Step 3: Sharers in His Resurrection
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.
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. Romans 6:4,5
Romans 6 is a vehement denial of any thought that God’s grace gives us licence to sin. In eight steps Paul seeks to prove that the gospel not only doesn’t encourage sin but it actually hinders sin.
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 have looked at the first two steps and now come to the third.
Step 3: having shared in Christ’s death, we now also share in His resurrection (6:4,5)
The basic theme of the first half of Romans 6 is that the death and resurrection of Christ are not just historical facts. They are personal experiences as well that are visibly portrayed when a Christian is baptised in water. We ‘were baptised into his death’ (6:3) and so ‘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 [through a glorious display of His mighty power], we too may live a new life,’ (6:4) the new resurrection life of Christ which begins now and will find its completion on the day of resurrection.
‘For if we have been united with him like this in his death [literally, with him in the likeness of his death], we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection [with him in the likeness of his resurrection]’ (6:5). The verb ‘united’ comes from a word that means ‘to grow together, to unite, to amalgamate.’ Jesus came ‘in the likeness of sinful man’ (8:3) but this ended with His death on the cross. His break with the old world was decisive at this point. Our identification with the death of Christ means we too are freed from domination by the powers of the present evil age. We are no longer controlled by slavery to sin because, like Christ, we have been transformed to a new kind of existence. We have died to the old corporate race just as Christ died to Adam’s race. Christ’s death assures us of the final defeat and death of sin. Dying with Christ is dying to the old world. Because of Christ’s death and resurrection, our transfer from the old dominion to the new dominion takes place now (Colossians 1:13).
Christ has been raised from the dead and is now seated at God’s right hand. ‘And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus’ (Ephesians 2:6). Christ is no longer on earth. His sole earthly existence finished with His death. He now lives at God’s right hand. We are united with Him in His resurrection. We are in Him and with Him. What is true of Him is true of us. We have received the life of the new world through the Holy Spirit and have been raised to new life in the ‘new life’ dominion set up by Christ’s resurrection (Colossians 3:1). The measure of the Holy Spirit we now enjoy is only a down payment on the far greater measure that will be ours at Christ’s return (2 Corinthians 1:21,22; 5:5; Ephesians 1:4)
Christ’s resurrection and ascension was the beginning of, and the guarantee for, the general resurrection at the Second Coming (1 Corinthians 15:20). Paul uses the future tense, ‘we will … be united.’ (6:5). While we enjoy the new life now, our ‘being raised with Christ’ awaits the Parousia. This is Paul’s thinking, especially expressed in Philippians 3:20,21 ‘But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.’
Christ is the firstfruits (1 Corinthians 15:23). A farmer planting seed knew one or two plants would grow up before the rest of the crop. These were called the firstfruits. They were a guarantee of what would soon follow. Christ’s resurrection made Him the firstfruits, the same kind as all the other seed that was planted and the guarantee that the full harvest would in time grow up too.