Buried And Raised: What Baptism Declares About Christ And You
Romans 6:3-4 (CSB) reads: "Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life."
Two verses. Forty-five words in the original Greek. And yet packed inside those forty-five words is one of the most vivid, searching, and joyful descriptions of what it means to belong to Jesus Christ. Whether you are preparing to be baptized, whether you have been baptized for many years, or whether you are simply exploring what Christian baptism means, these words from the apostle Paul are for you today.
What The Text Is Doing
Before we can understand what baptism means, we need to understand what Paul is doing in this passage. He is not writing a manual for a baptism service. He is writing to a congregation in Rome about the logic of the Christian life. In the verses just before this, Paul has been declaring that where sin increased, grace increased all the more. Then he anticipates a dangerous misreading: does that mean we should keep on sinning so that grace can keep on multiplying? His answer is a firm and astonished no. And the reason he gives is baptism.
Paul appeals to baptism because it is a picture the whole congregation already shares. Every believer in Rome had been baptized. They all knew what it looked like. A person goes down into the water. A person comes up out of the water. Paul says that visible moment carries the weight of the entire gospel story.
What Baptism Declares
Notice Paul's language carefully. He says we were baptized into Christ Jesus and specifically into his death. The word into here carries the sense of union, of being joined to someone. Baptism is not merely a ceremony about the person being baptized. It is a declaration about Christ and about what his death and resurrection have accomplished.
When a believer is immersed in water, the going down pictures burial. Christ died for sin. He was laid in a tomb. The old life of living under sin's dominion is finished. When the believer rises from the water, it pictures resurrection. Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, and that same resurrection power is now at work in everyone who belongs to him.
This is why Paul can say we were buried with him by baptism into death. He is not saying the water caused the burial. He is saying the water declares it. The spiritual reality came through repentance and faith in Christ. Baptism gives that invisible reality a visible, public, bodily form. The water says out loud what the gospel has already done in the heart.
What This Means For The Congregation
Christian traditions have understood baptism in different ways. Some traditions speak of baptism as a sacrament that conveys grace. Others understand it as a covenant sign. In the Baptist tradition, baptism is an ordinance, a practice ordained by Christ himself, that symbolizes and proclaims the gospel. It does not save. It does not add to what Christ has already done. But it is not empty, either. It is a bold, public, embodied declaration of a life that has been united to Christ by grace through faith.
If you are preparing for baptism, hear this clearly. You are not performing a ritual to earn God's favor. You are saying with your whole body what your heart has already confessed: I have died with Christ to the old life, and I have been raised with Christ to walk in newness of life. That newness of life is not a promise you make to God about your future performance. It is a gift God has already given you in Christ, and baptism is your public yes to that gift.
If you have already been baptized, let these verses renew your sense of what that moment meant. You declared something true about Christ. You declared something true about yourself. You stepped into a story that began at the empty tomb and will not end until Christ returns.
A Closing Word
The water of baptism points beyond itself to the death and resurrection of Jesus. That is the center of everything. Christ died. Christ was buried. Christ rose. And by grace through faith, everyone who trusts in him is united to that story forever. Baptism says so with every drop of water, with every person who goes down and comes up, with every congregation that gathers to witness it.
Walk in newness of life. That is what you have been raised for.
Sources Consulted
Douglas J. Moo, The Letter to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament, second edition, Eerdmans, 2018.
Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament, Baker Academic, 1998.
John R. W. Stott, Men Made New: An Exposition of Romans 5-8, InterVarsity Press, 1966.
G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, Eerdmans, 1962.
Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, second edition, Zondervan Academic, 2020, chapter on baptism.
Before preaching: verify every biblical reference, adapt every application to the real congregation, and revise the message in your own Christian tradition and pastoral voice.