<p>2:22 <em>It has happened to them according to the true proverb: A dog returns to his own vomit and a sow, having washed, to her wallowing in the mire</em>- The word for 'washed' means a complete bathing, and would be appropriate to baptism. These orthodox Jewish converts who had come from hard line Judaism to being washed in Christ by Peter baptizing them... were returning to the wallowing in the mud which had been their former way of life. And that was how Peter therefore esteemed the hard line legalism of Judaism- a wallowing in mud, as pigs, the classic unclean animal. In another analogy, their conversion away from Judaism had been a vomiting up of rotting unclean food; and they were now returning to what they had once vomited up. Judaism is not at all spirituality, according to how Peter, Paul, Stephen and others allude to it. The washing of baptism is likened to a vomiting up of rotten food. Again the implication is that the vomiting of the old life was a one off act which occurred at a specific time- their baptism. Baptism is therefore a specific action of the Spirit upon us in moral terms.</p>