By Bill McKeever and Eric Johnson
Romans 6:3–4 says, “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.”
There is a strong connection between baptism and the believer’s relationship to Christ through His death and resurrection. The use of the aorist (past) tense suggests that, at some specific moment, the believer actually becomes linked to Christ’s death and resurrection.
F.F. Bruce writes, “Burial sets the seal on death; so the Christian’s baptism is a token burial in which the old order of life in sin comes to an end, to be replaced by the new order of life in Christ” (Romans: Tyndale New Testament Commentaries, 130).
In New Testament times, faith and baptism were so closely identified because they normally took place so closely together. Paul’s main message in this passage was that Christians should consider themselves dead to sin but alive in Christ. If the old nature has been washed away through the death and resurrection of Christ, why should the believer allow sin to reign? Baptism symbolizes a person’s new identity with Christ.
For other passages discussing common passages used by Latter-day Saints, click here.
See more on Acts 2:38 and 1 Peter 3:21.