In Romans,
Paul states that believers are baptized into Christ’s death; in fact, believers
were buried with Christ by means of their baptism into death (Rom. 6:2-4).
Union with Christ means direct access to moments in Christ’s incarnated past:
Christ’s death and burial. This is the case not because believers travel to Christ’s
past but because Christ’s past is present and can be known in human present
tenses. The apostle writes that believers are organically united (συμφυτοι) in the likeness of Christ’s death
(6:5). “Likeness” signals that believers share in the benefits but not the work
of Christ’s death. Those who are in Christ’s death are, then, co-planted in a
similar though nonidentical death. Christ’s death is unique in that he is the
first human to die to sin “once for all (time)” (6:10)—and so to be liberated from
death (6:9). Yet while Christ’s death is stupendously singular and unrepeatable—a
point Paul does not want missed—it is not locked in the past, nor is it simply
an event that has continuing effects. Christ’s death may be entered and shared
subsequent to that event. Paul underscores this in the first part of Romans 6:
the old person of believers has been co-crucified with Christ (6:6); believers
have died with Christ (6:8). (L. Ann Jervis, Paul and Time: Life in the
Temporality of Christ [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2023], 81-82)
