Baptism is often taught as a command and a sacrament with no understanding of the 'type' being conveyed because the baptism of Christ is not understood.
John the Baptist was technically a priest, the son of Zechariah a priest, and can be considered as the true High Priest of Israel chosen by the Holy Spirit rather than by the politics of men. His baptism of Christ should be seen as the transfer of the position of High Priest from John to Christ through the Holy Spirit and coinciding with a 'change of the law' (Heb 7:12).
Likewise, our baptism is when we 'receive our priesthood' (I Peter 2:4-11) and pass through a 'change of the law' into love (Gal 5:14). It minimizes the importance of baptism to reduce it to a command or sacrament that is fulfilled by the one-time act of baptism. The far richer truth that believers should be taught is that baptism is the outward sign of their inner decision to become 'priests of the most High God' fulfilling the 'law of love'.
Understanding that truth would change many more Christians than the simple keeping of a command.
Nice.
From our POV (which is, of course, correct) GOD does not NEED Baptism to do the things you said, but He promises to do them in Baptism.
To me it is silly to say that my Baptism meant nothing and the only thing that counted was my “Hold ON a minute! You mean ME?” moment in 1971. I see the latter as a stage of the fruition of the former.