Paul uses even more expressive language in Romans 6:4 than he had in the preceding verse: We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death.
Some exegetes connect the words into death
with buried.
However, one is not buried in
death; people are buried because they are already dead. It is clear, therefore, that Paul means that, by means of being baptised into his death we are buried with Christ. Now that we have joined with him in his death, we consequently also join him in his burial. The water of baptism, which is opened for the one being baptized, is like the mouth of the grave. The baptism that unites us with Christ in death becomes our underwater grave. The Roman citizen who dies through faith in the Jew, Jesus, is buried with him in Jerusalem.
To what end are we buried with Christ? For a new life! Not a life under the law (like the Jew) or under sin (like the Greek), but a life with the Risen One—close to God!
Paul articulates this very carefully in Romans 6:5, which is something that is often overlooked in many translations. The NLT translates this verse as follows: Since we have been united with him in his death, we shall also be raised to life as he was.
In this regard the NLT tries to account for the fact that the verse appears clumsy in the original Greek, wherein it consists of a parallel structure that seems incomplete. A literal translation of this verse would be:
If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall be that also in his resurrection.
Why is the description like his
added to the keyword death,
yet omitted from the parallel keyword resurrection?
As seen in the example above, many translators simply choose to ignore this inconsistency—an approach related to a later theological development that views Christ’s death and resurrection as being on an equal footing. Paul, however, carefully distinguishes between the two. Of Christ’s death he writes that we share in it by baptism
(Romans 6:3–4a), yet when he writes about the resurrection, he said that we share in it directly. Hence, while our death and burial take place symbolically (by faith, by baptism), our resurrection is promised as a physical reality. Paul therefore had to maintain this distinction even while referencing both death and resurrection in one sentence.
In terms of the death of Christ, we have grown together or were united toi homoiomati, that is, as an image of likeness, but with the resurrection we have really grown together or have been truly united. By what image
of Christ’s death do we then become one in that death? As is clear from the foregoing, this is the image of baptism. Paul’s meaning of what he writes here would become blurred in later years when theologians began to think of baptism as an image of both death and resurrection. Paul does not use baptism as an image of resurrection. It does, however, guarantee the resurrection, because it depicts how the believer will share in the death of Christ and will be united with him through that faith.1
4 We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.