Each day we must learn to die, to get go, to be plunged under the waters so that God might pull us forth like newborn babies. Baptism is a dress rehearsal for death. We must die many deaths, and we must be born again and again and again. As Luther put it so wryly, - the old Adam must be drowned daily because the old Adam is a good swimmer. B aptism is about grace.
Grace is a gift.
A gift implies dependency and dependency raises questions about our pretensions of omnipotence. Baptism reminds us that we are always helpless, dependent souls as far as our relationship to God is concerned. We are always dependent upon God to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. Consider the foolishness of a book like How to be Born Again. Salvation is not an achievement or new life style.