v.20 "eight in all", i.e. Noah and his wife, their three sons and their wives. The significance of eight is how small the number is. The Christians are a small minority as well.

"were saved through water" -- that is, the water floated the ark and kept them safe through the flood.

v.21 The word the NIV translates "symbolizes" is the word "antitype." An antitype is that thing that is prefigured by or corresponds to the type -- type being a person or thing or event or practice that foreshadows some reality still to come. Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, for example, regards Israel's passing through the waters of the Red Sea as a type of baptism. Peter here sees the waters of the flood in the same way, as a type or foreshadowing of baptism. Typology is founded on the conviction that it is one and the same God who is at work in all eras of history and is working out the same purposes in all that history. There is a continuity of action and meaning because there is one God and one salvation from the beginning of history to its end.

"by the resurrection of Christ", i.e. by our union with Christ in his resurrection, his victory over sin and death, as Paul often says. He has already established the context for this short phrase in v. 18: It is Christ's dying for sins, the just for the unjust, and his rising again that bring us to God.

"removal of dirt from the flesh" baptism in earliest Christianity was administered in various ways. Most written references to it seem to suggest that it was done by immersion, but the earliest artistic representations, some very early, show the catechumen and the minister standing in shallow water, perhaps a river, with the minister pouring water over the convert's head. Sprinkling asserted itself as people gave more attention to the ways in which ceremonial washings were performed in the Bible and the way in which in Scripture both the blood of Christ and the water of cleansing is said to be sprinkled upon the heart.

v.22 "with angels, powers..." picking up the point of vv. 19-20 as we discussed them last Lord's Day morning.

Now, Peter speaks in a way that somewhat alien to us. I don't simply mean that his thought here is very compact and perhaps somewhat difficult to unravel. I mean he puts things in a way we would never put them. specially on Reformation Sunday! The last thing it would occur to us to say would be that "baptism saves you", no matter what qualifications he may go on to mention. He did this also on Pentecost Sunday, if you remember. When the great congregation had heard his sermon and because the Spirit was powerfully at work in that sermon they were cut to the heart and cried out, "Brothers, what must we do?" Peter said, "Repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins." Why, as good American evangelicals, we almost cringe at that reply. "Peter, why on earth mention baptism in an evangelistic context like that? Don't you realize how that can confuse people and lead them to think that they can be saved by the performance of an outward rite? Peter, you would be far wiser to lay all your emphasis on true faith in the heart; that is the key; a personal relationship with Jesus Christ."

And if we never exactly utter those words, because we at least have the good sense to know that we ought not to lecture an apostle on his choice of words when those words were added to Holy Scripture by the influence of the Holy Spirit himself, we as much as say them and as much as criticize Peter's way of speaking, by never imitating it ourselves.

Many things may be said in explanation of Peter's way of speaking here: "the baptism that saves you." Remember, for these people, as for the Jews in Jerusalem who heard Peter on Pentecost, baptism was the gateway into the new faith and life of the followers of Jesus Christ. As our Westminster Confession of Faith puts it, one of the purposes of the sacraments is "to put a visible difference between those that belong unto the church and the rest of the world." They had become Christians, so far as the world could tell, and so far as their public identification with Christ was concerned, at their baptism.

There is no doubt that the focus shifts somewhat when the Bible addresses the church as a whole, full of folk who were given the seal of faith, most in their infancy, or when it addresses many in the church who are not, in fact, walking with God or trusting in Christ. You find that different perspective in the prophets, for example, where Jeremiah complains that he is preaching to a congregation that is circumcised but uncircumcised, they have the outward rite, but lack the inner reality to which the rite is supposed to bear witness.

But in the years of the NT itself, people were streaming from the world in to the church by conversion to God and the gateway through which they passed was baptism.

Then there is in the Bible a habit that we have not preserved of speaking of that which is signified by the sign in terms of the sign itself. Throughout the OT we hear of the sacrifices that work atonement, that make the worshipper clean before the Lord, that cause a soothing or pleasant aroma to rise up to the Lord, even though it is as clearly taught in the OT as the NT that the rites in themselves and by themselves, that is, without faith, could not take away sins. We don't hear only of the rite of circumcision in the OT, for example, but as well of the circumcision of the heart and of the lips. In the NT we hear of salvation through men being washed with water with the Word -- unmistakably a reference to baptism, but to baptism because of what it signifies. Jesus himself spoke of men eating his flesh and drinking his blood -- a reference to the Lord's Supper because of what the Supper signifies. And Peter himself, in this same letter, in 1:2, speaks of Christians being sprinkled with the blood of Christ, an allusion to a rite of course, but only with reference to what the rite signifies, the application of Christ's death to our sins. There is in the Bible a constant alternation between the sign -- baptism or the Lord's Supper -- and the thing that is signified by the sign, inward grace, the work of the Holy Spirit, the forgiveness of sins, and communion with God.

Then, of course, the sacraments are means of grace, that is, instruments the Lord uses to work his grace and salvation in us. They can be said to "save" us in the same sense that elsewhere in the Bible similar things are said about faith, about obedience, about the Bible, about prayer -- all of which "save" only in the sense in which Christ's great salvation is given to us and worked in us and preserved in us through such means.

These and other considerations like them may well explain why Peter chose to speak of "the baptism that saves you" when we characteristically would not use such language. But, the fact is, Peter himself quickly goes on to disabuse any reader of an improper confidence in outward rites. Baptism saves you by the resurrection of Christ he says. If baptism saves it is in the sense that it represents and confirms and makes public our union with Jesus Christ in his saving work. It is Christ that saves us in the true sense, the final sense, the ultimate sense, as he has already said a number of times in his letter, and as recently as v. 18.

But still more, the baptism that saves you, he says in v. 21, is not baptism conceived of as an outward rite, the actual washing with water that takes place when a person is baptized. It is not as if the water itself makes anyone clean, of course. Peter knew that well enough from his own experience. He had already encountered people, probably a good number of people, certainly Simon in Samaria as we read in Acts 8, who had been baptized but were not true believers in Christ. These churches, no doubt, had seen professed Christians who had been baptized in the faith of Jesus Christ return to the world and give up that faith. It happened then just as it happens today. Jesus told us to expect it and, of course, he was soon proved right.

In any case, Peter makes this clear -- you don't get clean, you are not saved by baptism, by the power of water to wash your body. No, baptism saves you through the resurrection of Christ, by means of "the pledge of a good conscience toward God."

Now, what did Peter mean with those words? Well, commentators debate the fine points of the meaning of words and of Peter's phrase, but, by and large, it seems pretty clear that what Peter meant was this. Peter seems to be thinking of the fact that in baptism the believer commits himself to following Christ. That is part of what happens in baptism. God grants his seal, but the believer by undergoing baptism identifies himself as Christ's faithful follower and shows his determination to be the Lord's. It may even be, though no one can be sure of this, that Peter is imagining and supposing that his readers would imagine as well a typical baptism in which, as part of the ceremony, just as it is a part of the ceremony today, vows are taken, promises are made to God.

In the baptisms of adults today people, after first confessing their faith in God and in Christ as their Savior, will be asked questions like this one: "do you promise to make diligent use of the means of grace, to continue in the peace and fellowship of the people of God, and with the aid of the Holy Spirit to be Christ's faithful disciple to your life's end?" And they say, before God and the witnesses, "I do."

Well, perhaps it was something like that in Peter's day already. And Peter is thinking of that pledge, that vow, that promise of a faithful life to be lived for Christ and by his strength, when he says that baptism saves as a pledge of a good conscience towards God. The Church Fathers may have been reading their own baptismal practice back into Peter's remarks, but that is how they took his remark here.

In other words, Peter is saying to these converts to Christianity, baptism saves you insofar as one's undergoing it represents a true, a genuine, commitment to Christ, not simply to be saved by him, but to follow and serve and obey him, a pledge made, that is, in good conscience. That interpretation seems to be confirmed as well by the "therefore" with which chapter 4 begins and the subject of the following verses which is a faithful Christian life.

The references in the context to Christ's work, of course, remind us that we are not saved or made right with God by the consistency of our lives, by the purity of the pledge we make to him. Christ saves us by his life, death, and resurrection in our place. But only the one who sincerely believes in Christ, believes so as to confess him Lord, believes so as to obey him, believes so as to serve him with his or her life, believes so as to remain faithful in trial and trouble, believes so as to be willing to suffer for Christ -- the immediate subject of this argument remember -- only that one obtains the benefits and blessings of Jesus Christ having died for sins, the just for the unjust to bring his people to God. Who are his people -- well, they are those who trust and obey him, those who pledge and keep a good conscience toward him.

Now it is possible for a conscience to be so seared by constant refusal to heed its verdict on one's behavior that it no longer speaks with any authority in the soul. But even in the life of unbelievers the conscience is not silent. The conscience is a powerful voice. When a good one is pledged to God, it is no small thing. For the conscience is a demanding thing!

I came across an arresting illustration of this recently. It came to light only recently as a historian dug more deeply into an episode, all too typical episode, on the Western Front in the First World War. It seems a soldier in a Liverpool battalion, a Private James Smith, was executed for desertion on September 5, 1917. He had been in the army for seven years, had fought at Gallipoli in 1915, had been buried in the trenches by a German shell on the Western Front in 1916, had won several Good Conduct badges, and then lost them for various breeches of military discipline. And then in August of 1917, apparently, he had had enough and deserted. He was caught, tried, and sentenced to death (multitudes of soldiers were executed by their own armies in the First World War!).

Among those who had been assigned to the execution squad was a Private Richard Blundell, who, as it happened, knew Smith well. After the signal was given and the volley fired, it was discovered that Smith was still alive. Ordinarily, the officer in charge would finish off the prisoner with a round from his pistol, but this officer simply couldn't go through with it. Instead he gave his revolver to Blundell and ordered him to finish the job, which Blundell did. As a reward for his action, Blundell was given ten days' home leave which began that very day. Seventy-two years later in 1990, as Blundell lay dying, he repeated over and over again in the hearing of his son, "What a way to get leave; what a way to get leave." [Martin Gilbert, First World War, 359]

There is a conscience refusing to be silenced and speaking to the end. But it is not a good conscience, but a bad one. An accusing conscience, a condemning conscience.

But do not Christians struggle with a bad conscience? We sin, we fail times without number. How can we pledge a good conscience to God, which is to say, how can we pledge a life our own sanctified consciences, our consciences instructed and empowered by the Word of God and the Holy Spirit within us, will approve? Well, in part, of course, a Christian's good conscience is precisely his constant returning to Christ and the cross for forgiveness of his sins, his acknowledgment of his need of constant forgiveness and his seeking that forgiveness for all that he finds in his life that displeases God. Confessing sins, depending upon the grace of God in Christ, these are part of that obedience, part of that loyalty, part of that honor and service Christians have pledged to offer to God. In fact, in the marvelous words of the Puritan Thomas Willcox: "This will be sound religion: to rest all upon the everlasting mountains of God's love and grace in Christ, to live continually in the sight of Christ's infinite righteousness and merits...rejoicing in the ruins of your own righteousness...that Christ alone, as Mediator, may be exalted in his throne."

No conscience for which that is not what the Christian life means and the way it is practiced can be a good conscience toward God.

But Peter means also to refer to a real godliness, a real obedience, a real serving of God as his words here and his words that follow clearly show, and as his present argument is designed to prove -- for it is Christian faithfulness under persecution, in particular, that he is urging upon his readers. Their obedience may be imperfect in many ways, deeply flawed in fact. But it is nonetheless real. The pulse may be too fast or slow, the blood pressure to high or low, but there are the signs of real life.

It is, as a Christian conscience can tell, a life different from the life of unbelievers because of the Christian's love for God and God's people, his desire to serve the Lord for love's sake, his love of God's law and struggle to keep it in spite of the temptations of the world, his own flesh, and the devil. What does a good conscience toward God do? How does it manifest itself? It is always noting and confessing its sins, both to God and to those people against whom we have sinned. It is always seeking to put right, to restore wrongs that we have done. It is taking note of our duties and seeking to fulfill them, it is always turning from our sins and practicing and striving to practice new obedience. It is always looking at one's life from the vantagepoint of the will of God and always wanting and seeking to do that will. A good Christian conscience is always at work examining the life, putting right what is wrong, seeking in prayer and obedience to conform not to this world but to the will of God.

And from time to time this good conscience surfaces in ways so as to demonstrate its integrity, its honesty -- both in the acknowledgment of sin and the real commitment of the life to godliness.

Think of this. In 1977 Julian Imperial and an accomplice broke into the home of 73 year-old Mary Stein and bludgeoned her to death with a piece of wood. As they beat her without mercy she moaned "Lord, I'm coming home." The police never solved that crime. But Imperial could not get Mary Stein's words out of his mind. By the grace of God, sometime later he became a Christian. His conscience was now captive to the Word of God. He had pledged a good conscience to God. Years after the crime, long after the police had given up on solving the crime and were no longer looking for a suspect, Mr. Imperial turned himself in to the authorities. He is in prison today as he knows he should be making good on the pledge of a good conscience to God. [World (May 17, 1997)] You may have read in a recent World Magazine a similar story that happened just this year in Kansas City. A criminal now a Christian turning himself in for the sake of his conscience toward God.

In the newspaper this past week we were treated to one more story of a public figure who for years has misrepresented her qualifications and who, when caught in the lie, cannot really bring herself to admit it, offering a variety of different excuses and retreating from one to another. Not so the Christian who has pledged a good conscience toward God. He or she may have sins to acknowledge and confess, and acknowledge them they will, for it is part of their confession of faith in Christ who died for sins the just for the unjust; but they will also devote themselves to scrupulous obedience and faithfulness, which is what they have promised to God. You will find such Christians mourning their sins and confessing them to God and one another; you will find them at all hours of the day and night seeking to perform some service in Christ's name for God and man; you will find them always at work doing the will of their Father in heaven.

Such a person, any such Christian, who makes the pledge of a good conscience to God -- and not only at his baptism but over and over again, at least every Lord's Day in God's house -- and keeps that pledge in matters small and great, keeps it both in turning to Christ in his failures and in finding in Christ strength to do the Savior's will in all manner of ways, even in the face of great impediments, that person has a right to claim the salvation of God. Peter is, with this argument, nerving his readers and us, to show ourselves faithful to the Lord in the assurance that God will vindicate that faithfulness in due time. Such people who make and keep such a pledge of a good conscience to God may be a small minority, but the King of Kings who sits at God's right hand calls them and them alone his people and will, in due time, prove that they are to the entire world.

As we come then to the table of the Lord, renew your pledge of a good conscience to God, and seek from Christ' hand grace and strength to make good on your pledge.