Is the Baptism the Cause of Regeneration?

Baptism is when one comes spiritually alive to god. But i'm sceptical that we would always be able to have a correspondence between spiritual regeneration and visible behavior. The virtues of a temperance, prudence, just fortitude, the natural virtues, even faith, hope and love, are better carried out if you recognize they're good so it causes a change in your own virtues. And i think that these explanations ar we need to really include for a lot of us because they help account for other things as well.