I’ve witnessed too many Reformed baby baptisms where the meaning is completely sucked out of the entire event because the pastor spends 10-15 minutes explaining what baptism can’t do. “It doesn’t regenerate, it doesn’t save, it’s just water, there’s nothing special about it.” Usually they go on until the entire congregation is convinced that baptism isn’t really a means of grace after all. We can’t have any confidence or assurance in it. After all, it’s just a sign, right?

But then, just to save the whole thing from sounding totally depressing and pointless, they might throw in that by being baptised, we enter into the covenant, the saved community, the Body of Christ.

What the heck? If salvation isn’t about being united to Christ, what is it? If regeneration isn’t about being sealed in the new covenant, then what? So we enter the saved community. We’re somehow in it, but not one of its members? How is that supposed to work? If you’re going to say that you become a member of the saved community, I’m sorry, but that makes you saved. We are saved when we are baptised. We are united to Christ through this holy sacrament. God claims us and names us as His own. We become His children. If becoming a child of God is not being saved, then what is? What could be better than entering into His sheepfold?

That’s what I believe to be salvation. I don’t believe it’s about some amazing conversion that will serve as a great and shocking testimony. I don’t think it’s about how much of the Bible you understand, or how well you can grasp the concept of your salvation. I believe that salvation is about Christ dying for us while we were still sinners, and I believe that it’s about Him bringing us into His covenant and loving us when we can’t even speak or contemplate the 5 points of calvinism or the westminster confession. I think that some fall, as the parable of the sower shows to be clear. But the point is, baptism is one of the greatest examples of God’s love and mercy and our inability. God does save us through baptism; He draws us to Him through it. It’s that simple.

If you want to disagree, be consistent and say, “I’m going to sprinkle some water on this baby just as a reminder that it’s only water and serves no purpose nor gives any grace to him. It just washes his hair, if that.”