Merely reading the Bible won’t change anybody. Most Christians read the Bible again and again, but there is very little change in their lives.
What brings change is reading the Bible and doing what it says, honestly examining our life and making the necessary changes to align it with God’s standard as revealed in the Bible.
Reading the Bible but not doing what it says is the sure recipe to becoming like the Pharisees. Their heads were full of Scripture, but their hearts were far from God.
Same thing with baptism. Without faith and repentance, baptism is a meaningless and empty ritual. You get into the water a dry sinner and come out a wet sinner.
[Matthew 7:26] Everyone who hears/reads these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
[James 1:23-24] If anyone is a hearer/reader of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like.
[Luke 6:46] Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you?