Romans 6:3-7 “Or do you not know that as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? (4) Therefore, we were buried with Him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. (5) For if we have been united together in the likeness of His death, certainly we also shall be in the likeness of His resurrection, (6) knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin. (7) For he who has died has been freed from sin.”
We have seen earlier that the Lord Jesus Christ, the head of the church, has instructed His church to be baptized in water. So what role does water baptism fulfil in the Christian walk? We know that water baptism has nothing to do with our salvation, because in all the instances that we have looked at in the previous section the people who were baptized in water were already saved before they were baptized, and so all believers are destined for heaven whether they are baptised in water or not. We also know that water baptism has nothing to do with the baptism in the Holy Spirit, because in at least two of the examples that we looked at i.e. Paul and the gentiles, they had already been baptized in the Holy Spirit before being baptized in water. Nevertheless as we will see in this section, even though water baptism does not impact our eternal salvation it does serve a purpose in this life in which we now live. More specifically water baptism deals with the physical body of the believer, for the main reason we are baptised in water is so that the body of the sins of the flesh can be dealt with. We have already explained the truth that all believers are baptized into Christ. But in the above passage of scripture the Holy Spirit through the apostle Paul reveals to us something further that took place when we were baptized into Christ, for He tells us that we were also baptized into His death and that our old man died with Christ. When someone dies in the natural their bodies must be buried, and that is exactly what happened to Christ’s body. It was buried. In this passage the Holy Spirit goes on to say that as believers, our bodies are also buried with Christ through baptism. The baptism that the Holy Spirit is referring to in this passage is water baptism, for the immersion of our bodies in water it is a type of burial that takes place. The Holy Spirit goes on to say in the above passage that just as Christ was raised from the dead, even so our bodies are also raised as a type from the dead through water baptism as they are raised up out of the water. The whole purpose being that we can therefore walk in newness of life, having put off our old man’s body of sin. And so we see that water baptism deals specifically with our physical bodies. Therefore, although the believer who has not been baptized in water has still died with Christ, they have not yet buried the body of sin and been raised up in newness of life. Many Christians today are walking about in a dead man’s body because they have never buried (through water baptism) the body that their old man once occupied.
Michael E.B. Maher
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