Baptism uses water for washing. Yet its focus is not outward washing, such as the washing of dirt from your body, but inward washing, that is, the washing of sins from your soul. It was the pervasive presence of sin that triggered the flood in Noah’s day (instigated by demonic spirits), but the suffering of Christ brought about forgiveness of sins in Peter’s day (to the vexation of those imprisoned spirits).
21 Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ,