***Baptism saves.***
The problem with that is too many people go into the baptistry a dry sinner, and simply come out a wet sinner.
Usually to please someone else and have no change in their life.
Many places in the New Testament the Greek word for ‘to faithe’ is translated into believe, or some other word, losing the essence of what ‘faithing’ in the Salvation Dhrist gives means. If a wet sinner shows no evidence of a changed life, it is not likely they have been born again by the Spirit. Faith in Christ is a verb form, as in ‘faithing’ daily in His new Life in you, the hope of glory (the evidence of things not seen, for no one but God can see into the human soul, to see if Life is found in the human spirit, but we have learned that new life makes changes in old men).
“The problem with that is too many people go into the baptistry a dry sinner, and simply come out a wet sinner.”
I see - I think - what you are trying to say. However, let us remember that there is no problem with the statement that “baptism saves.” That is the simple truth of the Word of God, as quoted. However, that statement was not made in a vacuum. There is a context here, just as there is always in the Scriptures. Also, “baptism saves” is not to be set against or assumed to be contrary to, for example, “Jesus saves” or “Faith saves.” Both of those are also true, completely true. The question is how are each of these statements related the one to the others.
Baptism didn’t suffer and died for the sins of the world. Jesus did. Faith does not come out of the blue, it is given as the gift of God to us in a certain way, as Jesus and the apostles taught.
Simply put, Jesus lived a life of perfect righteousness in our place for us and then suffered and died in our stead (”My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?”) thus paying the debt of our sins. He is the one and only Savior of the world. He did this 2000 years ago just outside of Jerusalem. He and He alone WON our salvation. Thus, “Jesus saves.” Jesus is the Savior of the world.
What Jesus did then and there is brought to us here and now in the means of grace, that is, the Gospel in word and sacrament (which includes baptism). That is why Matthew 28:18ff and Mark 16:16 say what they say, command the church and its ministry to go out into the world and make disciples, believers, with these things, these means. Word and sacrament are God’s appointed means to DISTRIBUTE salvation to us here and now, salvation that rests in Jesus Christ alone, whoever we are and wherever we live.
Faith is given to us by God through these means, “lest anyone boast.” Faith then is the receiving instrument of salvation. One cannot be saved apart from faith. That is because such heaven-sent faith has as its God-intended object Him who alone atoned for the sins of the world. No other faith saves, because no other faith trusts in Him who is alone the Savior of the world. Thus faith is the means of RECEIVING salvation.
So, in summary:
Jesus saves, for He alone WON our salvation.
Baptism saves, for through it is DISTRIBUTED or GIVEN to us salvation. For through baptism we “put on Christ,” that is, we receive as our own Christ’s robe of perfect righteousness, the only righteousness that avails before God, the only righteousness that “exceeds the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees.”
Faith saves, for through it we RECEIVE Christ as our Savior from sin, death, and the power of the devil.
None of these are contradictory of the other. All and each are perfectly agreed with the rest of the Scriptures.
Now to answer a likely objection, God-given faith involves regeneration, a new birth in Christ, a new creation in Christ Jesus, in other words a changed heart that desires to do the will of God. Now, to be sure, as Paul noted in Romans and as is spoken of elsewhere, the Christian in this life remains also a child of sinful Adam. And thus the things we ought to do, we often do not do, and the things we ought not do, we often do do, just as Paul said, just as Paul noted within himself. Thus the baptized and believing child of God will find himself or herself coming back to God to confess sin and guilt and desiring to receive again forgiveness, comfort, and strength to “go and sin no more.”
The Christian will struggle all his or her life with sin, always returning to the God of grace who called him or her out of darkness into His marvelous light. As he or she does he/she will grow in faith and knowledge, slowly being conformed to the image of His Son until that great day when he/she puts off this mortal body and enters into eternity where he/she will forever be free of sin, death, and the power of the devil, free of sin and all of its horrible consequences, free of the old man, the old Adam. In short, a Christian will seek to do the will of the Father, to do good to his/her neighbor, because these fruits of faith flow from faith, even as a good tree must bear good fruit.
Christ, baptism, and faith are not opposed to each other. Far from it, they are woven together to accomplish the will of God, that is, that all be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth.