Romans 6.3b-The Believer Has Been Identified with Christ In His Spiritual Death
Wenstrom Bible Ministries
Pastor-Teacher Bill Wenstrom
Thursday June 5, 2008
Romans: Romans 6:3b-The Believer Has Been Identified With Christ In His Death
Lesson # 180
Please turn in your Bibles to Romans 6:1.
In Romans 6:3a, Paul reminds the believers in Rome that they were identified with Jesus Christ the moment they exercised faith in Him as their Savior.
This evening we will complete this verse by noting in Romans 6:3b that the believer is identified with Christ in His spiritual death.
Romans 6:1-3, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”
“Have been baptized” does not refer to water baptism but rather it refers to the act performed by the omnipotence of the Holy Spirit on behalf of those sinners who exercise faith in Jesus Christ as their Savior.
This act places the believer in Jesus Christ in an eternal union with Jesus Christ and identifies them with Christ in His crucifixion, death, burial, resurrection and session.
The omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit causes the believer to become identical and united with the Lord Jesus Christ and also ascribes to the believer the qualities and characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This identification with Jesus Christ in His spiritual death is called in theology, “retroactive positional truth” meaning that when Christ died spiritually on the Cross, God the Father considers and views the believer has having died with Christ at that moment.
At the moment of salvation, the omnipotence of God the Holy Spirit causes the believer to become identical and united with the Lord Jesus Christ in His spiritual death and also ascribes to the believer the qualities and characteristics of the Lord Jesus Christ’s spiritual death.
Romans 6:3, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”
“Into His death” refers to the unique voluntary substitutionary spiritual death of the impeccable humanity of Christ in hypostatic union.
Remember, Adam died spiritually first and then physically.
This pattern holds true as we noted in Romans 5:12-21 for his posterity, the human race.
Jesus Christ’s obedience to the Father’s will in dying a spiritual death negated Adam’s spiritual death and its effects, namely, physical death and eternal condemnation.
Therefore, the sinner who trusts in Jesus Christ is delivered from all three.
Romans 5:12-21 taught us that the sin nature came into the world through Adam’s transgression and spiritual death through the sin nature.
God imputed Adam’s transgression to every member of his posterity, i.e. the human race.
Therefore, every member of the human is born into this world, physically alive yet spiritually dead and in need of justification.
The sin nature resides in the physical body (Romans 6:6).
Romans 6:6, “knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin.”
Personal sin is the result of obeying the desires of the sin nature.
Spiritual death is the result of possessing a sin nature and committing personal sin perpetuates this status.
Therefore, the human race had three major problems that are interconnected, the sin nature, spiritual death and personal sins. Jesus Christ’s spiritual and physical deaths dealt with all three.
Spiritual death is the product of the sin nature and personal sin perpetuates this status of spiritual death.
The human race is under the status of real spiritual death because of the sin nature, which was passed down from Adam.
Spiritual death is the consequence of not only possessing a sin nature but also obeying its desires and committing personal sin.
Instead, of the human race suffering the consequences of possessing a sin nature and obeying its desires and committing personal sin, Jesus Christ died spiritually in their place as their Substitute.
Thus, His spiritual death negates one of the effects of Adam’s sin, which is spiritual death that is the result of possessing a sin nature and committing sin.
Therefore, our Lord had to die spiritually to solve the problem of spiritual death in the human race.
His spiritual death dealt with the consequences of the human race possessing a sin nature and obeying its desires, namely, spiritual death.
Adam acquired a sin nature when he disobeyed the Lord’s command to not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
This sin nature was passed down to his posterity, i.e. the human race through sex and resides in the genetic structure of every body of every human being.
Therefore, the status of spiritual death was passed down to Adam’s posterity since spiritual death entered the human race through the sin nature.
Spiritual death is the status of possessing a sin nature due to the imputation of Adam’s original sin in the Garden of Eden.
Therefore, our Lord had to die physically to solve the problem of the sin nature, which resides in the body of every human being.
Our Lord’s resurrection body replaces the sinful body of Adam.
The believer will receive a resurrection body like Christ in order to replace their physical bodies that possess the sin nature, the Adamic body.
Therefore, God the Father viewed His Son’s spiritual death as negating spiritual death in the human race and viewed His physical death as negating the sin nature.
Personal sin perpetuated the status of real spiritual death and through the function of human volition is the product of the sin nature.
Consequently, the sinner who is declared justified through faith in Christ is identified with Christ in His spiritual death in order to solve the sinner’s problem of real spiritual death whereas the sinner is identified with Christ in His physical death in order to solve the sinner’s problem with the old sin nature.
Therefore, Christ’s spiritual and physical death resolved the human race’s problem with the sin nature, spiritual death and personal sins.
Thus, there is a clear pattern in that the first Adam sinned and then, he died spiritually while simultaneously acquiring a sin nature and then he died physically (Genesis 5:5).
The last Adam obeyed the Father, died spiritually as a Substitute for Adam and his posterity, and then died physically to break the power of the sin nature.
Then, the last Adam was raised from physical death and received a resurrection body, which would be passed down to His spiritual posterity, namely, those who trust in Him as Savior.
In Romans 6, Paul follows this pattern.
Thus, in Romans 6:3, he speaks of the justified sinner being identified with Christ in His spiritual death so as to solve his problem of being spiritually dead.
Romans 6:3, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death?”
Then, in Romans 6:4, he speaks of the justified sinner being identified with Christ in His physical death so as to break the power of the sin nature.
Romans 6:4, “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”
In Romans 6:5, the apostle teaches that the justified sinner is identified with Christ in His resurrection in order to solve the problem of possessing a sin nature.
Romans 6:5, “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection.”
This identification with Christ’s resurrection solves the problem of the sin nature in that it guarantees that the believer will receive a resurrection body like the last Adam, Christ so as to replace his sinful body.
Therefore, in Romans 6:3, the noun thanatos, “death” is a reference to the spiritual death of Christ, which dealt with the consequences of obeying the desires of the sin nature and committing personal sin.
However, in Romans 6:4, Paul teaches that the believer is identified with Jesus Christ in His physical death since thanatos, “death” is used in relation to our Lord’s burial, which certified that a person was physically dead.
Our Lord’s physical death broke the power of the sin nature and then in Romans 6:5, Paul teaches that the believer is identified with Christ in His resurrection in order to solve the problem of possessing a sin nature and guaranteeing the justified sinner that he will receive a resurrection body to replace his sinful body.