Dead to Sin, Alive to Christ in Baptism—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost 4A/Proper 7

Romans 6:1-11 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

6 What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may increase? ² By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? ³ Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? ⁴ Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.

⁵ For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. ⁶ We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, so we might no longer be enslaved to sin. ⁷ For whoever has died is freed from sin. ⁸ But if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. ⁹ We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. ¹⁰ The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. ¹¹ So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

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                What about baptism? What does it accomplish? That is a question that Christians have been debating since perhaps the very beginning of the Jesus movement. My own experience with baptism is complicated. I was baptized as an infant in the Episcopal Church and later confirmed in the same tradition. A few years after I was confirmed, I got baptized again, this time by immersion in a creek at a summer camp sponsored by churches affiliated with the Foursquare denomination. I am an ordained minister in a denomination that historically practices believer baptism, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). You could say that I’ve thought a bit about baptism. One of the passages of scripture that has been meaningful to me over the years is Romans 6.  In part, this is because it seems to support believer baptism by immersion. Of course, there is more here than a defense of baptism by immersion. The message is that in baptism we die with Christ to sin, while being raised with him to new life.

                I am not sure why the lectionary reading begins in the second half of verse 1. The opening question connects what is said here in Romans 6 with the preceding message in chapter 5 concerning the relationship between sin and death, along with the role Christ plays in overcoming sin’s effects through divine grace (Rom. 5:12-21). So, if we are dead in our sins, the good news is that through grace, we are justified and set free from the law of sin and death. Here in Romans 6, Paul extends the conversation by connecting it with baptism.

                The opening question of our reading (Rom. 6:1b) raises the question of whether divine grace serves as a “get-out-of-jail-free” card. Another word for this is “antinomianism,” such that we are no longer subject to any law, so we can do as we please. Think about an agreement with the government that says the IRS can’t investigate you (conduct audits), your family, or your businesses. Wouldn’t that be nice? Why pay taxes if the IRS can’t check on you? Well, it seems that Paul faced similar questions when it came to grace. If you are under God’s grace, why not do as you please?  After all, if you sin boldly, won’t grace abound even more? Paul is a big believer in grace, but he is quite sure that grace doesn’t give you freedom to do as you please. As Paul reminded the folks in Corinth, all things might be lawful, but not everything is beneficial (1 Cor. 6:12). In his message to the Corinthians, he reminded them that as members of Christ, they should behave accordingly. Here in Romans 6, Paul wants his readers to remember that they belong to Christ through baptism. So, if you have died to sin, how then can you continue living in it?

                Here is where baptism comes into play. Paul asks the Romans, whom, with few exceptions, he has not met, if they did not know that those who had been baptized into Christ were baptized into his death. That is, in baptism we are co-crucified with Christ. With that question, he invites them to consider the act of being immersed into Christ through baptism, which represents being buried with Christ in death. From there, just as Christ was raised from the dead, as we are raised out of the waters of baptism, we are raised with Christ to new life “by the glory of the Father.” Michael Gorman helpfully connects what Paul says here about baptism with what Paul said about justification in Galatians 2:15-21, such that both involve a “participatory experience of co-crucifixion and co-resurrection with Christ.” He goes on to write:

Justification is like baptism, and vice versa. More precisely, justification and baptism are two sides of the one coin of entrance into Christ and his body through dying and rising with him. Both faith and baptism involve transferal into Christ by means of dying and rising with Christ. The result is life: being ‘alive to God’ now (6:11) and one day having ‘eternal life’ (6:22-23). And this means that in Christ, we are meant to become like Christ [Gorman,Romans, p. 167].

                We see elements of Paul’s apocalyptic theology present here in the way he speaks of dying to sin (the old life) and being raised to the newness of life. We might want to read this passage in connection with what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, where he speaks of being reconciled to God through Christ, such that the old is gone and we enter the new life or new realm of God.  

¹⁷ So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; look, new things have come into being! ¹⁸ All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; ¹⁹ that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us (2 Cor. 5:17-19).

What does this old realm defined by sin involve? The answer is, of course, complex because it involves both personal actions and systemic ones. Often, the two are intertwined. Think here of racism or sexism. These are systems that Christ abolishes, and yet we inhabit them, acting out from them. While we live under grace, we still find ourselves entrapped by them. Paul himself understood this, in that he confessed that he did the things he didn’t wish to do.  As he put it: “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me” (Rom. 7:19-20 NRSVUE). Nevertheless, this is not an excuse because to be in Christ is to die to the sin that has taken hold of us. As Gorman suggests, to be in Christ is to become like him as well. As Sarah Heaner Lancaster notes, this involves a change of allegiances: “Exchanging one dominion for another requires a change of allegiances. To continue in sin would show that one has not changed allegiances” [Lancaster, Romans, p. 107].

                While I find that the act of believer's baptism by immersion offers an important symbolic connection of the person to Christ’s death and resurrection, that does not mean other forms cannot represent the actions. However, it should be remembered that, in general, from what we know of the earliest centuries of the Christian movement, baptism followed a lengthy period of instruction (Hippolytus, in his Apostolic Tradition, described a three-year process). When the day of one’s baptism came, the person being baptized would strip off their clothes, enter the baptismal pool, and at that time they would be asked to renounce Satan, after which they would be immersed in baptism. Then, after leaving the baptismal pool, they would receive new clothes that symbolized their new life in Christ. Of course, I don’t know of any believer-baptism communities that go to such lengths, but it is intriguing to remember what was once true. These actions did offer a powerful symbol of one’s movement from the old realm to the new realm in Christ.  

                Having pondered the symbolism of baptism, Paul continues in verse 5 of Romans 6 to reaffirm the message that having been united with Christ in his death, we will also share in his resurrection. That is, the old self, dominated as it was by sin, has been crucified with Christ so that the old body of sin has been put to death, destroying the power of sin that had enslaved us. Death has the power to free people from the enslaving power of sin. Then in verse 8, Paul reasserts this message with a different phrasing. The good news revealed in verse 9 is that having been raised with Christ in his resurrection, we will never die. Death no longer has dominion over our lives. This is truly good news.  

                Now, as we get back to reality, it does seem as if we still struggle with sin’s hold on our lives. We may have died to sin, but it seems to have kept hold of at least part of us. At least that is true while we remain in this body, which is why in chapter 7, just a few verses later, Paul confesses that he struggles to do what is right. Perhaps the takeaway here is that while we continue to do what we wish not to do, thus struggling with sin, to be in Christ is to recognize that we have been set free to live differently. One way this has been stated is that to be justified in Christ is to be set free from the grip of sin, but sanctification takes time (sorry, John Wesley, but instantaneous sanctification doesn’t seem to be available). So, the process of sanctification is ultimately a movement toward a full embodiment of God’s grace. As Karl Barth puts it in his commentary on Romans: “Faith means seeing what God sees, knowing what God knows, reckoning as God reckons” (Romans, p. 206). With that, we can embrace Paul’s closing message: “The death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.  So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom 6:10-11).