Romans 6:4

“ Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death: in order that as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. ”

If baptism were, or represented, the death of which Paul had spoken, the therefore would be very hard indeed to explain (see the commentaries). But if baptism is in his view the external proof of death, as burial is the proof of decease, he can take up again the course of his argument and say: “In consequence of this death to sin undergone in Christ, we have therefore been buried with Him...in order also to rise with him,” which signifies: “buried with Him, not with the aim of remaining in the tomb or of issuing from it to return to the past life, but to penetrate into a new life, whence a return to the old is definitely precluded.” The clause into death cannot depend on the verb we are buried, as Grot., Hofm., and Ostervald's version would have it. How could it be said of one interred that he thereby descends into death? The converse would be the truth. This clause, therefore, must be made directly dependent on the word baptism: “by baptism into death.” The substantive βάπτισμα, baptism, like those generally derived from verbs in ιζω, has a forcible meaning which allows it easily to have this position and the relation between the notions expressed by the two substantives is so close, that no article was needed to connect them. What also guides us quite naturally to make the words into death dependent on the word baptism, is Romans 6:3: We were baptized into his death. Undoubtedly we must explain the phrase: baptism into death, like the similar ones preceding: “baptism (with water) in relation to death.” Our versions translate: “into His death” (Osterv., Oltram.). But if this had been the apostle's view, he would have expressed it by adding the pronoun αὐτοῦ, of Him. He evidently wished to leave the notion of death in all its generality, that the word might be applied at once to His death, and ours included in His. It is in relation to these two deaths which have taken place that the believer is baptized.

Modern commentators are not at one on the question whether the apostle means to allude to the external form of the baptismal rite in the primitive church. It seems to us very probable that it is so, whether primitive baptism be regarded as a complete immersion, during which the baptized disappeared for a moment under water (which best corresponds to the figure of burial), or whether the baptized went down into the water up to his loins, and the baptizer poured the water with which he had filled the hollow of his hands over his head, so as to represent an immersion. The passage, Mark 7:4, where the term βαπτισμός, a washing, bath, lustration, baptism (Hebrews 6:2), is applied not only to the cleansing of cups and utensils, objects which may be plunged into water, but also to that of couches or divans, proves plainly that we cannot insist on the sense of plunging, and consequently on the idea of total immersion, being attached to the term baptism. It is nevertheless true, that in one or other of these forms the going down into the water probably represents, in Paul's view, the moral burying of the baptized, and his issuing from the water, his resurrection.

The relation between the two facts of burial and baptism indicated by the apostle is this: Burial is the act which consummates the breaking of the last tie between man and his earthly life. This was likewise the meaning of our Lord's entombment. Similarly by baptism there is publicly consummated the believer's breaking with the life of the present world, and with his own natural life.

It is a mistake to represent the idea of the first proposition of the verse as entirely isolated from all that follows. Paul means, not only that we have been buried with Christ, but that we have been so, like Him, in order to rise again.

The ἵνα, in order that, is the essential word of the verse. In the case of an ordinary death, the man is inclosed in the tomb, to remain there; but he who is buried with Christ is buried with one who died and rose, consequently with the intention of rising also. This idea is essential to the apostle's argument. Indeed, the believer's death, even with the baptism which seals it, would not suffice for a sure guarantee that he will not return to his old life of sin. Did not Lazarus come forth from the tomb to resume life? What, for one dead, renders his return to an earthly existence definitively impossible, is his passing to a new and higher life by the way of a resurrection. Now, such is precisely the believer's case. By being buried with Christ by baptism, he does not intend to remain thereafter inactive and lifeless, any more than Christ Himself, when giving Himself up to the grave, thought of remaining in it. As Christ gave His life to take it again (John 10:17-18), the believer renounces his life of sin for Him only to receive from Him another and wholly different life (Luke 17:33). His baptism, which supposes his death, tends to life. To die to sin, is it not to die to death, and consequently to spring to life? As, then, by His burial Christ broke the last tie with His earthly life and entered on a higher life, so the believer, by his baptism, finds himself placed between a life which has taken end, and a wholly different one which opens before him. Paul knew by experience the situation indicated by his ἵνα, in order that. In Acts 9 we behold him placed between death on the one hand (Romans 6:8-9), and the burial of baptism, followed by resurrection through the Holy Spirit, on the other (Romans 6:17-18). Comp. also the position of the penitents of Pentecost, to whom Peter says: “Be baptized for the pardon of your sins, and ye shall receive the Holy Spirit.” It is therefore true, as the end of the verse says, that what the resurrection was to Christ, renewing by the Holy Spirit is to believers. And in this last fact there is found the answer to the question of Romans 6:2: “How shall we, who are dead to sin, live any longer therein?” Perhaps, if we were no more than dead, it would not be possible to answer this question so positively. But if, being dead, we have penetrated to a higher life, the relation to the old life is most certainly terminated. The conjunction ὥσπερ, even as, indicates only an analogy, a resemblance. The sequel will bring out the internal necessity on which this resemblance rests.

The expression: from the dead, is an allusion to the state of death to sin in which the believer receives baptism, and which paves the way for his spiritual resurrection.

The glory of the Father by which Christ was raised, is not the display of His power apart from His other perfections; but, as usual, that of all the divine attributes combined. For they have all contributed to this masterpiece of the revelation of God on the earth, righteousness as well as mercy, wisdom as well as holiness. Speaking of the resurrection of Lazarus, Jesus said to Martha: “Thou shalt see the glory of God. ” But here we have to do with the resurrection of the Son; and therefore Paul says: by the glory of the Father.

The word so expresses the analogy of the second fact with the first, irrespectively of the individuals in whom it is realized; the we also sets forth the living personalities in whom the prototype is reproduced.

In speaking of believers, the apostle does not rest, as in the case of Christ Himself, on the bare fact of their resurrection, but solely on its permanent consequence, the new life which flows from it: that we should walk in newness of life. He does so because, in regard to believers, he wishes solely to shut out their return to their former life; now this result springs from life in a state of complete realization, rather than from the act by which it is entered on.

The term περιπατεῖν, to walk, is a frequent figure with Paul for moral conduct.

Paul says: newness of life, instead of new life. By this turn of expression he gives less prominence to the idea of life (in contrast to that of death) than to the new nature of the second life in contrast to the nature of that which it excludes. The slightest detail of style is always strictly determined in his writing by the principal thought.

Infant baptism does not seem to me to be either assumed or excluded by this passage. The baptism assumed here is certainly that of adults, and adults only. The act of baptism is put between faith (with death to sin through faith) on the one hand, and renewing by the Holy Spirit on the other. Baptism, thus understood, therefore involves the actual fact of faith and of death to sin, as much as burial implies the death of the buried. But, at the same time, it is clear that Paul adduces the rite of baptism such as it exists at the time of his writing. The baptism of adults was that which, from the nature of things, suited the first generation of believers, as the parents required to belong to the church before there could be any question of introducing their children into it. The apostle does not therefore think of excluding a form which may arise when, circumstances having changed, family life shall have become an integral element in that of the church. The only question is, whether this modification is in keeping with the spirit of the gospel. And this is a question which it seems to me impossible to examine here without breaking the plan of our exegesis.