When Protestants (and I’m including Baptists in this category) talk about baptism, they usually focus on questions like when to do it and how to do it. The first of necessity includes the theology of baptism: is it an initiation into the covenant people of God, and if so, are children included or only professing believers? Or is it something we do to follow Jesus’ example and command but without greater spiritual significance? Or is it something else entirely?

Romans 6:1-4

One passage that is frequently cited, particularly in support of baptism by immersion, is Romans 6:4, which says we are buried with Christ in baptism and raised into new life. Immersion, it is argued, is a better picture for burial than sprinkling or pouring, so that is the only correct way to baptize.

Whatever you make of the argument, that isn’t really what the passage is about. Let’s look at it in context.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. Romans 6:1-4 (ESV)

Paul here is addressing a question that could be raised by what he had just said, that where sin increased, the grace we are given through faith in Christ abounded all the more (Romans 5:20). If this is so, why shouldn’t we just keep sinning?

The answer is obvious: no, we shouldn’t. What isn’t obvious Paul’s reasoning. He points to baptism.

Baptism into Christ’s Death

Paul tells us that we died to sin with Christ, an idea he develops in the following verses. This isn’t an abstraction for Paul. He identifies our death with Christ with our baptism. If we take his words at face value, we are united with Christ’s death in our baptism, and that is the core reason why we should not continue in sin.

For people in a more liturgically focused tradition, this probably shouldn’t be news. For evangelicals and other low church types who downplay the idea of sacraments, it’s a different story. In my experience, our union with Christ’s death is not a topic evangelicals usually address; they focus on the forensic (i.e. legal) aspects of our justification in Christ. Not surprisingly, then, they don’t connect dying with Christ to baptism. And if they do, they see baptism as a symbol distinct from the spiritual fact of our burial and especially resurrection with Christ.

But that isn’t what Paul says: he says that we have been baptized into Christ’s death and buried with him by baptism into death. In other words, the connection to Christ’s death occurs at or with baptism. A look at the other pictures of baptism in the New Testament will help us understand what Paul is doing here.

Baptism in the Cloud and the Sea

1 Corinthians 10:1-2 refers to the crossing of the Red Sea in the Exodus as a “baptism into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.” In this event, we see God delivering the people from slavery and soon initiating them into a covenant mediated by Moses; we also see a judgment on the Egyptians in the sea. So this baptism marks deliverance through judgment and the inauguration of a new covenant with God’s people. Paul emphasizes here that all the people were baptized, yet most displeased God and died in the wilderness (vs. 3), showing that not all the baptized are necessarily saved.

Baptism in the Flood

The baptism at the Red Sea was prefigured by the Flood, which in 1 Peter 3:20-21 is also connected to baptism. Once again, we see salvation through judgment leading to the inauguration of a covenant. Peter here associates baptism with transformation and connection to the resurrection as Paul does in Romans 6:4.

Interestingly, God promised Noah he would never again destroy the earth with water. In Exodus and in the New Testament, the waters of baptism are used not for destruction but for deliverance from judgment—though in both cases judgment on the wicked does occur in this world or the next.

Baptism into the New Covenant Through christ’s Death

Baptism thus marks a separation of those under the emerging covenant from those outside of it (1 Peter 3:21, cf. Mark 16:16). In the New Covenant, that separation point is our relationship to the death of Christ, through which the world is crucified to us and us to the world (Galatians 6:14). To separate ourselves from the judgment on the world and to enter the New Covenant, then, we must be baptized into Christ’s death.

As both Paul and Peter point out, our baptism into Christ’s death carries with it the promise of being united with him in his resurrection. Those who are baptized into his death thus receive new life and a new identity now, even as they wait for the promises of the New Covenant to be fully realized in the New Heavens and New Earth. However, Like those baptized in the cloud and the sea in Exodus, those who do not respond to their baptism with faith still face judgment.

Dead to Sin but alive to God

Understanding our baptism into Christ’s death both motivates and empowers us to resist sin and “walk in newness of life.” Paul expands on this in the subsequent verses in Romans 6, some of which are commonly cited as encouragements to fight sin and live righteously (e.g. vss. 11, 13). But it is a mistake to read these verses apart from what Paul tells us about baptism, which is the foundation for everything he says in this section of Romans.

Paul’s words about baptism not only enriches our understanding of the sacrament but also provides us with a basis for living out our freedom from bondage to sin in this life. It is thus of immense practical importance for anyone who wants to be a faithful follower of Christ.