These were the words of the vow that the young couple made to each other in the midst of their wedding ceremony. They placed the rings which they had so carefully selected, on each other's left ring finger, and were duly married as the minister pronounced them to be husband and wife.

They proudly displayed their rings to family members and friends after the ceremony to demonstrate that they were married. In the days, weeks, months and years that followed, whenever someone would ask if they were married, they always proudly displayed their wedding rings.

One day they were challenged as to whether the acquisition of, exchange of, and wearing of wedding bands necessarily made them married. They had to admit that the wedding rings were but outward and visible signs of the legal covenanted relationship that they had entered into on the date of their marriage. In marriage they were intimately united as one, but the rings served merely as symbols by which they publicly proclaimed that they were unashamedly married to one another. The rings did not make them married.

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   Likewise, neither does baptism make a person a Christian. There is no spiritual regeneration effected in the public and symbolic act of baptism. Water baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inward spiritual reality of union with Jesus Christ. In that our spirit has been overwhelmed by the Spirit of Christ (baptism in the Spirit), this is subsequently externally represented as our body is overwhelmed by water ­ the outward signifying the internal, but not effecting such. In water baptism we unashamedly publicly proclaim our spiritual union with Jesus Christ, but the physical act of baptism does not effect our spiritual salvation, anymore than the wearing of a wedding ring effects marriage.