Baptism is not a form or a ritual; it signifies our identification with Christ. Through baptism we are immersed into Christ, taking Him as our realm, that we may be united with Him as one in His death and resurrection.
Baptism is not a form or a ritual; it signifies our identification with Christ. Through baptism we are immersed into Christ, taking Him as our realm, that we may be united with Him as one in His death and resurrection.
We were born in the sphere of Adam, the first man (1 Cor. 15:45, 47), but through baptism we have been transferred into the sphere of Christ (1 Cor. 1:30; Gal. 3:27), the second man (1 Cor. 15:47).
Baptism is not a form or a ritual; it signifies our identification with Christ. Through baptism we are immersed into Christ, taking Him as our realm, that we may be united with Him as one in His death and resurrection.
When we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into His death. His death has separated us from the world and the satanic power of darkness and has terminated our natural life, our old nature, our self, our flesh, and even our entire history.
Our old man has been crucified with Christ (v. 6), and it has been buried with Him through baptism into death. In the natural realm, a person first dies and then is buried; but Paul's word indicates that in the spiritual realm, we are first buried and then die. We do not die directly; we enter into Christ's death through baptism.
Christ and His death are one. Apart from Him we could never be baptized into His death, for the element of His effective death is found only in Him, the resurrected, all-inclusive One.
Referring to the manifestation of divinity.
After baptism we become a new person in resurrection. Resurrection is not only a future state; it is also a present process. To walk in newness of life means to live today in the realm of resurrection and to reign in life. This kind of living deals with all that is of Adam in us until we are fully transformed and conformed to the image of Christ (Rom. 8:29).
This denotes an organic union in which growth takes place, so that one partakes of the life and characteristics of the other. In the organic union with Christ, whatever Christ passed through has become our history. His death and resurrection are now ours because we are in Him and are organically joined to Him. This is grafting (Rom. 11:24). Such a grafting
1) discharges all our negative elements,
2) resurrects our God-created faculties,
3) uplifts our faculties,
4) enriches our faculties,
5) saturates our entire being to transform us.
This does not refer to a future, objective resurrection but to the present process of growth. When we were baptized, we grew together with Christ in the likeness of His death; now, through His death we are growing into His resurrection. Just as the element of Christ's death is found only in Him, so the element of Christ's resurrection is found only in Christ Himself. He Himself is resurrection (John 11:25). After experiencing a proper baptism, we continue to grow in and with Christ in the likeness of His resurrection, that is, to walk in newness of life.
Referring to the natural life in our soul. The old man is our very being, which was created by God but became fallen through sin, and it is the same as the "I" in Gal. 2:20. It is not the soul itself but the life of the soul, which has been counted by God as hopeless and has been put on the cross and crucified with Christ. Formerly, our soul acted as an independent person, with the old man as its life and personality; now, since the old man has been crucified, our soul should act only as an organ of Christ and should be under the control of our spirit, having Christ as its life.
See note Gal. 5:242.
cf. Rom. 7:24
The body indwelt, occupied, corrupted, possessed, utilized, and enslaved by sin, so that it does sinful things. This body of sin is very active and full of strength to commit sins; it differs from "the body of this death" mentioned in Rom. 7:24, which is weak and powerless in the things of God. The body of sin is not the sinning person but the sinning instrument utilized by the old man to express himself by committing sins, thereby causing the body of sin to become the flesh. Hence, the body of sin in this verse and the flesh of sin in Rom. 8:3 refer to the same thing.
Or, unemployed, jobless, inactive. Because the old man has been crucified with Christ, the body that had been utilized by him as the instrument for sinning now has nothing to do; it is unemployed, jobless. Thus, we have been freed from sin (vv. 18-22) and no longer need to be under the bondage of sin to serve sin as slaves.
Both the nature of sin with its power and its pain, and the sinful acts with their history and their judgment.
This again shows our organic union with Christ in His death and His resurrection.
In His resurrection Christ is transcendent over corruption and death. Since we are one with Him in this resurrection, we also are transcendent over corruption and death.
Or, consider. Reckoning is not a technique but a spontaneous believing, a spontaneous considering, produced by seeing the facts that are revealed in this chapter. We must see and believe the facts, recognize them, and, according to them, reckon ourselves dead to sin and living to God.
Reckoning, however, is not the cause of death and cannot by itself execute the death of Christ within us. Only by the enjoyment of the Spirit, who is revealed in Rom. 8, will we experience Christ's all-inclusive and effective death and His resurrection and its power, which are revealed here in this chapter. This chapter shows the objective facts accomplished by Christ for us; these need our believing and reckoning. Chapter 8 shows the subjective work of the Spirit in making the facts accomplished by Christ real in our practical experience; this needs our fellowship with and enjoyment of Him. The facts spoken of in this chapter can become our experience only in the Spirit revealed in ch. 8.
This is to reject sin and to cooperate with the Spirit of God.
Lit., its (referring to body).
2 Cor. 6:7; Rom. 13:12; cf. Rom. 7:23
Presenting ourselves and our members to God is the result of seeing the facts of our having been crucified and resurrected with Christ and of reckoning ourselves dead and living according to these facts.
Or, instruments. Our members are not merely instruments but are weapons of righteousness to fight the battle in the war between righteousness and unrighteousness.
Sin, here personified, lords it over us through the lusts of our body (v. 12).
That we are not under the law but under grace is the reason sin cannot lord it over us. This gives us the position to reject sin. Sin no longer has any right to make claims upon us, but we have the full right to reject sin and its power. By rejecting sin and taking sides with the resurrected Christ, we present ourselves and our members as slaves to righteousness that the divine life may work within us to sanctify us, not only positionally but also dispositionally, with the holy nature of God.
This does not make us lawless, as some were during the time of the church's degradation (Jude 1:4). The law referred to in this verse is the law given by Moses, which has been replaced by the inward laws in the new covenant (Heb. 10:16). Just as Rom. 5 and Rom. 6 explain that we are now under grace, Rom. 7 and Rom. 8 explain how it can be that we are not under the law.
Unto may be interpreted resulting in, and so in the succeeding verses.
This occurred as a result of the crucifixion of the old man (v. 6).
Righteousness ushers us into sanctification. If we present ourselves as slaves to righteousness and our members as weapons of righteousness, Christ as the eternal life within us will have the ground to work in us and saturate our inward parts with Himself. Thus we will be sanctified spontaneously; we will be made holy spontaneously in our inward parts by Christ's saturating.
Sanctification (see note Rom. 1:23) involves not only a change in position, that is, a separation from a common, worldly position to a position for God, as illustrated in Matt. 23:17, 19 and in 1 Tim. 4:3-5 it involves also a transformation in disposition, that is, a transformation from the natural disposition to a spiritual one by Christ as the life-giving Spirit saturating all the inward parts of our being with God's nature of holiness, as mentioned in Rom. 12:2 and 2 Cor. 3:18.
See note Rom. 6:192b.
Wages are a payment according to righteousness, based on the work that a person performs. In the eyes of God, all man's behavior apart from God is sin and is man's work, and the wages it earns is death.
Death comes from sin and is its result. The death mentioned here, however, is not only physical death and eternal death, but the death in which man is entangled daily. See note Rom. 5:124d.
Eternal life is the very life of the Triune God Himself. This life has been imparted into us on the basis of our having been justified by God, and it is now spreading throughout our being through sanctification and transformation. This will result in our being conformed to the Lord's image and our being brought into the Lord's glory, that we may be made suitable to have a part in the manifestation of His glory (Col. 3:4).