I would not say that any individual part of baptism is the "active ingredient," only that baptism as a whole spiritually cleanses.
How does anything cleanse if it doesn't have an "active ingredient" that can cleanse? So you are talking about Water Baptism meeting a *legal requirement* for cleansing to take place? If so, what do you base this legal requirement on--a general call to repentance in an apostate Israel?
But you would not say, for example, that someone could claim to be a believer and refuse baptism in spite of it being commanded by our Lord, would you?
It depends on whether it was a real command and what the requirement actually entails. I'm not aware that Water Baptism is specifically required of everyone as a legal mandate? At best, there were specific situations where people were compelled to be baptized, just as in a fire those in a burning house are compelled to get out.
It is an urgent directive more than a legal mandate, however. Sometimes people ignore such a directive and pay the consequences. But this doesn't necessarily mean all is lost--what is lost may be only a particular opportunity to take the best course of action made available.
The water in the Flood and in John's baptism certainly can be said to be symbolic in some ways, but I don't see how that relates to whether the baptism of Jesus is efficacious or not.
We are told that the waters of the Flood were efficacious in removing sinners. And we believe that the water in Water Baptism is efficacious in bringing forgiveness from God, However, the water itself cannot cleanse from Sin. It is symbolic of something spiritual, something internal that can in fact cleanse from Sin.
Some assume, however, that just the legal act of obeying Baptism as a mandate has the effect of forgiving Sin. But my argument here is that there must be an actual agent of cleansing--something spiritual that is only represented symbolically by the water.
These were 2 different Baptisms, one under the Law and one after Redemption had been completed. Prior to redemption water was used for cleansing in a way that fell short of NT Baptism. NT Baptism permanently cleanses from Sin, and is by no means a temporary means of forgiveness. The water in NT Baptism no longer shows a need for redemption, but actually shows that redemption has already been achieved.
John's Baptism also dealt with a spiritual cleansing from Sin. But like water, the cleansing was transitory. And the Flood merely removed sinners--it did not remove the Sin from believers. So the waters of the Flood were symbolic of a different kind of cleansing that transcended the temporal efficacy of water in the OT era.
The water is symbolic of a different kind of cleansing that is efficacious in removing Sin and its guilt permanently. It is Baptism of a Spirit that permanently cleanses through Christ's redemption, as opposed to a Spirit that forgives temporarily under the Law, The Spirit of Christ is the agent that truly cleanses permanently from Sin, as opposed to the cleansing of Sin that takes place through the imagery of water.
The healings were miraculous; of course handkerchiefs and aprons, in and of themselves, can't heal people. But God worked through those physical means to perform miracles - the preceding verse says that God was performing miracles by the hand of Paul, i.e. "Paul was performing miracles," as we would say, but ultimately it was God performing the miracle, and nobody who says "Paul performed a miracle" actually thinks Paul has any power to do so apart from God. In the same way, "the handkerchiefs and aprons were carried to the sick, and they were healed" doesn't detract from God ultimately being the giver of grace.
No contest--that's true.
Here you've gone from water being symbolic of the spiritual part of the baptism to baptism itself being symbolic, with no apparent connection. Even if we say the water is symbolic in this way, that doesn't imply that it is exclusively symbolic, nor does it imply that the baptism as a whole is not efficacious.
Water Baptism in the OT was efficacious for forgiveness, though it was a temporary forgiveness. Water Baptism in the NT is efficacious in representing a permanent forgiveness that has already been achieved.
The waters of the Flood represented NT Baptism in the sense the water in NT Baptism represents an internal cleansing of Sin by Christ. The water is thus symbolic of an internal, spiritual cleansing that is final, or permanent.
Baptism itself is symbolic of the death of sinners. The waters of Baptism are symbolic of our internal, spiritual cleansing.
