“Baptism doesn’t save you if you have not first accepted Jesus as your savior.”
Correct. And Just saying “Lord, Lord” will not save you without doing the will of the Father. Jesus said that in Matthew 7:21
You hear the word.
You believe it.
You publicly confess Christ as your Savior.
You immerse yourself in baptism, as Peter described “the action of a good conscience toward God”.
You hear it, you say it, you do it. Leave any of those out and Salvation is not there.
guess the thief on the cross got a raw deal then...what with not be able to be baptized and all.
Baptism is simply a physical identification with another thing.
When we have faith in Christ,...what He performed on the Cross,...we also hear when we are commanded to be baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
When we are baptized by wetting or immersion of the head, we are manifesting by a work, our identification with God in our thinking, volition, and action.
It is a simple work, whereby we are identified as His.
The action doesn’t give us a new human spirit. That happens by a work of God, when we exercise faith in Him. That saves us from eternal damnation and it seals us by His work in us.
In regards to the initial question, all believers still have volition wherein we can turn away from God and miss the mark of His Plan for us. Missing the mark is sin.
Our missing the mark doesn’t remove salvation, but we might no longer qualify at the bema seat for some rewards He had predestined for us, had we simply remained in fellowship with Him.
The quality or quantity of sin doesn’t remove our human spirit from our anthropology,..it doesn’t remove our salvation, but it does remove us from fellowship with God, meaning we cannot perform works which He considers to be good works, nor can we grow in Him, until we first return to Him and confess our sins for forgiveness.