Baptism
and the Dialectic of Death and Life
Through baptism into Christ Jesus
we live (Rom 6:3, 4). Baptism works the palingenesis or rebirth (Tit 3:5).
Supernatural in its essence and effect baptism should mean as much to humankind
as its very genesis when God created man out of the dust. For palingenesis
means literally a second genesis, a regeneration and rebirth. It is through
baptism into Christ Jesus that we live (Rom 6:3, 4). In the New Testament
baptism is intimately related to faith, as its complement really in the
appropriation of God’s justice or his justifying grace. In his letter to the
Corinthians Paul argues to the close association of baptism to justification.
He writes to them in chapter 6, verse 11, “You were washed, you were sanctified,
you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of
our God” (1 Cor 6:11). The three verbs there are all repeated in the same
tense, apparently referring then to the same event: washed, sanctified or
consecrated, and justified. Washing, of course, refers to baptism. So baptism
implies consecration to God. At the same time, this presupposes our
justification before him. “You are justified,” Paul tells the Christians, and
now that they are Christians he contrasts them to the unjust, or the
unjustified of the preceding verses in 1 Corinthians 6:4-11. Hence a new life
was implicit in their decision to turn to Christ. But that decision was
inseparably connected with their baptism. Paul continues in our text, 6:3, ‘‘Do
you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were
baptized into his death?” (Rom 6:3) Thus the rite of Christian initiation
introduces man into union with Christ, suffering and dying. And the Christian
is not merely introduced to the suffering of Christ. He is introduced to the
very action by which Christ died to sin. And what is this action but Christ’s
extreme expression of obedience and love on the Cross? Through our baptism we
can share that expression. We can follow Christ even to the Cross in a new
obedience to God through the same love or grace which led him, the grace of the
Holy Spirit which is poured forth at baptism (1 Cor 6:11; Tit 3:5). ‘(We were
buried therefore with him by baptism into death,’’ Paul continues in verse 4,
“so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too
might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4).
Now the New Testament uses the
word new as often as the word joy and both are fairly frequent. Kainos rather
than neos is the word most frequently used and it implies something more
than recent or fresh. It implies a replacement of the old, but of a higher
order. In prophecy the epithet kainos denotes what was thought
characteristic of a divine intervention in history. Certainly a new reality was
to characterize the messianic era. Thus, Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant (kainos)
which is in our hearts (Jer 31:31, 33). Ezekiel spoke of the new spirit which
characterizes the messianic era. In Deutero-lsaiah the same promise is made and
a generation in exile is admonished:
Remember not the former things
nor consider the things of old.
behold, I am doing a new thing;
now it springs forth, do you not
perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
rivers in the desert (Isa 43:18).
Through baptism and through the
power as much as the glory of the Father (Rom 6:3), Christians may walk in the
newness of life. Though they grow old in years, in the face of sin and death
they can remain strong in spirit and inner strength. For their strength is from
God. They are children of the resurrection (Rom 6:5). Upon such the burden of
age and the claim of death itself can be but tentative and passing.
‘‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed
away, behold the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). Yet the resurrection remains
wholly eschatological. “If we have been united with him ina death like his, we
shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ (Rom 6:5). Käsemann
notes well, ‘‘Participation in the resurrection is spoken of not in the perfect
tense but in the future. Baptism equips for it, calls to it, but does not
itself convey this gift. If baptism makes the new obedience possible, this is
still only an anticipatory hint of what in the temporal sense is undoubtedly in
the future.’ 54 And this is only consistent with Paul’s teaching in 1
Corinthians 15. The resurrection must be deferred to the last day. It is true
also that the newness of life which Paul predicates of the baptized in verse 4
and the living with Christ in verse 8 are also spoken of in a future sense.
Perhaps that is because such life must wait upon an eschatological fulfillment.
“For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor 13:12).
But already the Christian who has
been baptized into Christ’s death is withdrawn from the sphere of sin and
released from its power. ‘For he who has died is free from sin” (Rom 6:7). At
least he is freed in that he is no longer a slave of sin (Rom 6:17, 20). In the
light of the eschatological reservation which appears in this chapter (vv. 4,
5, and 8; especially 5), however, Christians are not wholly free from sin.
‘This we know,” Paul says in verse 6: “‘our old self was crucified with him so
that the sinful body might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to
sin” (Rom 6:6). Here the old self, the sinful body, is tantamount to flesh or
the natural man (cf. Rom 7:24), and the figure of the Cross is invoked because
through the Cross the new man prevails and the sinful body is destroyed. Now
the sense of our association with Christ is very strong in Romans. Baptism inaugurates
a real union with Christ.
It also admits the crucifixion of
our old self, that the sinful body might be destroyed. The language is very
strong in reference to the destruction of the body, that is, the body as
enthralled by sin and doomed to die. To be sure at baptism the Christian dies
to sin and through the same love or grace which led Christ to the Cross and
victory over sin the Christian dies to sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:14-15). Yet in evoking
the figure of our crucifixion with Christ “so that the sinful body might be
destroyed” (Rom 6:6), Paul suggests also that an elementary ascesis be part of
Christian life. Not that our body is to be destroyed but the extirpation of
that sin which literally takes possession of a man’s members (Rom 6:12ff.;
7:23) implies some violence, an ascesis. He had already addressed the
Christians in Galatia, ‘‘And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified
the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Later he will admonish the
Colossians, ‘Put to death therefore what is earthly in you...” (Col 3:5). But
the program of this ascesis should be the way of the cross. In Galatians it is
the flesh which is crucified with its passions and desires. Paul’s usage of
desire (epithumia) would be familiar enough in the ancient world. The
word was popular with Stoic moralists but here in Galatians it refers to the
whole perspective of flesh or the natural man. Flesh is egocentric, alienated
from God and prone to sin and death. It must be renounced. In Romans it is
renounced through baptism and union with Christ but it is a union which
revolves about Christ crucified. Again Paul had already written to the
Galatians, “| have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer | who live, but
Christ who lives in me...” (Gal 2:20). And as Schnackenburg notes, the perfect
usage in reference to having been crucified with Christ, ‘‘makes it obvious
that Paul not only considers entry into the fellowship of Christ as a becoming
crucified with Christ, hence that he can bring the act of baptism into closest
connection with the event of Golgotha; he also looks on the Christian existence
itself as an abiding union with the Christus crucifixus.’’ But this
union with Christ crucified and the overcoming of our old self is with a view
to the resurrection. The way of the cross remains the path to glory.
The resurrection is reserved to
the last day. Paradoxically in this life we experience only through fidelity to
the Cross, the power which derives from Christ. In 2 Corinthians especially
Paul will draw out the dialectic between weakness and divine strength, between
suffering and divine consolation, between the drifting toward death and the
life of Christ in those whom he had addressed. He will write to the Corinthians
that Jesus may also be revealed in our bodies, “For while we live we are always
being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be
manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you” (2
Cor 4:11, 12). In the weakness of Christ’s servant the divine power can express
itself (cf. 2 Cor 12:9). Death with Christ that we might live with and through
him derives from baptism. The way of the Cross strengthens the union and
deepens the wellspring of Christian life and heroism.
To be, to act, is the privilege
of men to an exceeding degree. A blade of grass may glorify its Creator in the
exquisiteness of its texture, a drop of rain in its purity, and dumb animals in
their simplicity, but man is the moral counterpart of God. He can return love
for love and in God’s overruling purpose engage freely and bravely. ‘‘Yield
yourselves to God,” Paul urges the Christians (Rom 6:13). “Eor sin will have no
dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace” (Rom 6:14).
As in the letter to the Galatians Paul argues that grace or God’s love is the
key to Christian liberty. Otherwise sin can tyrannize and before its power the
law itself is powerless. Grace alone is of advantage.
For the balance of the chapter
(Rom 6:15-23) Paul contrasts the deference to sin with that offered to God. The
verses are a kind of homily on what he had already set forth in w. 1-11. The
Christian who through his baptism into the death of Christ was freed from sin
(Rom 6:7, 1) especially should realize that he ought to sin no longer. One
cannot serve two masters. For the claim of the one excludes the other. Freedom
from the power of sin depends on the deference to God and grace implied in
baptism. Certainly we have no license to sin because we are no longer under the
law. We are under grace and grace alone can be our principle of liberty.
Freedom from sin’s power means freedom for the new obedience which, adhering to
the standard teaching (Rom 6:17), leads to justification (Rom 6:16). This
obedience derives from the heart (Rom 6:17) where God’s grace can penetrate
(Rom 5:5). The wellspring of such obedience then is finally grace or love. And,
as we have seen, whatever is done out of love is done freely. Paul does speak
of a kind of ‘‘slavery” to righteousness (Rom 6:38) and to God (Rom 6:22) but
the compulsion must be one of love. Christ’s love constrains, Paul writes to
the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:14). If God is indeed his master how could a Christian
defer to the tyranny of sin (Rom 6:20)? Sin does offer recompense to its
slaves: death. “For the wages of sin is death’ (Rom 6:23). But the surpassing
gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 6:23).
In chapter 6, then, Paul argued
that in the wake of the redemption men were set free from sin so that they were
discharged from the law (Rom 7:6). Christians are now under grace. (Thomas Buckley,
An Apostle to the Nations: The Life and Letters of St. Paul [Boston:
Daughters of St. Paul, 1981], 185-90)
