According to chapter 6 in the book of Romans, before we are baptized we must become dead to sin. Baptism is to symbolize Christ's death, burial, and resurrection. Sprinkling does not fulfill that because there is very little action involved. Baptism by immersion involves the person being baptized being lowered into the Christ and figuratively dying in our sin, and gaining new life as they are raised up to Christ in righteous obedience. We can keep this 'newness of life' by using our body as an instrument of righteous rather than that of an instrument of sin. Our bodies are gifts from God. In order to keep living a righteous life, we must dedicate our lives to living in a way that the Lord can use us as a tool to bring about his righteousness.
Mosiah 3:19 states: "For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father".
According to this verse in Mosiah, ideally our natural man would die at baptisms. We would no longer want to do the things of the world and would, instead, want to do what Christ would have us do.
Romans 6 discusses knowing whose servant we are. We are given two choices: become a servant of sin or a servant of obedience. Servants of obedience are righteous and will be blessed, whereas servants of sin will find only death. It is very black and white--no grey area. Those things that we do out of faithful of obedience will cause us to be servants of obedience and righteousness. Things that detract from the Spirit and lead us farther away from Christ will leave us a servant of sin.
True freedom comes when we give up our sin, and turn to Christ as we lead lives of righteous obedience.
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