You're referring to 1 Peter 3:21, ostensibly, in which Peter literally says that baptism saves you. Obviously the water is not what saves you materially, it is the Holy Spirit which saves, but clearly one does not have baptism without water. This is what makes it a sacrament, it has both a material form and spiritual form at once. Going back to confession, how do you reconcile Matthew 18:18? In this quote Jesus is speaking to his disciples telling them that they have the authority to assert heavenly bounds on earth, this has been interpreted and maintained as apostolic authority to forgive sins on earth and in heaven, through Christ's authority solely. Similarly how do you reconcile John 20:23-24? Another quotation of Jesus speaking to the apostles, here our Lord speaks in clearer terms granting explicit authority to the apostles to forgive sins on earth as in heaven. The authority of which only comes from Christ through the Holy Spirit of course, same for all sacraments, but the material evidence of which is the role of the apostolic priest. Once again this is the interpretation maintained from even before the canonization of the bible by early church fathers, and remains so 2,000 years later in the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Where did this interpretation err in this apostolic lineage?