Rom. 6:1-11 - Baptism into the death and resurrection of Christ

^1-2 The question Are we to remain in sin that grace may increase? arises because Paul has just said, ’where sin increased (epleonasen hē hamartia), grace over-abounded’ (5:20). The wording suggests that he is thinking of sin as a status (cf. Wright, Romans, 537) or perhaps better a sphere or domain (Dunn, Romans 1-8, 306): to remain in sin is to be in the place where sin reigns (5:21); it is where we live prior to baptism (6:2).

Although the language is somewhat generalized and the narrative framework is of less immediate relevance at this point, we are still in the argument about Israel: the question (as at 3:8) is whether God’s people should persist in their trespasses against the Law in order - perhaps at some particular moment in the future - to know the over-abounding grace of God. A relevant parallel is found in 1 Esdras where Ezra laments the mounting sins of Israel in marrying foreign wives, which led to judgment in the form of war, exile and plunder:

For our sins have risen higher (hai.. hamartiai hēmōn epleonasan) than our heads, and our mistakes have mounted up to heaven from the times of our ancestors, and we are in great sin to this day. Because of our sins and the sins of our ancestors, we with our kindred and our kings and our priests were given over to the kings of the earth, to the sword and exile and plundering, in shame until this day. (1 Esdr. 8:75-77)

^3-5 The reason we - that is, those who inherit what was promised to Abraham (4:13-14) - cannot remain in sin is that the very fact of baptism into Christ Jesus constitutes a departure from sinful Israel under condemnation. Baptism into Christ is a baptism into the narrative of his death and resurrection.

The relationship between the experience of Christ and the experience of the person who is baptized into Christ is analogical. Christ literally died to sin and was literally raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. The experience of the believer is like that: she has become identified (grown-together) with the likeness of his death and with the likeness of his resurrection; as Christ was raised from the dead, so also we expect to walk in newness of life. This rather suggests that likeness denotes the concrete behavioural analogue to the death and resurrection of Jesus in the life of the believer. Some commentators suppose that the identification or growing-together is with Christ and that homoiōmati is instrumental (eg. Fitzmyer, Romans, 435).

Paul does not argue in this passage that the believer will literally be raised as Christ was raised from the dead; nor does he use the baptism into Christ motif to describe the condition of the ’Son of man community’ that is called to suffer and be vindicated with Christ. His point is that the renewed people of God must understand that through their baptism into Christ they have moved beyond the condition of sinful Israel under judgment to a newness of life, a historical transition that is analogous to and, of course, through the act of baptism underpinned by, Christ’s actual death and resurrection. The crucifixion of Jesus anticipates the destruction of the sinful people; the resurrection of Jesus represents the restoration of Israel to life following judgment (cf. Hos. 6:1-2). For Israel and those who wish to join themselves to Israel to be baptized into Christ means to undergo that judgment and restoration, which is symbolically death and resurrection.

The future tense here (of the resurrection we shall be) and in verse 8 (we shall also live-together with him) may suggest that Paul has in mind the life of the community beyond the eschatological crisis of God’s wrath against Israel and the pagan world. But the new life certainly belongs to this world, not to a final and absolute renewal of creation.

^6-7 What baptism into his death signifies is a fundamental break from the sinful condition of a people under judgment, understood metaphorically as a crucifying of the old self, the destruction of the body of sin, and as acquittal from the condemnation that hangs over Israel. The objective outcome of the process is that the believer has left a community that faces destruction and has become part of the community of restored or resurrected Israel.

^8-11 The argument of verse 5 is repeated: if we died with Christ to the extent that we as God’s people are no longer subject to condemnation and destruction, we shall also live with Christ. The verb is future but the thought is nevertheless of the new life of the age to come, beyond the eschatological crisis, that the churches are anticipating.