<p>6:4&nbsp;<i>We were buried therefore with him through a baptism into his death</i>- Gk.&nbsp;<em>dia&nbsp;</em>baptism. It is through baptism, on account of it, that we are &ldquo;in Christ&rdquo; and associated with the saving death of the Lord Jesus. This is how, mechanically, as it were, we become &ldquo;in Christ&rdquo;. The use of&nbsp;<em>dia</em>&nbsp;here demonstrates the colossal importance of baptism.</p><p>&ldquo;Therefore we&nbsp;<em>are&nbsp;</em>buried with him by baptism into death... knowing this, that our old man&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;crucified with him&quot; (Rom 6:4,6). Every time someone is baptized, the Lord as it were goes through His death for them again. And yet baptism is an ongoing process, of dying daily. We are in Christ, connected every moment with the life and living out of His cross. We&nbsp;<em>are</em>&nbsp;dying with Him, our old man&nbsp;<em>is</em>&nbsp;crucified with Him because His death is an ongoing one. &ldquo;It is Christ that died... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... As it is written, For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter&quot; (Rom 8:34-36). According to Isaiah 53, He on the cross was the sheep for the slaughter; but all in Him are&nbsp;<em>all day long</em>&nbsp;counted as sharing His death, as we live out the same self-control, the same spirit of love and self-giving for others, regardless of their response...</p><p><i>That like as Christ was raised up from the dead through the glory of the Father</i>- This doesn&rsquo;t mean that some bright light as it were hauled the body of Jesus out of the grave. The glory of God is essentially His character and attributes; when Moses asked to see God&rsquo;s glory, He heard the essential character of God proclaimed. Christ was raised from the dead&nbsp;<em>dia&nbsp;</em>, for the sake of, this glory. He perfectly revealed it in a life and personality which was totally like God&rsquo;s, omitting no aspect of righteousness and not committing any sin. He gave His life for us, to become our full representative; and therefore it was appropriate that He be raised again, for the wages of sin is death, but He had done no sin. His same perfection is counted to us, if we believe in Him and into Him through &ldquo;the obedience of faith&rdquo; in baptism. And it is on this basis that we too shall rise again. Paul mentions this aspect of the Lord&rsquo;s resurrection to explain to us something more about&nbsp;<em>how and why</em>&nbsp;immersion into His death and resurrection can lead to&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;resurrection. We must consider that His resurrection is in fact going to be ours exactly because His righteousness is counted to us, and therefore<em>, dia,</em>&nbsp;that, for the sake of it, we took shall be raised to life eternal.</p><p>The theory of Him only &lsquo;acting out&rsquo; reaches its nadir when we come- as each Christian must- to personally contemplate the meaning of the dead body of Jesus. That lifeless corpse, in contrast with the immortal God who cannot die, was surely the ultimate testament to Christ&rsquo;s total humanity. God did not die for three days. The Lord Jesus did. His subsequent resurrection doesn&rsquo;t in any way detract from the fact that He was really dead for three days. Indeed, His resurrection would also have been a cheap sham if He had actually not been really dead, with all that death means. We too, in our natural fear of death (cp. Heb. 2:15), come to that dead body and wish to identify ourselves with it, so that we might share in His resurrection. Baptism is a baptism into His death (Rom. 6:3-5). It&rsquo;s more than some act of vague identification with the dead and resurrected Jesus. We are &ldquo;buried with him&rdquo;, literally &lsquo;co-buried&rsquo; (Gk.&nbsp;<em>syn-thaptein</em>) with Him, inserted into His death, sharing the same grave. If His death was not really death, then baptism loses its meaning, and we are left still searching for another Saviour with whom we can identify in order to rise out of the grave. &nbsp;Jesus Himself was baptized in order to emphasize our identity with Him: &ldquo;Now when&nbsp;<em>all</em>&nbsp;the people were baptized, and Jesus&nbsp;<em>also</em>&nbsp;had been baptized&hellip;&rdquo; (Lk. 3:21).</p><p>Our experience of grace means &ldquo;that we should serve in&nbsp;<em>newness</em>&nbsp;of spirit and not in the oldness of the letter&rdquo; (Rom. 7:6). We don&rsquo;t&nbsp;<em>have</em>&nbsp;to serve God in the sense that He grants us salvation by pure grace, not by works. The blessing of the Lord has nothing added to it by human toil (Prov. 10:22 RVmg.). But just because we don&rsquo;t&nbsp;<em>have</em>&nbsp;to do it, we do. This is the power of grace; it doesn&rsquo;t force us to monotonous service, but should be a wellspring of fresh motivation, to do perhaps the same things with an ever fresh spirit. The pure&nbsp;<em>wonder</em>&nbsp;of it all needs to be felt- that&nbsp;<em>for nothing but pure faith</em>&nbsp;the Lord will grant us eternal redemption for the sake of the Lord&rsquo;s death and resurrection. Which is why Rom. 6:4 says that because of this, and our appropriation of it in baptism, we therefore live in&nbsp;<em>newness</em>&nbsp;of life, a quality of life that is ever new. Through His death, a new and living way is opened (Heb. 10:20). We share the ever fresh life which the Lord lived from His resurrection. It does us good to try to imagine that scene- the Son of God, coming out of the grave at daybreak. He would have seen the lights of Jerusalem shimmering away in the distance, a few kms. away, as everyone woke up and went back to work, the first day after the long holiday. Getting the children ready, caring for the animals&hellip; it was back to the same old scene. But as they did so, the Son of God was rising to newness of life, standing alone in the fresh morning air, with a life that was ever new, with a joy and dynamism that was to know no end&hellip; His feelings are beyond us, but all the same, distorted by our nature, by our spiritual dysfunction, into&nbsp;<em>our&nbsp;</em>lives&nbsp;<em>His&nbsp;</em>life breaks through.</p><p><em>So we also might walk in newness of life</em>- The similar passage in Tit. 3:5 speaks of how &quot;according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit&quot; (see note there). This regenerative power is from the Spirit working within our minds, making life ever new as the Spirit is progressively poured out. Paul will develop this further in chapter 8.</p>