Romans 6:22

But now being made free from sin and become servants of God, ye have your fruit unto sanctification, and the end eternal life.

Now being made free from sin ... refers to the justification of the believers which was accomplished by God upon the condition of their believing and being baptized into Christ; but there is also another sense in which the Christian must be "free from sin," namely in this, that he shall also be free from the practice and pursuit of sin, which is "sanctification" as Paul defined it here. And how does that come about?

Your fruit ... meaning the holy and righteous deeds of Christians, is unto sanctification, meaning that it ends in sanctification, or produces sanctification, the true end, of course, as Paul stated, being "eternal life."

The view of Christian baptism that would dissociate it from justification and connect it with sanctification does violence to the whole corpus of the word of God. The ordinance of baptism has nothing to do with sanctification, because no ceremony, however sincerely complied with, can change human nature. Millions of baptized believers will testify that holiness in their lives was no automatic result of their submission to this holy commandment. How then does baptism save? Only in this, that it is a divinely imposed condition of the primary justification involved in the sinner's transfer out of Satan's dominion into that of Christ. Therefore, baptism connects with sanctification only in the fact that without it, justification does not exist, and sanctification cannot even begin. The preposterous notion that justification is accomplished through faith ALONE, and that baptism has something to do with sanctification, is unsupported either in the sacred text or in the experience of believers.

But isn't baptism the new birth? Yes, of course, in the sense of its being necessary thereunto, and an integral part of it, being specifically that "water" of which people must be born (John 3:5); but the new birth is not of water only, but "of the Spirit" as well. These dual elements in the new birth relate justification and sanctification as follows: (1) The WATER of the new birth (baptism) is the condition upon which justification is dependent; and the SPIRIT (the Holy Spirit of promise) is the instrument of God in the believer's heart which leads to his sanctification. The fruit of the Spirit is given in Galatians 5:2,23, and such fruit constitutes sanctification, being in fact exactly the same "fruit" Paul mentioned in this verse. The differentiation being made here is that the baptismal element of the new birth is retrospective, looking to the washing away of past sins (and having nothing whatever to do with producing holiness in the nature of the Christian afterward), and that the Holy Spirit element in the new birth is prospective, looking to the fruits of sanctification unto eternal life, as here.

(2) This is not to say that there are two new births, there being only one, but to note that it was not being born "of the water" alone that Jesus made prerequisite to entering his kingdom, but also being born "of the Spirit." The two elements are so closely joined that it is proper to speak of both as constituting the new birth, the reception of the Holy Spirit in Christians' hearts being itself conditional upon their baptism (Ephesians 1:13; Acts 2:38f, etc.). But, when baptism as an isolated element of the new birth is considered, the retrospective nature of it must always be understood. On the other hand, when baptism is mentioned as a synecdoche standing for the new birth, it also has a prospective function in that it leads to the impartation of the Holy Spirit of promise (Ephesians 1:13).