Cover image via Gospel Media Library. 

Have you ever attended a baptism where the person had to be baptized again? It could be that the wording was said incorrectly, or that they were not fully immersed in the water.

Why be so picky?  Because baptism by immersion is a saving ordinance and a key component of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It symbolizes the death and resurrection of Christ, and death of our natural selves. Being fully immersed is symbolic of being completely born again. We become His covenant disciples, dedicated to serving God and His children.

The Lord set this example in Matthew 3:13-17, and explained it exactly to the Nephites, and later to the Prophet Joseph Smith. Not only did it need to be done properly, but by someone having the priesthood authority to do so. And yes, you must be completely immersed.

There’s a beauty to this ordinance, a gleaming pureness as the person rises from the water, 100% rinsed and sparkling. They honestly seem to have a luminous glow about them.

As I was teaching Seminary last week, I felt inspired to write on the board, “You were baptized by immersion. Do you still feel immersed in the Gospel?”

None of us gets through this life without sins and mistakes. Our loving Savior paid for each and every one of them, knows us, and is eager for us to repent and accept His incredible, unfathomable gift.

But we cannot languish in rebellion, enjoying our favorite sins without any effort to change and improve. Thinking we can just tap into His atoning Sacrifice later is wrong. It would be like sticking one foot out during your baptism, and saying, “Well, I agree with most of this, but I want to keep a few toes out to cover the times when I take a drink, cause a fight, cheat on tests, break laws of chastity, and criticize the leaders.”

Nope. We have to be all in. This doesn’t imply perfection the way the world defines it, but the way the Greeks did—as finished and complete. President Nelson once said, “We need not be dismayed if our earnest efforts toward perfection now seem so arduous and endless. Perfection is pending. It can come in full only after the Resurrection and only through the Lord.”

President Dieter F. Uchtdorf has said, “There is no threshold of perfection you must attain in order to qualify for God’s grace.” God is waiting for us with open arms, thrilled to bless us for our sincere efforts.

When we isolate a certain tenet of the gospel that’s harder for us to live, and excuse ourselves for ignoring that one, we are no longer fully immersed. We’re in the water, but one part is sticking out.

And if we continue without effort to repent, we often find ourselves excusing other areas as well—we become slower to forgive others, more reluctant to tithe, less dedicated to the temple, and so on.

Being fully immersed in the gospel doesn’t mean we’re perfect, just that we embrace all of it and are trying our level best. Will we still stumble and fall? Of course. But we don’t stay there. We get up and enlist the Savior’s help to do better. We push ourselves to grow, to develop traits such as faith, compassion, humility, patience, and forgiveness. We take personal inventory from time to time, and set righteous goals that will bless our life and the lives of others.

In his talk, “Ye Must Be Born Again,” Elder David A. Bednar stated, “And after we come out of the waters of baptism, our souls need to be continuously immersed in and saturated with the truth and the light of the Savior’s gospel. Sporadic and shallow dipping in the doctrine of Christ and partial participation in His restored Church cannot produce the spiritual transformation that enables us to walk in a newness of life. Rather, fidelity to covenants, constancy of commitment, and offering our whole soul unto God are required if we are to receive the blessings of eternity.”

The world is filled with temptations and opportunities to let things slide. It isn’t easy to keep ourselves fully immersed. But it’s a whole lot harder to be only halfway dedicated and face the consequences of incomplete immersion.

Joni Hilton is an LDS author, Seminary teacher, and shares life hacks at https://m.youtube.com/c/jonihilton. Her novel, Golden, is now an Amazon audiobook.