Romans 6:5

For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection.

This is a further allusion to Christian baptism, as Barrett noted, "the likeness of his death being baptism."[21] Most commentators refer to textual difficulties in this place, but regardless of those, the overall meaning is clear. Paul was making a comparison between the death and resurrection of Christ, on the one hand, and death to sin and rising to walk in newness of life, on the part of Christians. Brunner paraphrased the verse thus:

If we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.[22]

The "resurrection like his" is a reference to the wonderful new spiritual life of Christians, such being required by the argument, and not the eternal resurrection at the last day. Thus, Paul was still pressing the requirement of holy living on the part of Christians; and that fitted into his comprehensive theme of God's righteousness by refuting the proposition that the holy and righteous God would tolerate a community of his alleged children on earth living lives of sin.

For if we have been planted ... The big word here is "if." Net all shall partake of that new life, for not all will be planted in the likeness of Christ's death, that is, not all will be baptized. This verse is a connective between two focal points of the Christian message. First, Christ died for us, having lived a perfect life of faith and obedience to God's will, and through this means creating the ground of justification for sinful people, and containing within himself after his resurrection the only perfect righteousness ever known on earth, and without which no one can be saved. God's mighty act of redemption does not consist in transferring the true righteousness of Christ to sinners, but in transferring sinners "into Christ," making them legally one with Christ; that is, causing them to be in Christ's spiritual body, and thereupon being justly entitled to claim Christ's righteousness as their very own. Paul here pointed out that, in the most appropriate manner possible, the believing sinner accepts Christ's righteousness, not through any mere assumption of it, but by a valid act of response, in kind, to what Christ did. The sinner actually participates in the death, burial and resurrection of the Lord. We die to sin through the absolute denial of ourselves and renunciation of our evil nature with its pride by being baptized into Christ, that action constituting the death of our old identity, because by that action we have put on Christ (Galatians 3:26,27). It is in that legal sense of being dead to sin through the body of Christ (since we are in him, we died with him) that Paul was speaking earlier; but at this point he spoke more of the demise of the old man, which is death to sin in a different sense. The believer is transformed through God's creative act within him, having been born again, the old man dying and being replaced by the new man in Christ. Brunner commented on this as follows:

We have been baptized into the death of Jesus. That means we enter into his death in faith, not only as a death on our behalf, but as our death. He has not only died for us, but he died in our place; his death was really valid for us, and this sentence of God executed upon him for our salvation we allow to be executed upon us. We surrender ourselves into his death; we are crucified with him; we sacrifice our old hitherto sinful life to this death, letting the old man be buried with Christ.[23]

If one really wishes to know why people do not wish to be baptized and why every device ever known to human intelligence has been exercised in a fruitless effort to get baptism out of God's plan, let him read Brunner's words again.

Death to sin has a double aspect in this chapter, meaning in fact two things: (1) It is the legal death to sin, which is the status of being dead to sin "in Christ," a legal state that one enters in the act of baptism, .the baptized believer being dead to sin in the same way that he is dead to the law "by the body of Christ." (2) It means the crucifixion of the old man, the utter and final rejection of self, what Jesus called "denying" one's self, renouncing the old identity, repudiating the old system of value-judgments, mortifying the members of the fleshly body, etc. This is called the personal death to sin. The first aspect of being dead to sin is accomplished in one formal, dramatic act of conversion to Christ; but the second aspect, the personal death to sin, cannot occur in one blinding burst of light, but is a growth process, as correctly analyzed by Sanday:

If so surely as we have grown into, become CONJOINED with (this) metaphor is taken from the parasitic growth of a plant, but applied to natural growth, not "planted together with" as in KJV. The idea would correspond with the growth of a bud or graft regarded as part of the stock in which it is inserted, but without reference to the operation of budding or grafting.[24]

Sanday's comment upon "if we have been planted" shows that dying to sin is a growth process (in the sense of phase 2, above). Unlike the legal death to sin which is accomplished dramatically, this is a continuing process and, in a sense never completely accomplished on earth. The glaring error often met with regarding the believer's death to sin is that of making it some kind of subjective change wrought within the believer himself prior to his becoming a Christian. Impossible. The death to sin, in the personal sense, properly begins with the repentance of the believer and his denial of himself as preliminary to his baptism; but, as every young Christian quickly finds out, the old man is far from dead at that point! The Holy Spirit's employment of the growth metaphor in this verse clearly shows the truth. Successfully crucifying the old man requires a lifetime of devotion and Christian service; and it cannot ever be done at all without the believer's first achieving a legal status of deadness to sin, through his conversion to Christ.

[21] C. K. Barrett, op. cit., p. 124.

[22] Emil Brunner, The Letter to the Romans (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1959), p. 49.

[23] Emil Brunner, op. cit., p. 49.

[24] W. Sanday, Ellicott's Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Pub. Company, 1970), p. 227.