Step 2: Baptised Into Christ’s Death
Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death? Romans 6:3
God’s grace to us in Christ has decisively changed our relationship to sin. We are no longer ‘slaves to sin’ (6:6) but have become ‘slaves’ to God and righteousness (6:17-22).
Paul is explaining in eight steps our new standing in relationship to sin and God Himself
Step 1: we died to sin (6:2)
Step 2: how we died to sin was through our being united with Christ in
His death as portrayed in our baptism (6:3)
Step 3: having shared in Christ’s death, we now also share in His
resurrection (6:4,5)
Step 4: our former self was crucified with Christ so that we might be
freed from sin’s slavery (6:6,7)
Step 5: both the death and resurrection of Christ were decisive events:
He died to sin once for all and lives continually before God (6:8-10)
Step 6: we are now what Christ is: ‘dead to sin but alive to God’ (6:11)
Step 7: being alive from death we must now offer our bodies to God as
instruments of righteousness (6:12,13)
Step 8: sin shall not be our master because our position has radically
changed from being ‘under law’ to being ‘under grace.’ Grace
does not encourage sin; it outlaws it (6:14)
We come to the second step:
Step 2: how we died to sin was through our being united with Christ in His death as portrayed in our baptism (6:3)
‘Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into his death?’ (6:3). Anyone who genuinely wondered if their forgiveness of all sin – past, present and future – meant they were now free to sin does not understand the meaning of their baptism. The kind of baptism Paul is writing of here is obviously water baptism. By the date we understand the letter of Romans was written, ‘baptise’ had become almost a technical expression for the rite of water baptism, which was itself understood as the outward initiation into the Christian life.
Baptism signifies our union with Christ, Christ crucified and Christ risen. The verb ‘to baptise’ was commonly used of immersion. It was used, for instance, of a ship that had sunk. The ship was said to have been ‘baptised’ (immersed) in the sea. Paul is saying that we have been ‘immersed’ into Christ. Similar language is used by Paul in Galatians 3:27 ‘for all of you who were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.’ Paul’s thinking is that Christian baptism, by joining the believer with Christ, also joins him or her with the death of Christ.
It is important to note too, that water baptism does not secure what it signifies. We don’t get baptised in water to be ‘saved’ (Paul has just spent three chapters carefully explaining that justification is by faith alone) or to experience our co-death with Christ. Our baptism in water follows our union with Christ. It is the outward sign of our already existing inward union with Him. That union with Christ, invisibly brought about by the Holy Spirit, is visibly demonstrated and sealed by baptism. Being a Christian necessitates a personal, vital identification with Christ which is publicly demonstrated by our water baptism.