Romans 6:1-5

Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
1 What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2 By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? 3 Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

5 If we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his.


Dig Deeper
My wife and I had a unique wedding ceremony. Oh, it was pretty normal and traditional in what was supposed to happen but it was one of those weddings in which seemingly everything that could go wrong did go wrong. Some of these problems included our entire wedding party coming down with the flu the day before the wedding, my wife was fifteen minutes late for the wedding, the wind kept blowing out our unity candles, and all of the drinks for our reception were put in an industrial freezer and left there too long so that absolutely everything was frozen solid at the start of the festivities meaning that we had to do our initial toasts with empty cups. We look back on that day now and laugh but the important thing is we are still married. Even though the day was full of “adventures,” it was still a great day and a great ceremony. Wedding ceremonies can be difficult to plan, stressful, and full of problems but that is what we do in our culture. It is just an assumption that if two people plan to spend the rest of their lives together, that they will have a marriage ceremony of some type even if it is in a non-traditional location or format. It is still assumed that a marriage will begin with a ceremony. There are very few exceptions to that. Even now, in our day and age, when two people who do not meet the biblical requirements of being husband and wife wish to get married the first thing they do is plan a ceremony. It’s just what Americans do.

God created humans free of sin but he also created us with our own free will. The Bible makes it clear that it didn’t take long for humans to abuse that will and rebel against God’s will. Yet, God showed immediately that he had a plan to deal with the problem of sin and the death that had been ushered into the world through sin. God’s solution was so simple, in some senses, that it is almost shocking. His solution to the problem of sin and death was to create a new family. He would bring about a new people, a new family, and deal with the sin of the world through them. It was through them that he would create a new humanity. God would take several stages in coming to the finished product but we see some striking similarities at each of those stages as God was busy creating a renewed people, his new family. At each stage God would make a marriage-like commitment to his people.

Paul, as we have noted, has begun to tell his story of the new exodus and the new people of God. These are the people that have moved from the location, realm, and reign of sin and death into a new reign of grace in the Messiah. Paul doesn’t likely seriously think that the recipients of his letter that would completely misunderstand this line of thinking, but based on his theoretical objection here in verse 1 and what he has already mentioned in 3:8, it seems clear that some were claiming that Paul’s gospel was a dangerous thing. Why with all that talk of grace meeting people in Christ in the realm of sin and creating a renewed humanity, might lead some people to think that they can remain in their place of sin (a better rendering of Paul’s question in verse 1 than the TNIV’s “shall we go on sinning,” which implies an action rather than a status or state of being) without seeking holiness at all because if God’s grace increases in the very place where sin abounds (5:20-21) then why not remain in sin?

Paul will have none of that kind of talk at all. It shows a gross misunderstanding of the effect of the gospel in the lives of individuals. This misunderstanding has become almost the definitive way in which people in our world today have chosen to define the gospel. It has become a twisting of God’s grace so that the message of the gospel is reduced to the belief that God simply wants to meet people where they are at and love them just the way they are without any call to change. Paul says that this is by no means the sort of thing he is teaching. When one comes to the gospel it is a death and a new life. It is moving from the country of sin and death to the country of resurrection life. When one moves to a new country it is assumed that you will have to learn the language and customs of the new country. You cannot die to the realm of sin and move into a new life and still live in sin anymore than you can move from Australia to the US and still live in Australia. It is impossible. This is what happens, Paul wants to be clear, when God creates his new family in the Messiah.

God loves human beings, true enough, but we create a entirely different and unbiblical version of God when we apply to God a human version of love that loves you “just the way you are” and bind him to that kind of love. God loves his creation far more than that. He sees his human beings that have been dehumanized left under the reign of sin. The whole point of fulfilling his covenant promises through the Messiah was to take human beings out of the dehumanizing realm of sin not “love” them by leaving them there. One cannot claim to be in Christ and be raised to a new life through the resurrection and still cling to the slavery of the types of things that Paul described in 1:18-32.

We might be surprised that exactly the point where Paul wants to talk of God creating a new humanity, his new family, that he turns to the subject of baptism. Why would he do that? Paul clearly believes here that one enters into Christ, and thus this new family in the very real act of baptism. Many in our religious world today have relegated baptism to an optional or symbolic act but Paul will have none of that type of thinking. He reminds his brothers and sisters that have escaped the reign of sin that they did so through the water of baptism. This should not be that big of a surprise when we look at God’s history of forming his people throughout the pages of Scriptures. Just as a wedding ceremony can be assumed, we can assume that water will be involved when God forms a new humanity.

In Genesis 1, we are told that the whole world was in a state of death and that creation was brought out of the chaos of the water, culminating with the creation of the first humans. Then, in response to the sin of those humans, God promised in Genesis 3:15 to deal with the rebellion instigated by the Serpent through the means of a human seed. As human evil reached an early fever pitch, God created a new remnant of humanity by brining them into the Ark and through the water during Noah’s flood (something that Peter in 1 Peter 3:20-21 saw as a foreshadowing of the baptism of which Paul is currently describing). This promise was passed directly to Abraham as God entered into covenant with him and promised him that he would create a family from his descendants through whom the whole world would be blessed. As God began to create that family, he brought Abraham’s descendants out of slavery in Egypt by taking them through the Red Sea (and event that Paul likened to being baptized into Moses in 1 Cor. 10:2). Later, as they were about to enter a new phase by entering into the promised land, he brought them through the Jordan River. As we look through the pages of the Bible the pattern starts to become clear. Why water baptism to enter into the covenant family of God? Because this is how God has always worked when he was creating a people for himself. Just as we always seem to desire a marriage ceremony when we are getting married, so God has always brought his people through the water when he is doing something new with them. Thus, in this passage, Paul not only appeals to the pattern that God has used in history, he also clearly primarily appeals to Red Sea crossing in particular as he continues his narrative of the new exodus.

Throughout the first five chapters, Paul has alluded to being in Christ as he has talked about having righteousness in the Messiah and having eternal life through Jesus Christ. Christians, Paul assumes as he appeals to a common knowledge, are all baptized into his the death of Christ. This is the first time that Paul has explicitly appealed to the concept that what is true of the king is true of his people but he has presumed upon that basic understanding throughout the foundation he has laid since the opening verses of his letter. He reminds Christians that they each crucified their own lives and the desire to live according to their own wills and took up the corporate life of Christ and the will of God (see 1 Cor. 12:12; Gal. 2:19-20; 3:27-28). This is not an option or some higher level of commitment. Connecting with the life of Christ by dying to self and entering into his life is something that all Christians must do. This is where the resurrection faith that Paul has traced all the way back to Abraham meets believing obedience. One cannot separate, try as you might, faith in Christ from baptism into Christ because having faith in Christ is to have faith that through the power of his death and resurrection I can die to myself and enter into his life which is done at the waters of baptism. This is the moment when I leave the reign of sin and of not being part of the people of God and become part of his people (see 1 Cor. 12:12; 1 Pet. 2:10). In order to have the resurrection life of Christ, we must first connect with his death. In order to live and free ourselves from the slavery of sin we must, as did the people of the first exodus, enter through the water in faith in the power of God.

If we we unite with Christ in his death, becoming intertwined so that what is true of him is true of us to the point that when God looks at us he sees Christ (Col. 3:3), we will not only have the resurrection life of the new humanity in the present but will also be guaranteed to be united with him in the future resurrection. This is where so many get the theology of resurrection incorrect. Some hold to such a future hope of some type of existence in heaven that they fail to apply the resurrection life to their present existence in any meaningful way. On the other hand, some groups such as the heretical full preterist position maintain that resurrection is solely a spiritual event that happens now with no hope of a physical resurrection in the future. The great Christian hope of resurrection, however, is that the resurrection life does begin new in the hope of a new life but that new life points to the very real physical resurrection in the future. Those who enter into the resurrection now must begin to live their lives in the present as though God’s promise of future, physical resurrection in the Messiah are true.


Devotional Thought
Do you view your baptism as the beginning of a new life where you actually died to yourself and were freed from the realm of sin and brought into the promise of new life? We tend to view leaving sin behind as restrictive rather than the freedom from slavery that it actually is. How can you take hold of that freedom today?