“Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:3,4)
In this passage, what does baptism illustrate? What does it signify? In the four gospels and the Acts, baptism refers to the practice of literal water baptism. It is for those who have come to know Christ as Savior. When we reach the New Testament’s epistles, however, baptism often refers to something other than water baptism. That’s the case with our passage in Romans 6 above. As Paul wrote about our new life in Christ, baptism illustrates, clarifies, and explains our status as those freed from the power of sin.The point of this third devotional on baptism is this: The baptism Paul mentions is a wonderful illustration only if we understand water baptism as an act that immerses and identifies someone.
When the Lord Jesus used parables, they were effective because he chose common things that were easily understood by his hearers. Christ told the parable of the kingdom of heaven being like a fisherman’s net (Matthew 13:47-50). The parable fails if the listeners don’t understand that the net is filled with fish which later would have to be separated (the good are kept, but the bad are “cast away”). As it is with the fishing net, so it is with the kingdom of heaven.
Likewise, Paul’s spiritual references to baptism are clear and helpful only if we understand literal water baptism. Paul says that the believer has been “baptized into Jesus Christ” and “baptized into his death” (Romans 6:3). That doesn’t refer to water baptism outright, but we must understand water baptism for 6:3 to make sense. The believer is fully immersed into and fully identified with Christ and Christ’s death. That only explains our position in Christ if water baptism by immersion is the pattern and background for Paul’s statements in 6:3 (and in I Cor. 12:13 and Colossians 2:12, for example).
As it is with literal water baptism by immersion, so it is with baptism into Christ and baptism into his death. When baptized, the baptized one is fully identified with that into which he or she is baptized. In water baptism by immersion, the baptized one is fully identified with water. That is, the baptized one is wet. In baptism into Christ (Rom. 6:3), the baptized one is fully identified with Christ, his death, his work, his forgiveness. In baptism into the death of Christ (Rom. 6:3), the baptized one is fully identified as having passed from one life (marked by sin) to a different life made possible because, in Christ, we died to that sinful life when He died.
