Bible Study Romans 6
Dead to Sin, Alive in Christ
This objection ignores the fact that justified sinners are under obligation not to persist in sin, and they have freedom not to sin. Baptism “into Christ” brings believers into a close relationship with him. In baptism they can be said to have died and even been buried with him.
Paul knew well enough that the Christian life would therefore be a life of constant tension, in which the values of the fallen world would be seeking to obliterate the standards of God’s new creation (Romans 7:14–25). But he believed it was possible for Christians to triumph over sin and live as God intended, provided they recognized the impossibility of doing so by their own best efforts, and were prepared to trust God to breathe new life into them by the operation of the Holy Spirit (Galatians 5:25). This was the true meaning of Christian baptism, which for Paul was a symbolic expression of a moral and spiritual change that took place in a person’s life when they had been committed to Christ (Romans 6:1–4).
Paul is referring to the ordinance of baptism both in verse 3 and in verse 4. Still, the outward ordinance is not of any saving merit. It is but an object-lesson, a symbol of the real thing
Paul occasionally used the term “glory” as a reference to the Spirit’s work. When, for example, he wrote that “Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father” (Rom. 6:4), the word “glory” is a shorthand description of the Spirit’s work (cf. Rom. 1:4). Similarly, he described the era of the new covenant as a period characterized by the glorious ministry of the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:8), because the Spirit is the Agent producing transformation in God’s people (3:18).