The following are verses about water baptism in the New Testament followed by excuses I have personally heard in an attempt to justify the tradition that baptism is a symbolic public testimony.

Mark 16:16 – He who believes and is baptized will be saved, but he who disbelieves will be condemned.
Excuse: This verse only condemns those who don’t believe, not those who are not baptized. (This excuse would not be a problem if this were the only verse we explain away.)

John 3:5 – Jesus answered, “Most certainly I tell you, unless one is born of water and spirit, he can’t enter into God’s Kingdom.”
Excuse: The water here is not baptism, but our fleshly birth. We’re born in a sack of water. (I like David Bercot’s response: “If Jesus did not mean water here, then he was a terrible communicator, because everyone thought he did for about 1700 years.”)

Acts 2:38 – “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins.”
Excuse: The word “for” (Gr. eis) can be translated as “because of.” (Yes, it can in the rare occasions when context calls for it.)

Acts in general – All baptisms are immediate, the Philippian jailer’s baptism (Acts 16) was not in public nor before the church, and there is no “sinner’s prayer” anywhere.
Excuse – Really? (No one seems to know this, so they’re surprised. Then they go away and apparently never think about it again.)

Acts 22:16 – Now why do you wait? Arise, be baptized, and wash away your sins, calling on the name of the Lord.
Excuse: Some scholars say “Be baptized” goes with “arise,” and “wash away your sins” goes with “calling on the name of the Lord.” (Isn’t it funny that the act that involves water doesn’t go with “wash away”?)

Romans 6:3-4 – Or don’t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.
Excuse: this is all symbolic, not actual

Galatians 3:27 – For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ.
Excuse: this is Spirit baptism

Colossians 2:12 – … having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the working of God, who raised him from the dead.
Excuse: same as Galatians 3:27

Titus 3:5 – Not by works of righteousness which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy, he saved us through the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit …
Excuse: “the washing of regeneration” is something other than water baptism.

1 Peter 3:21 – … in the days of Noah, while the ship was being built. In it, few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water. This is a symbol of baptism, which now saves you—not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Excuse: The words after “baptism … now saves you” mean that Peter said, “Baptism now saves you (but not really).”

I’m sure I missed a verse or two, but these should be sufficient to display the problem. From my earliest days as a Christian, back in Florida in 1982 and 1983, the barrage of excuses Christians use to avoid things the Bible at least seems to say plainly, has bothered me.

I have found that those “difficult verses” that we are forced to talk about mostly disappear when we stop making excuses for disbelieving the primary meaning of verses. In fact, once we stop making excuses we wind up believing the same things the apostles’ churches believed and wrote about after the apostles had died, rather than having to refer to those apostolically taught churches as a bunch of legalists.

The road there can be confusing–how can Romans 2:6 and Ephesians 2:8-9 both be true?–but the arrival is peaceful and satisfying.