Baptism is an ordinance of profound symbolism. In the purest sense, we are baptized to witness our willingness to accept Christ, to take upon us his name, and to commit ourselves to receive his atonement. We go down into the watery grave as a token and a remembrance of our Master’s descent into the tomb of death. We come forth, as did he, unto a newness of life: his a resurrected immortality, ours a sanctified mortality. Having been “planted ... in the likeness of his death,” we are thereby “in the likeness of his resurrection” (Romans 6:3-5).