In Romans 6:2 Paul emphatically rejects the idea that remaining in sin would be the logical alternative to living under the law: By no means!
While the Gentiles are not destined to living a life under the law, living with sin is also precluded. The Gentile Christians belong neither to the realm of the law nor to the realm of sin: How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Paul here espouses what would have been an astonishing take at the time, and it must have seemed abrupt and strange to his readers. After all, they still live in the metropolis of Rome, which falls outside of the realm of the law and belongs to the realm of sin. How can Paul regard them as being having died to sin?
The explanation follows in Romans 6:3, which refers the readers to their baptism in Christ Jesus. He reminds them that they were baptized (submerged) in him. This is how their lives as believers are initiated. Through that baptism they allow themselves to be joined to the Lord Jesus Christ. They allow themselves be taken up in him and they want to be joined to him in the same way that a drowning person is submerged into the water. Paul describes the effects of this baptism as follows: Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?
It is evident that this connection between baptism and death was itself foreign to the readers. Paul therefore specifically highlights it when writing to them. In Romans 6:3 he explains that when you belong to Christ, you belong to One who was crucified. They join in their Master’s death by being drowned in baptism. His death becomes their baptism!
In later theological writings concerning Christ and baptism, scholars often write about the terms death
and life
as though they are interconnected, maintaining that through baptism we share in Christ’s death and in his resurrection in exactly the same way. They consequently suggest that the symbolism is connected to entering the water (death) and coming out of the water (resurrection). But the apostle Paul restricts himself to only connecting baptism to the death of Christ. This in itself shouldn’t be regarded as strange given that the verb used for baptize
(baptizein
) literally means to cause to go under, to bury.
Even though the person being baptized rises again above the water, the baptism itself symbolized his drowning: a drowning in and with Christ. By sharing is his death they now belong to One who has died! The physical rising out of the water of course clarifies that the death spoken of here is only symbolic or sacramental in nature, and not an actual death by drowning.1
2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?