Baptism is a burial…. I heard one preacher who told the story of being a young kid who lived on a farm….. one day one of his puppies died and he took it out to the back yard and dug a hole and placed the puppy in the hole and…… well the point of the story is that you bury dead things…..
If a person has already been made alive in Christ prior to being baptized… what are you doing burying them?
having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith in the power of God, who raised him from the dead. Col 2:12 (NIV)
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? 2 May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? 3 Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? 4 Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:1-4 (NASB)