Baptism is an incredible symbolic picture of what happens spiritually when, by faith, we trust in Christ’s death and resurrection.  Paul tell us in Romans 6 that when we go down into the water, our old self, the old person, dies just like Christ died.  He continues by telling us that just like Christ raised from the dead, we too are resurrected to a new life when we come up out of the water.  And while this is a picture of what is happening on the inside of the believer through baptism, we also recognize that baptism is the immersion of a believer in water where they are publicly identifying themselves as a Jesus follower and acknowledging that they belong to God’s family- the Church.