Today, Christians associate water with salvation and grace as we participate in baptism in order to be consecrated to God. However, water has not always had such happy connections in regard to God’s relationship to mankind. We are all familiar with the story of Noah. Humanity had become so disturbing that God decided to flood the entire earth. God spared Noah and his family by ordering the obedient Noah to build an ark in advance of the flood, as God deemed Noah righteous. We cannot be certain how many people were alive before the flood, but we know only eight people were spared- Noah, his wife, his sons, and his daughters-in-law. (Genesis 7:7) Once the flood had come and gone and the land had dried up, God made a covenant with Noah that he would not use a flood to destroy all life ever again, and that a rainbow would be the sign of this covenant.
Just because God did not destroy humanity through water or anything else, it did not mean that humanity had not descended into decay. However, God’s response was to send his son Jesus Christ to earth to save humanity through the sacrifice of his life. But before he began his earthly ministry, he was baptized by John the Baptist. And according to Mark 1:10-11, “Just as Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.” Notably, the bird that Noah sent out from the ark to find evidence of dry land was a dove, which has come to signify peace. When Jesus had been baptized, the Holy Spirit descended on him like a dove, displaying the covenant of peace between the Father and the Son, and later between God and the saints. It is through God that the meaning of water changes. According to 1 Peter:18-22, the great flood was the water by which Noah and his family were saved, and that this very water symbolizes the baptism that renders the saints pure before God. According to Galatians 3:27, “[…] all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.” What we see here then is the covenant between God and Noah writ large. The covenant between God and the saints developed through the sacrifice of Jesus is one not only of salvation, but of peace. Just as when we are baptized, we put on the clothes of Christ, God the Father is well pleased with us when we are baptized as well. Baptism is symbolic of the transformation of the decaying circumstances of the world into a propellent of the grace of God and, ultimately, the eternal peace God will establish. As humanity was saved from physical decimation through a violent flood, humanity was saved from spiritual decimation through the violent death of Jesus Christ.
All scripture referenced from the New International Version (NIV) Translation.