“Water baptism has an important place in salvation, but it isn’t in giving life.”
“baptism now saves you”. That’s not simply an analogy. Something that saves you has given you life. Grace is in baptism.
“Why folks struggle with 1 Peter 3:21 is hard to understand, since Peter was pretty specific.”
Yes, he was, “baptism now SAVES you”. Can’t be much clearer than that.
Salvation includes sanctification - the process by which we are separated from the world. To be saved involves both justification and sanctification.
We are saved out the the world - “Save yourselves from this crooked generation”, to use Peter’s own words - by water baptism, just as Noah was saved from a wicked generation by the waters of the Flood.
“That’s not simply an analogy.”
“...in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water. 21 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...”
Baptism with water corresponds to the baptism of the Flood, so to speak. Just as the Flood separated Noah from the evil around him, so does water baptism save us by “an appeal to God for [not from a good conscience, bot FOR one] a good conscience”. The waters of the flood did not give Noah life, but it did rescue him from the evil world...
Baptism was a well known concept to the Jews. It was a ritual washing for a convert to Judaism, giving a public witness of the changed life that had already begun. It was a dedication to a new way of living, not something that gave new life itself. See http://www.jewsforjesus.org/publications/issues/v02-n10/baptism
Mark 16:16
He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved;
but he that believeth not shall be damned.
I notice it does NOT say:
... but he that baptized not shall be damned.