Question

My question is on Romans 6:3-4…could you explain how that fits into the whole picture of the Gospel? I am quite familiar with the deity of Christ and the Trinity and the bodily resurrection and 1 Corinthians 15, but what is it when you accept Christ into your heart and how is that transferred and could you kind of go over the Gospel and explain it?

Answer

First of all we want to see what the verse says, “Don’t you know that as many of us as were baptized” or literally a better way to say it, “immersed into Christ.” Now we talk about immersed in ways that don’t refer to water. We say a guy was immersed in his studies, right? Or he was immersed in his music, and that’s the idea here. So don’t we know that as many of us as were immersed into Jesus Christ, now there is a new term in the book of Romans, for what it means to be a Christian. It means to be literally immersed into Christ. 1 Corinthians 6:17 says, “He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit…right? Galatians 2:20 says, “I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me and the life which I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God Who loved me and gave Himself for me. So I don’t live any longer, Christ lives in me and I live in Him. In Philippians, Paul over and over again says that we are IN Christ. 

So there is a sense in which, when you become a Christian, you are immersed into Jesus Christ. You are placed into Jesus Christ. Now, what does that mean? Verse 4 explains it. We are buried with Him, through that immersion into death and as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life. So when you received Christ, at that moment, a divine miracle occurred by which you were immersed into Christ.  In that immersing  into Christ, again a divine miracle, you were literally placed on the cross, so that somehow in God’s plan and God’s purpose and God’s mind, you were placed on the cross with Christ, you died with Christ, you literally were buried with Christ and when He rose from the grave, you rose from the grave also. The wages of sin is what? Is death. That meant you died. So you payed “in Christ” the wages of sin already, that’s why you’ll never die again. That’s why the law has no hold over you and that’s what He goes on in the rest of the chapter to explain. That’s why no judgment will ever come. You’ve been judged. You’ve died, you’ve paid the penalty. It is appointed unto man, what? Once to die. You did it. You died in Christ, so the wonderful truth of the Gospel as it’s indicated in Romans 6:3-4, is that by faith in Christ you are immersed into Christ, you literally die in Christ, you rise in Christ and then you walk in Christ…so that the life which you now live is not your own, but you live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved you and gave Himself for you. Therefore, you can say at the beginning of that verse, I am crucified with Christ, nonetheless, what? I live, yet it’s not I, it’s Christ that lives in me. Okay? Good question.