Rom 6:3-5
3Do you not know that all of us who have been
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
Paul says this so that we might know that once we
have been baptized we should no longer sin, since when we are baptized we die
with Christ. This is what it means to be baptized into his death. For there all
our sins die, so that, renewed by the death we have cast off, we might be seen
to rise as those who have been born again to new life, so that just as Christ
died to sin and rose again, so through baptism we might also have the hope of
resurrection. Therefore baptism is the death of sin, so that a new birth might
follow, which, although the body remains, nevertheless renews us in our mind
and buries all our old evil deeds.
4We were buried therefore with him by baptism
into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the
Father, we too might walk in newness of life.
In saying this, Paul means, first of all, that
Christ raised his own body from the dead. For he is the power of God the
Father, as he said: Destroy this temple
and I will raise it again in three days. He was saying this about the
temple of his own body; because Christ has risen to a new life, he is now a
stranger to death. It also means that we now have a new way of life, which has
been given to us by Christ. For by baptism we have been buried together with
Christ, in order that from now on we may live according to the life into which
Christ rose from the dead. Baptism is the sign and symbol of the resurrection,
which means that we ought to abide in the commandments of Christ and not go
back to what we were before, for the person who dies does not sin; death is the
end of sin. This is symbolized by water, because just as water cleanses the
dirt of the body, so we believe that we have been spiritually cleansed by
baptism from every sin and renewed, for what is incorporeal is cleansed
invisibly.
5For if we have been united with him in a
death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like
his.
Happily Paul says that we can rise again if we have
been united with Christ in the likeness of his death, in other words, if we
have laid aside all our wickedness in baptism and, having been transferred into
a new life, no longer sin. In this way we shall be like him in his
resurrection, because the likeness of his death presupposes a similar
resurrection. The apostle John states this in his epistle when he says: For when he appears, we shall be like him.
This is what it means to rise again immortal and glorious. The likeness does
not mean that there will be no difference at all between us, of course. We will
be like him in the glory of his body, not in the nature of his divinity.[1]
1 Cor 1:17
17For Christ did not send me to baptize but to
preach the gospel, and not with eloquent wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be
emptied of its power.
Because it is a greater thing to preach the gospel
than to baptize, Paul says that he was sent to do the former, not the latter.
The dignity of all ordinations belongs to a bishop, because he is the head of
the other limbs. In this way, Paul also humbles those whom the Corinthians were
honoring simply because they had been baptized by them. He tells them that it
is no great thing to baptize, because not everyone who baptizes is competent to
preach the gospel. After all, the words used at baptism are an established
formula. When Cornelius became a believer, the apostle Peter gave orders that
he should be baptized along with his household, but he did not bother to do it
himself when he had his assistants standing by. He would only have done it
himself if they had not been there and there was no other choice. Paul thus
shows how much better he was than the people whom the Corinthians were
honoring, but he does not allow this conclusion to be drawn by referring to
himself, knowing full well how dangerous it is to arrogate the glory of God to
the name of a mere man. In its own way, that is idolatry!
It was because Christian preaching does not need
elaborate refinement of verbal expression that fishermen, who were uneducated,
were chosen to preach the gospel. In that way the truth of the message would be
its own recommendation, witnessed to by its own inner power. It would not
depend on the cleverness or ingenuity of human wisdom, like those disciplines
which are human inventions, where verbal dexterity has replaced the search for
logic and virtue. Anyone who tries to commend the Christian faith in this way
is seeking his own glory, because his splendid rhetoric obscures the truth and
brings praise to the speaker, not to the faith he is supposedly proclaiming.
The false apostles were doing just that, preaching according to the wisdom of
this world so as not to appear foolish to the worldly-wise. They were
cultivating their rhetorical brilliance and at the same time omitting things
which the world does not believe, like the virgin birth of Christ and his
resurrection from the dead. It was for this reason that Paul said that he was
not preaching according to human wisdom, because he did not want to nullify the
power of the cross of Christ. Anyone who proclaims Christ in that way denies
the truth of Paul’s preaching, as I have already said.[2]
1 Cor 6:9-11
9Do you not know that the unrighteous will not
inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor
idolaters, nor adulterers, nor sexual perverts,
Paul indicates that they are not sinning
unknowingly, and so it is that much harder to excuse them. For if the
unmerciful are guilty before God, how much more so are the wicked!
10nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards,
nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.
Paul did not say this because the Corinthians did
not know it already—after all, he had spent a year and a half among them,
teaching God’s Word—but in order to revive their reverence for the law and
their means of deserving the kingdom of heaven.
11And such were some of you. But you were
washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus
Christ and in the Spirit of our God.
Paul said some
of you in order not to appear to be including everyone, nor (on the other
hand) to be excusing them all, which he would have done if he had said nothing
about it. The way it appeared, it seemed as though he had forbidden their
crimes, rather than revealed them! He added but
you were washed so that after having been convicted of their guilt, they
could breath a sigh of relief. Some people habitually put up with embarrassment
and amend their ways when they hear good things spoken of them.
The Corinthians had received all the benefits of
purity in their baptism, which is the foundation of the truth of the gospel. In
baptism the believer is washed clean from all sins and is made righteous in the
name of the Lord, and through the Spirit of God he is adopted as God’s child.
With these words, Paul is reminding them how great and how special is the grace
which they have received in the true tradition. But afterward, by thinking
which is contrary to this rule of faith, they had stripped themselves of these
benefits. For this reason he is trying to bring them back to their original way
of thinking, so that they can recover what they had once received. [3]
Notes for the Above
[1] Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on
Romans and 1-2 Corinthians (ed. Thomas C. Oden and Gerald L. Bray; trans.
Gerald L. Bray; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An
Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2009), 47–48.
[2] Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on
Romans and 1-2 Corinthians (ed. Thomas C. Oden and Gerald L. Bray; trans.
Gerald L. Bray; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An
Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2009), 123.
[3] Ambrosiaster, Commentaries on
Romans and 1-2 Corinthians (ed. Thomas C. Oden and Gerald L. Bray; trans.
Gerald L. Bray; Ancient Christian Texts; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An
Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2009), 145–146.