Romans 6:11

Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

The fact that Christians are delivered from the power and bondage of sin is brought out by Paul by a reference to Baptism and its power. Or do you not know, are you ignorant of the fact? If his readers should doubt that justification has caused them to die to sin, they should remember what they knew with regard to their Baptism, whose meaning had been explained to them. As many of us as are baptized into Christ Jesus are baptized into His death. The Christians are not merely baptized with reference to Christ, to be united to Him in His death and to be partakers of its benefits, but, as the papyri have shown, any one baptized into the name of a person of the Godhead thereby became the property of the divine person indicated. Christ's salvation is our salvation, because we were baptized into His death. By taking our sins upon Him and paying the full price for them by His suffering and death, Christ has delivered us not only from the guilt and punishment, but also from the power of sin. And since we have become Christ's own by Baptism and have been baptized into His death, we are delivered from the power of death; its authority and sovereignty over us is at an end.

Since this is the nature of our union with Christ, given and sealed to us in Baptism, it follows that we are buried with Christ through Baptism into death, Colossians 2:12, in order that, just as Christ was raised up from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we should walk in newness of life. In Baptism the believer dies with Christ. in a spiritual sense. He passes through a death, dies unto sin, is really, totally, dead unto sin. But this dying and being buried with Christ had the purpose, and that was the intention of God, that, in accordance with the resurrection of Christ, we also should walk in newness of life. Christ left the weakness of humiliation of His body and sin which He bore on His body in the grave. And He was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, by a manifestation especially of His omnipotence, and entered into a new, spiritual life. And to this life of Christ the new life of the Christians, the life after Baptism, corresponds. It is a new life, and in this new life we are supposed to walk, to have our conversation, to show it in all the acts of our daily life. The salvation of which we become partakers in Baptism works sanctification in us. The idea of purity is always associated with that of newness in Scriptures, and so we say with Luther that the consequence of our Baptism must be that we live before God in righteousness and purity forever.

Just how this new life has been wrought in us is explained in the nest sentence.

For if we are grown together with the likeness of His death, we shall also be with that of His resurrection. We have grown together, we have entered into the most intimate union with the death of Christ by virtue of our dying typically in Baptism. Our dying to sin and Christ's death are thus similar, and the apostle can speak of a likeness, of a picture, which is the death of Christ. Now: if united with Christ in death, we shall certainly be united with Him in life. The one thing having happened, the other is sure to follow. In the case of Christ, His death and resurrection were intimately connected. He, therefore, that has part in His death also has part in His resurrection and is bound to show the new spiritual life with which he has been endowed, which he has received in Baptism. All this can be asserted, knowing, as we do, that our old man is crucified with Christ, in order that the body of sin may be put away entirely, may lose all influence, power, and dominion, to the end that we no longer serve sin. Christians should at all times know and remember that their old man, their corrupt, sinful condition and state, their natural depravity, is crucified with Christ in Baptism, since in Baptism they have become partakers of the death of Jesus on the cross and of its fruit. As a result, the body of sin, the sinful body: that body which sin has used as its instrument: is now put out of commission as such, can no longer serve in that capacity, and therefore we no longer serve sin. That is God's object and intention, that we henceforth no more, as before, serve sin; this our Baptism has worked, effected, in us. Because the old Adam, in Baptism, has been killed with all his evil lusts and no longer controls the organism of the body as his instrument, therefore we no longer need, we no longer shall, serve sin. For, as Paul declares in the next sentence, in the form of a general axiom, he that is dead is free from sin, is absolved, acquitted from sin, is pronounced just and free from sin in every respect: from its dominion as well as its curse, with the emphasis upon the deliverance from its jurisdiction. Since our old man was crucified with Christ, the axiom finds its application in such a way that sin has now lost power and dominion over us, and that we are no longer obliged to serve and obey sin. That is the wonderful blessing and benefit of Baptism.

But the apostle draws a further conclusion from the fact of our participating in the death of Christ: If we have died with Christ, if we are dead with Christ, we believe, we are confident of the fact, we trust, that we shall also live with Him. We have not merely been delivered from evil of every kind by becoming partakers of His death, but we have also received positive benefits. And this is further explained: Knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will die no more; death no longer rules over Him. Since Christ was raised from the dead, the dominion of death is at an end in His case. When Jesus died on the cross, He Fielded up His spirit, He laid down His life. But in His resurrection He reassumed His life and showed that death was not His lord and master. He has entered upon the full and unhampered enjoyment of the life of which He is the Lord. For: what He died He died unto sin once and for always; but what He lives He lives to God. Jesus had been in relation to sin, He had taken sin upon Himself, and what He did as our Substitute He performed for the purpose of expiating sin, the crowning work of His life in this respect being His death, by which sin was removed, forever put away, so far as Christ is concerned. Therefore for US also, by virtue of our Baptism into the death of Christ, sin is removed, it has lost its dominion and power. What Christ now lives He lives unto God: His heavenly Father. He has entered into the state of His glorification, at the right hand of His heavenly Father. And therefore we also, according to the admonition of the apostle, consider, reckon ourselves as being dead to sin, but living unto God in Christ Jesus. In the same manner as Christ, though not in the same degree: me Christians, by virtue of our Baptism, are dead unto sin and live unto God, because the new life of God is planted into our hearts in Baptism. We live unto God according to the internal man, according to the regenerated mind and heart. And this is possible for us because we live in the communion with Christ and our life is hidden with Christ in God.