ark of the church, judgment looms, but those washed into the church — with its nautically ribbed ceiling — are delivered. Through the saving flood of baptism, children of Adam become brothers and sisters of the last Adam who is “at the right hand of God?” (1 Pet 3:22). We become members of one another, no longer adrift and alone.
Both the flood and baptism tell us about our sin. In the days of Noah, even God doesn’t try to repair things. He extinguishes all flesh and turns the globe into a graveyard. There’s a message there: sinners need something more radical than reform. We “need to die.” That may sound heartlessly stern, but it’s our only hope. In moments of desperate clarity, we want to end it all and start over. Baptism says we’re right to see death.
As the antitype of the flood, baptism indicates the right kind of death. Noah and his family are delivered from a world stalked by Titans where “every intent of the thoughts of [man’s] heart was only evil continually” (Gen 6:1–5). Old loyalties, old temptations, old habits, and old associations and networks are washed away, and the eight members of Noah’s family receive new life on the far side of death. One way or another, the flood kills. Those outside the ark drown. Those in the ark die to the world that then was. Baptism doesn’t just tell us that we need to die. It kills, and so gives the gift of death. Baptized into the ark, we don’t die with the world, but to the world.”