Are you unaware that we who were
baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? (6.3)
Another rhetorical question, equivalent to saying, “as you know.” Roman Christians
instructed in the apostolic catechesis, can be expected to be acquainted with
the sublime effects of baptism, but Paul takes the opportunity to remind that the
audience of the death-to-life symbolism of the rite. In the NT, baptizein refers
either to Jewish ritual washings (Mark 7:14; Luke 11:38), to John the Baptist’s
ritual washing, or to Christian baptism (John 1:25, 28; Gal 3:27). Here Paul’s
discussion of the last is most easily understood of immersion, but one need not
assume that early Christian baptism was always administered in that form. The
phrase eis Christon, while reflecting the immersive ritual of baptism,
goes beyond mere metaphor. Nor is it short-hand for a bookkeeping term (eis
to onoma Christou, “to Christ’s account”), as if baptism merely established
Christ’s proprietorship over the baptized. Like other Pauline prepositional
phrases, it designates the relationship of the Christ-believers to Christ,
occurring most often with words denoting “faith” or “baptism” and connoting the
movement of incorporation by which one is born to life “in Christ.” Sometimes
viewed as a mystical relationship (e.g. Ambrose of Milan), sometimes as a
metaphysical change (cf. the “character” imparted, CCC §1272). Paul’s
language is best understood within the overall apocalyptic framework of his
gospel. The Christ-even inaugurated the beginning of the end of the “age”
dominated by Sin, and baptism “into Christ” incorporates believers into the
Christic body that, enlivened by the Holy Spirit, lives already-but-not-yet in
the age to come. Paul boldly claims that Christians are not merely identified
with the “dying Christ” who has won victory over sin but are incorporated into
the very act by which that victory has been won. Hence Christians are “dead to
sin” (6:11) associated with Christ precisely at the time when he formally
became Savior.
Just as Christ was raised from the
dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life. . . . we
shall also be united with him in the resurrection (6:4-5).
Paul’s experience with the Philippians has made him cautious about an overly
realized understanding of Baptism: believers enter into the death of Christ,
united with this saying event of the past, but do not yet share fully in
Christ’s rising to new life. Thus, Paul avoids the “gospel of glory” he had to
combat at Philippi (e.g., Phil 2:5-8). The baptismal rite symbolically enacts
the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ, converts descend into the
baptismal bath, are covered with its waters—thereby dying to sin and being
buried. Paul uses one of his favorite compound verbs, synthaptein (“co-buried”),
to vividly express the significance of the baptismal event. While those
undergoing the rite actually are raised up from the water, illustrating their
emergence to newness of life in Christ, Paul carefully avoids mention of that
part of the rite. Believers live in union with the risen Christ, a union that
will find its term when they will one day “be with Christ” in glory (syn
Christō), but that realized glory lies in the future for all but Christ
himself.
As in Romans 4:24, the efficiency
of the resurrection is ascribed to the Father’s doxa, “glory.” As the OT
(Exod 15:7, 11; 16:7, 10) exodus miracles were ascribed to Yahweh’s kābôd
(see 3:23), so too the raising of Christ (see Fitzmyer, TAG, 202-17).
Indeed, the doxa o the Father shines on the face of the risen Christ (2
Cor 4:6) and invests him with “power” (Rom 1:4) that is “life-giving” (1 Cor
15:45). This transforms believers (2 Cor 3:18), who will be glorified together with
Christ (Rom 8:17).
The baptismal incorporation of
Christians “into Christ” enables them to live with the life of Christ himself
(Gal 2:20); a “new creation” is involved (cf. 2 Cor 5:17). “To walk” is another
favorite Pauline expression, borrowed from the OT (Mic 6:8; 2 Kgs 20:3; Prov
8:20), to designate the conscious ethical conduct of the faithful. Identified with
Christ through baptism, they are enabled to lead a new life under the ruling
authority of the Spirit of God rather than under Sin.
We know that our self was crucified
with him. . . . We believe that we shall also live with him (6:6-8).
These three verses affirm of baptized Christians what Paul will say of Christ
himself in 6:9-10. The “former self” having been crucified with Christ (cf. Gal
2:20; 5:24; 6:14), the “body of sin” has been destroyed and with it the bonds
of Sin. Paul is no Gnostic; as the rest of the verse shows, “the body of sin”
denotes the whole of an earthly being, dominated by a proneness to sin. In 7:24,
Paul speaks of a “body of death” (cf. Col. 1:22); in each case the genitive
expresses the element that dominates the earthly, natural human being. Death
brings liberation, since it ends all obligations that impinged upon the former
reality. This affirmation provides the final answer to Paul’s rhetorical
question posted in 6:1.
Paul asserts that the dead are dedikaiōtai
(“acquitted, absolved”) of sin, a difficult verb related to the dikaios
word group that took so much of his attention in the earlier discussion of dikaiosynē.
Understood in a forensic sense, dedikaiōta means that a dead person is
acquitted of sin since sin has no standing to bring a claim or a case against
the dead. Possibly Paul is thus echoing a Jewish notion: the death of a guilty
person ends all litigation. The other explanation seeks to interpret the verb
without forensic connotation (so Lyonnet, Romans 89; Cranfield, Roman,
310-11): The one who has died has lost the very means of sinning, “the body of
sin,” so is definitively freed of sin. In either case, a change of status has
ensued; the old condition has been brought to an end in the baptism-death, and
a new one has begun. This new life, a future reality perceived even now with
the eyes of faith, is the definitive form of new life syn Christō, “with
Christ,” in which Christians proleptically share through the Spirit (cf. 6:4; 2
Cor 4:10-11). (Sheila E. McGinn, “Romans,” in The Jerome Biblical Commentary
for the Twenty-First Century, ed. John J. Collins, Gina Hens-Piazza,
Barbara Reid, and Donal Senior [3d ed.; London: T&T Clark, 2022], 1555-56)
