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Living the Likeness of His Resurrection

Romans chapters five and six are two amazing chapters – perhaps two of the most amazing chapters in the Bible. Chapter five speaks first of the incredible, unconditional love of God in sending his Son to die for us while we were yet sinners (5.6-11) and secondly of God’s amazing, limitless grace that super-abounds beyond man’s amazing, limitless ability to sin (5.12-21, cf. especially vs.20). One cannot read this chapter without being deeply moved, perhaps even taken aback, by God’s desire and willingness to offer forgiveness to sinners

Now, if chapter five occurred in isolation, you might get the idea that God doesn’t care if you keep right on sinning -- since “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (5.20). But Paul shows the absurdity of such a position by showing that when we were baptized into Christ, we died to sin (6.2-4). Baptism, when done in faith with a repentant heart, unites us to Christ’s death, burial and resurrection (vs.3-5). Baptism, being a death to sin, an immersing or burial in water and a raising to new life vividly pictures the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. And in that pictorial act, we are untied with him (vs.5

However, I want to suggest to you that there is more to it than meets the eye. While the act of baptism itself (when done in faith) is a likeness of Christ’s death and resurrection, it is not so much the act itself but what happens to the person in this act and what the person becomes afterward that forms the likeness. In Rom 6.6-11 Paul goes on to relate our spiritual death that occurred at baptism to Jesus’ once-for-all death to sin at his crucifixion; and likewise our walking in new life to Jesus’ resurrection to a new life. Before Jesus died, he was connected to sin – not his, but ours. In his great love for us, the one who had no sin came to this earth to be surrounded by sin, tempted by sin and even to “become sin” on our behalf (2 Cor 5.21). But in his death he died to that sin once for all. And in his resurrection he lives to God, death and sin no longer having control over him (vs.9). The same is true of those who have been baptized into Christ (vs.6-8). However, the “likeness of his death” of vs.5 is not so much the act of baptism itself as it is the likeness (sameness) of our death to his death. It is in our dying to sin like he died to sin that we are united with him. And in our being raised to a new life just like he was raised to a new life, we are united to with him. What I’m trying to say is that the “likeness of his death” and the “likeness of his resurrection” is us – it is our personal, real death to sin and our new life to God in which we walk. Baptism is simply where it begins. When you look at a Christian, you ought to see a likeness of Christ’s death every day. We died to sin at baptism and we stay dead to sin. And you ought to see a continual likeness of his resurrection life. That is, you ought to see us living a life to God, victorious over sin, freed from sin – just like Jesus. In that new life we are united with Jesus – intimately, daily -- because we are living the likeness of his death to sin and walking in the likeness of his resurrection life. Verse 8 says it all: “Now if have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him” – here and now as we are united with him by living like him. And that’s perhaps the most amazing thing of all!