Correct. Water baptism is an outward symbol, but it not required.
I say this with intentional charity: Can you offer any biblical support for this statement?
Some background: this is what I grew up believing as well. It's the reason why I didn't get baptized until I was 17 years old, because I had been taught that baptism wasn't necessary in anyway, but just an outward symbol and a public affirmation of my faith. I trusted my teachers and pastors who told me this, and when as a child I had read passages in Scripture which seemed to indicate that baptism was really important, those teachers and pastors convinced me that I was reading it wrong and that baptism was just an outward symbol.
It's a position I, then, became convinced of in my youth, throughout childhood and adolescence, and into my early 20's.
The problem is that I think my first impressions when, as a child reading those passages of Scripture, were probably more accurate: And that the meaning and significance of Baptism can be found by a plain and straightforward reading of the Bible.
It really appears to me, now, that the "outward symbol" argument is one that is not biblically defensible, but rather stems from a desire to avoid the plain meaning of Scripture because many do not know how to reconcile elements of their theology with what the Bible says about baptism.
By that I mean this: Many do not know how to reconcile a belief in salvation by grace alone through faith alone with the biblical teaching on baptism; because they assume that baptism is a "work", and since works can't save us, then baptism must not play any role in our salvation.
This objection appears to be centered upon a single mistaken premise, that baptism is a work, i.e. something we do for God. And a secondary wrong assumption: physical, tangible, and material reality is inferior to spiritual, invisible, immaterial reality--ergo since baptism involves the body, and physical water, and there is ritual build up around it it therefore must not be a God thing, but a man thing.
Challenge: Is it not the case, throughout Scripture, that God works through material, visible, and physical means to accomplish His purposes, His work? When Naaman dipped himself in the Jordan seven times, was it God or Naaman who worked to cure Naaman's leprosy? When the Lord Jesus took a bit of dirt and His own saliva turning it into mud and applied it to the blind man's eyes, what happened? What kind of work was it that cured blindness? When the woman with a problem with bleeding touched the fringes of the Lord's clothes, what happened?
I often see some go so far as to mock, saying "Water can't save anyone", and I'd agree. Also, water can't cure leprosy, dirt and spit can't cure blindness, and fringes on clothes can't cure people either. And neither can bronze serpents save people from deadly snake bites. And yet throughout the Bible God works through visible, physical, material means to accomplish His works.
If Baptism, therefore, is not our work, but God's work; if the water is the physical, material, and visible means which God uses to do something--to act, to accomplish His work--then that means baptism isn't about works but
grace. "By grace you have been saved, through faith" is not in opposition to, but is fully in agreement and attached to, "baptism now saves us" (1 Peter 3:21).
Because Baptism isn't an outward symbol, a human work we do for God, or for ourselves, or for others; but is God's work, a gift and precious means through which God operates, and which the promises of God are attached. So, therefore, when Paul writes in Galatians 3:27 "all of you who were baptized into Christ have been clothed with Christ", Paul really means what he says. In baptism, we have put on Christ as a garment, we are clothed with Jesus, we have received His righteousness as a pure gift, as grace, through faith, to be declared and reckoned righteous before God on Christ's account. Baptism does not merely represent this, Baptism
does this.
-CryptoLutheran
