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BAPTISM beautifully conveys how Christ has transformed our peril: water is both perilous and life-giving; and Christ has transformed the peril of drowning in sin into the gentle, cleansing bath of salvation.
Debra Rienstra, So Much More: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality

THE SIGNIFICANCE of baptism is the objective fact to which it witnesses, the historic event of redemption and the present gift that it makes possible, embraced through faith in that God who acted and yet acts.
G.R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament

IN THE WATERS of baptism we are reminded that we are not born in a vacuum, nor do we journey entirely alone (although loneliness is often part of the burden). Being reborn, being made alive, involves being born into a community. So there are strings attached to this adventure.
Alan W. Jones, Journey into Christ

BAPTISM CONSECRATES us, and consecration is a conscriptive rope that takes us to where we would rather not go, namely, into that suffering that produces maturity.
Ronald Rolheiser, The Holy Longing

BAPTISM CELEBRATES and effects the merging of the Jewish and the Gentile stories. A people with the law and a people without it, a people walled off from the world and a people open to it, become a single community, melding the legacies of both. . . . This new status is a new kind of social reality, a unity that overarches the differences (Jew/Gentile, male/female, slave/free) that previously had separated people.
John Howard Yoder, Body Politics

BAPTISM IS VALID, even though faith be wanting. For my faith does not make baptism, but receives it.
Martin Luther, The Large Catechism

FAITH DOES NOT follow from baptism, but baptism follows from faith.
Menno Simons, Foundation of Christian Doctrine

WHETHER BAPTIZED as children or adults, our baptism signifies primarily what God has graciously done for us, and it is upon this that faith rests. It can be argued that the two forms of baptism—infant and adult—together express the full meaning of baptism better than each would alone. In other words, their meanings are complementary rather than mutually exclusive.
Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding

WHEN PEOPLE submit to Christian baptism, they die with the Messiah and are raised with him into a new life. This means, first and foremost, a change of status. … Once you are baptized, of course, you can try to shirk or shrug off your new responsibilities. You can pretend you don't after all have a new status. … But what you can't do is get unbaptized again.
Tom Wright, Paul for Everyone, Romans: Part One

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May 2005, Vol. 49, No. 5