It’s a way of saying, I'm going public with who I'm identifying with. When we are baptized, we are associating with the message and the person of Jesus Christ. Shortly before he began his public ministry, Jesus was baptized by his cousin John. You may have heard him referred to as John the Baptist. John taught that people should repent and surrender their lives to God. As a symbol for those who believed in this message, they were baptized in a river. One day, Jesus went to be baptized by John. When John saw him approaching, he proclaimed to his followers, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). When Jesus was baptized, he was associating himself with the message John had been declaring.

It’s a declaration someone makes of a decision they’ve made to follow Jesus. Salvation was initiated by God because of His great love for us. When we trust in Jesus’s death and resurrection, we receive the gift of new life in Jesus and the promise of eternal life with him. This is what it means to be saved. When we are baptized, we are declaring our new association as a follower of Jesus.

Baptism is something we do from salvation not for salvation. We believe that a person is saved and then baptized. Baptism is evidence of a person’s individual decision to become a follower of Jesus. Baptism does not make our salvation official. It’s a way of displaying an earlier decision to follow Jesus.