Life Follows Death (Romans 6:1-14)

We are aware that Peter says in 2 Peter 3 that some of Paul’s writings are hard to understand, and maybe he had this passage from Romans in mind. Yet Peter does not suggest that we should ignore the hard passages in Paul. Indeed he says that they can be misinterpreted wrongly, which means that we should know what they mean. So we will follow Peter’s advice and try and interpret Paul correctly.

In this passage, Paul moves from a focus on the doctrine of justification to concentrate on the doctrine of sanctification. As he does so he seems first to be answering an objection that was made to his gospel message. The objection was connected to what he said about the freeness of full forgiveness and the failure of the law to contribute to a person’s salvation. Some people deduced from his message that he was saying that the more sinful a person was the better for him or her and that it did not matter how a person lived. After all, if grace was bestowed on sinful people, it means that it was good for them to be very sinful because they would receive more grace.

Now, we know that Paul did not teach such a distortion. His writings make it obvious that he insisted upon holy living in the lives of believers. Yet it was clearly the case that some understood his words to say the opposite. We also know that Paul was not a careless speaker, which means that he knew what he was saying whenever he spoke or wrote about the gospel. I would say that this situation has a couple of important lessons for us. The first is that the same criticism should be made of our preaching; otherwise it might mean that we are putting constraints round the gospel message. The second is that we should be ready to deal with any false deductions that are made regarding our message. Both these details indicate that we need to think about the message we pass on.

Baptism in Romans 6 – some opinions

Yet as we read the passage that we are studying we can see that such a response to the gospel message is not the only thing we need to think about as we work our way through it. Perhaps the first detail that raised our eyebrows was what Paul says about baptism in verses 1-4. Paul mentions baptism here as his first detail in his response to the accusations levelled against his message. His basic response is that at some stage believers died to sin and rose again to newness of life. ‘What has that got to do with baptism?’ we might ask. Some commentators say that when we see the word ‘baptism’ in the epistles we should assume that it is referring to Christian baptism in water. That may be true, but it is also possible that we should interpret the usages in the epistles by how Jesus used the word in the Gospels, given that the apostles passed on to the church what he had taught them.

One way to deal with this question is to see how other sections of the Christian church have dealt with it. So here are some suggested answers from them. First, there are those who believe in baptismal regeneration. They look at this passage and say, ‘Paul says here that we receive new life at baptism.’ At first glance, we might think he seems to be saying so. But if he is, he is being very inconsistent because elsewhere he says that new life is given to sinners at the time they come to trust in Jesus, with that trust being the evidence that they have received new life from God. I don’t think Paul is teaching baptismal regeneration here. Instead I would say that those who think he is are reading their own ideas into his words, a practice that is not confined to such people.

Second, there are those who believe that Paul here is using the practice of baptism that is advocated by Baptists. They say that going under the water illustrates burial and coming up out of the water illustrates spiritual resurrection. The problem with this suggestion is that Paul does not say that what he is describing is merely an illustration of what occurred in a new convert’s experience. Instead he says that the actual baptism, whatever he has in mind by it, brought about the experience of spiritual death and reception of new life. So while they don’t mean so, it looks to me that those who use this verse to argue for what they call believers baptism are failing to stress what Paul actually says and they also are reading their own ideas into his words.

A third suggested way of reading Paul’s words is to regard his use of the words connected to the term baptism as a code for believers or for Christians. After all, in those early days of the church every person who became a believer in Jesus would have been baptised, so it is suggested that the terms baptised and believing could be used interchangeably. I suppose that could be true in some Bible passages, but if we try and insert the terms connected to believing as substitutes for those connected to baptism we will discover that the passage here in Romans 6 does not make much sense. So I don’t think that is the meaning.

Baptism in Romans 6 – some questions

So how can we find out what Paul is speaking about here? I would suggest that we should bear in mind the context, which is that Paul in Romans 5 is dealing with the concept of identification with Adam or identification with Jesus. He says that those who are connected to Christ become the possessors of spiritual life through what he did for those he represented. And he is continuing to explain aspects of this identification in chapter 6.

So if we go back to his usage of baptism here, what can we say about his use of words? First, we could say that water is not mentioned, and we should not find this too strange because sometimes the Bible speaks about baptisms that are not connected to water, such as the baptism of the Spirit or the baptism of fire. Second, we could ask, who does the baptising here? Does Paul have in mind a church leader or another Christian? Or does he have in mind a divine person, because elsewhere he does say that ‘we were baptised by one Spirit into one body’? Third, we could ask, where and when did this baptism take place and I would say that the answer to this question is actually stated by Paul? It took place when Jesus was crucified, which may seem a strange answer to give, unless we recall the context, which is that Jesus is the representative of his people. And it may be significant to recall that Jesus did describe his experience on the cross as a baptism.

What about the other two comments? Who does the baptising, or who connected us to Jesus in his death and resurrection? Is the answer not God the Father, although it is possible to say that each person of the Trinity would have been involved? And what is the meaning of baptism if it is not connected to water? It looks to me as if Paul is saying that instead of water we should insert Jesus. If he had said that we were baptised in water, he would have expected his readers to think of water. If he had said we were baptised in fire, he would have expected his readers to think of fire. If he had said some were baptised into Moses, as he does in 1 Corinthians 10, he would have expected them to think of Moses. Since he says we are baptised into Christ Jesus, he would have expected his readers to think of Jesus and whatever aspect of his work the apostle had in mind. And Paul states those aspects in the following verses, which we will consider shortly.

There is one more question that we should ask, which is ‘Why does Paul say that death with Jesus is like a burial?’ It has often been pointed out in connection to this verse that Jesus was not buried when he died – he was laid in a tomb that was above the ground – so it is possible that Paul is not referring to the arrangements made by Joseph of Arimathea. Of course, those who make that point need to bear in mind that in 1 Corinthians 15:3 Paul says there that Jesus was buried, and that his burial was according to the scriptures. What does a burial do? It takes the dead person out of sight of others. In Paul’s argument here, who has died? It is those believers in Jesus who once were in Adam but who are now alive with Christ. Paul is saying that the old identity, the people we once were, is out of sight forever.

Baptism in Romans 6 – its outcomes

In verse 5, Paul continues with his explanation of being identified with Jesus and how that union affects the lives of those who trust in him. What he says in these verses are described by him at the end of verse 4 as walking in newness of life, which is a word picture that illustrates the freshness, the energy, the freedom, the environment a Christian spiritually has because of Jesus. So what does Paul say?

First, he says that in addition to being united to Jesus when he died, he also says that we are united to Jesus in his resurrection: ‘For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.’ At first glance we might think that Paul is saying that we will have a future resurrection that will be similar to the resurrection that Jesus had on the third day. While it is true that believers will have a wonderful resurrection in the future, Paul’s focus is on what the resurrection of Jesus does for his people in the present while they live in the world dominated by sin and death. This connection to the risen Jesus is a key to how they can live without being controlled by sin.

This is not the only passage in which Paul connects the Christian’s life with the resurrection power of Christ. In Ephesians 1, in his prayer for the church, Paul asks that the Father would sow to the Ephesians ‘the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.’ How is that power conveyed to us? The answer is by the Holy Spirit, but mentioning this power in connection with the resurrection of Jesus shows us how much power is available for us, which should be very encouraging to us when we sense the power of sin within us and around us.

Paul also says that something happened when we died with Christ – our old self was crucified (put to death) with Christ ‘in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin’. As we did in the previous verses we have to ask some questions regarding Paul’s statement here. Here are some questions: What is the old self? What is the body of sin? What does Paul mean when he says that it will be brought to nothing?

We are aware that controversy has raged in some circles over interpretations of the old man in Christians. Here Paul says that we had an old self, which implies that we now have a new self as well. I think the old self is what we were in Adam, which includes our identity, our character and our destiny – everything that marked us as unconverted people. What happened to this old identity? It was crucified with Jesus. In some way, when Jesus died physically as our representative it died too.

Why did this take place? Paul writes that it was ‘in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing.’ What is the body of sin? Does Paul mean sinful body? Does he mean the influences of sin that permeate everywhere in the sense that our entire body is affected by sin? Does he mean that our body expresses our sinfulness? Does he mean that every sinner belongs to a body that is marked by sin in the same way that every saint belongs to the body of Christ? I suppose each suggestion has part of the answer. Somehow the body of sin, whatever it means, is connected to the enslaving of sinners to sin because once the body is brought to nothing the slaves are free.

It is important to note how Paul says this ongoing deliverance is provided. First, the deliverance comes through union with Christ in his death and resurrection. Paul says that we have both and that if we have one we have the other. Just as it is impossible for Jesus not to have died and risen again, so it is impossible for a sinner to have died with Christ and not have resurrection life. Second, since it is impossible for Jesus to die for sins again, so it is impossible for one of his people to come under the power of sin again. Third, the apostle stresses the importance of a correct response with regard to this situation in which each Christian is found.

How to live as Christians

Paul gives three mandatory responses to what he has described. The first we could describe as become a thinker: ‘So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.’ The details that Paul has provided with regard to defeating sin belong to the doctrine of union with Christ. He has said that we were crucified with him then as our representative and that we are alive with him now. Before we were crucified we were in Adam and connected to the environment of dominant sin and death that belongs to him. Our union with Jesus when he died took us out of Adam and therefore out of the slavery of sin. Paul tells us to consider those matters, to think about them.

The second response Paul calls for is, be loyal to your Master. Each of us has a choice as to who will be our Master, and each of these choices demands total submission. The one we should not submit to at any time is sin, which wants to reign in and through our body. This reigning can be in what we regard as small matters or in big concerns. Take the inner sin of thinking wrongly about another Christian. If we let that thought progress, eventually it will work through our body when we use our tongues. We should not let the inner thought or physical word occur. If I let the thought occur, I am being disloyal to the Master who set me free by his death. Paul here stresses that it is our responsibility to deal with sin’s attempts to rule over us.

The third response is to have a life of ongoing consecration. Paul here describes our human features as instruments that either can be used for unrighteous ways or righteous ways. He says that we should not give those features for unrighteous ways. Instead he mentions a twofold correct response that will produce righteous living. First, he says we should present ourselves to God as those who have been brought from death (the world of Adam) to life (the world of Jesus). In English, it looks as if Paul is using the same verb when he says ‘do not present your members to sin’ and ‘present yourselves to God’, but he is not. The negative prohibition is in the present tense whereas the positive affirmation is an aorist tense. This change of tense probably means that we should devote ourselves to God in a definite, determined act of dedication. Second, we then present our members to God as instruments for righteousness. Paul’s point is obvious – give yourself to God and then you can give the individual features that belong to you.

Paul then gives a remarkable statement of encouragement, a great divine promise, to his readers: ‘For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.’ He does not mean that they will become sinless, but he does say that they will not become the slaves of sin. Why, because they will be protected by, preserved by and provided for by the God of grace.