We wish we had a dollar for every time we have heard that statement. Do you know when it comes up? When you go to visit a fallen member, hoping to bring him back to the Lord. "Yes, I know I don't (attend services like I should, study like I should, pray as I ought) and I know I (drink a little, need to watch my language, and hang out too often with people who are not righteous while avoiding Christians as much as possible) but I've been baptized so I'm okay!"
Do you know why that happens? Because we neglect to teach that baptism should be the start of a lifelong commitment to the Lord. Instead we dunk people like Oreos in a glass of milk and they think "Now my sins are gone and I'm all right." It's our own version of "once-saved-always-saved."
Parents may be the worst. They push baptism to the point that their child has nightmares and begs to be baptized, even if they are just 8 years old and wouldn't know what lifetime commitment truly meant if it bit them. No! You teach them to commit. Then when that happens, you tell them, "This is how you show that commitment, by obeying God in this command," which also happens to be how you wash those sins away. It takes both.
Or are ye ignorant 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 like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life… For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he lives, he lives unto God. Even so reckon you also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus. " (Rom 6:10-11).
Baptism is not a magic bullet. If you don't live like you have been baptized, showing that commitment every day of your life, it doesn't do you one bit of good.
Know ye not, that to whom ye present yourselves as servants unto obedience, his servants ye are whom ye obey; whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness? But thanks be to God, that, whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered; and being made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness (Rom 6:16-18).
Dene Ward