What is the reason that the Bible requires you to be baptized in water, and can you be saved if you never do it?

When you fall in love and get engaged, you make a commitment to limit your choices and to only be with that one person for the rest of your life.

The wedding ceremony is a public declaration of your fidelity…. but your heart was already spoken for.

In the same way, water baptism is like a wedding; a public declaration that you are committing yourself to Jesus, body and soul. You willingly choose to limit your choices and turn your back on the negative systems and ways of the world. It is symbolically dying with Jesus and resurrecting to new life. It is an external proclamation of the internal cleaning that already happened.

A water baptism can’t change anything on the inside; so if you are not really dedicated to Jesus, why do it? You’d be like a woman who marries for status or money, but she hates the man: she just wants the fancy ceremony for show.

Two worlds literally collided the night I met Jesus. He revealed his profound love for me with just one look; love beyond human understanding. I knew I had betrayed him… and I was ruined. I fell on my knees begging for his forgiveness… “repenting in dust and ashes.”

SUDDENLY - the floodgates of heaven opened - and something like Niagra Falls went through the top of my head and out the soles of my feet. This took all of two seconds(?). The unseen water from heaven washed me clean and I knew… my sins were as far from me as east is from west.

This cleaning paved the way for the Holy Spirit to make His home with me. I knew I would never be the same.

I won’t go into detail about the amazing things that happened next; I’m skipping to the part where, after falling on my face to worship, I had this intense ‘urge’ to get (externally) baptized. I remember wondering where it came from… because I knew I was not the source of it. I got baptized publicly at age 43, to show my commitment to Christ.

If my body died before the ceremony, I’d still be going to heaven.

By the way, like a woman who wants to renew her wedding vows, I wouldn’t mind doing it again. :)