This water prefigured Baptism, which now saves you. It does so not by the washing away of dirt from the body but by the pledge of a good conscience given to God through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
For thus says the One who is high and exalted, who lives eternally and whose name is holy: I dwell in a high and holy place but I am with the contrite and the humble, to revive the spirit of the humble and to revive the heart of the contrite.
How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of the messenger who announces peace, who bears good news and proclaims glad tidings, announcing salvation and saying to Zion, “Your God is king.”
But you are “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people claimed by God as his own possession,” so that you may proclaim the praise of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.
He then called the people and his disciples to him and said to them, “Anyone who wishes to follow me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”