Identification
Means the End of the Sin Nature's Tyranny. Romans 6:3-7
If
we come to understand what Paul says in the first eight verses of Romans
chapter six the rest of the chapter is fairly easy. We see that at the instant
of salvation Scripture says that we are baptized into Christ. Normally when we
read passages that talk about being in Christ that is the Greek preposition en [e)n], but what we
have here when we are identified “in Christ” is the preposition eis [e)ij]. It is important to understand the implication of that. It
is very similar; these two prepositions often overlap. What it is focusing on
is our identification with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection, which means that there is this radical break and transformation in
relation to the sin nature that is the foundation for our spiritual life.
The
key words we see here are sin and grace, died to sin, and then the contrast
“how shall we live in it?”—the contrast between
death and life—and then the phrases related to baptism in v. 3, “baptized
into Christ Jesus” and “baptized into His death,” and in v. 4 “baptism into
death”--all of these have to do with that basic idea of
identification—for that ultimate goal of living day-to-day,
moment-by-moment in “newness of life.” This promises real change, true
transformation from what we were before we were saved to what God intends us to
be.
There
are a lot of people who are sceptical because they look around and see people
who don’t change very much, and they don’t think that real change is possible.
But this is the promise here that radical transformation is not only possible,
it is expected of anybody who is a believer in Jesus Christ. We see that the
verb baptism here is expressed as a past tense, indicating that this is
something that has happened in the believer’s life. It is something that has
occurred in the past and the way Paul talks about it is present results that
are the result of this previous action. And the result is that we are to walk
in newness of life. This is expressed as an imperative. It is a subjunctive but
it is expressed as something that we should be doing.
We
have seen previously that the word “baptism” means to dip, to plunge. When John
the Baptist baptized in the Jordan River he was literally immersing people in
the water. But it is not the physical immersion that is
important, it is what it represented. It was a
ritual that had a symbolic meaning and it was designed to teach something. It
is a ritual that has the sense that it proclaimed a truth in the same way that
communion does. It only has a reality for people who understand the
significance. It is not the baptism that does anything,
it is a teaching tool so that we understand what we also refer to as positional
truth. Positional truth is a term that goes right over a lot of people’s heads
because they don’t understand what the position is and what the truth is. Paul
is talking about this as the foundation for understanding everything that we
are to do in Christ.
To
understand this is to give us the foundation for thinking about who we are and how we are supposed to live in terms of what
Christ has done for us. It is re-tooling our thinking. Whatever image we have
of ourselves, however we think about who we are, this is the image that is
foundational: that we are transformed and have been identified with Christ in
His death, burial and resurrection so that there is this definitive break with
the tyranny of the sin nature.
At
the instant that we trust in Christ God uses the Holy Spirit to identify us
with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. That is an eternal reality,
an eternal position, the foundation for the Christian
life. We are to walk in the light, and when we are walking in the light we are
being filled by means of the Spirit with God’s Word. We are walking by means of
the Spirit, walking in the light, walking in the truth, abiding in Christ; all
of these terms mean roughly the same thing. But we sin, and when we sin we are
out of fellowship and are walking in darkness. But positionally we are still
“children of light.” That is why Paul said in Ephesians 5 that we are children
of light and we are to walk as children of light; we are to live as children of
light. Walking indicates day-by-day, moment-by-moment lifestyle. And the way to
recover from carnality is to confess our sins (1 John 1:9) and we are instantly
forgiven and cleansed of all unrighteousness and restored to fellowship.
The
act of baptism is a radical reality, but it is not experiential. We have to walk
by faith, not by feeling, not by sight, not by experience; we have to make this
a foundational element in how we think about who we are and what we are
supposed to do in our Christian life.
The
baptism of Noah is a baptism that a lot of people have trouble with. It is
connected to the incident in Genesis chapter six where we are told that the
sons of God looked upon the daughters of men and saw that they were good to be
their wives, and they cohabited with them. Later in the passage it talks about the
product of that—men of renown and giants were on the earth in those days,
indicating that there was some sort of monster children from these unions. Who
were the sons of God? There are three different views and the only view that
makes sense biblically is the view that these were the fallen angels, because
that term “sons of God” in the Hebrew always refers to angelic beings in the
Old Testament. The implication from various passages of Scripture is that
angelic beings had the ability to transform themselves into human bodies with
normal human biological functions. The 1 Peter chapter three passage is a
reference back to those fallen angels who were identified as the sons of God, a
term that refers to both fallen angels and elect angels.
1 Peter 3:18 NASB
“For Christ also died for sins once for all, {the} just for {the} unjust, so
that He might bring us to God, having been put to death in the flesh, but made
alive in the spirit; [19] in which also He went and made proclamation [kerugma/khrugma = announcement] to the spirits {now} in prison …” (“spirits”
– pneuma in the plural often
refers to angelic beings). So who are these spirits who are in prison? In Jude
6 and 1 Peter 3:19 we have this phrase that they are in prison in bonds of deep
darkness. But in the parallel passage in 2 Peter 2:4 it is translated “into
hell,” but literally in the Greek it is Tartarus,
which is a compartment in what the Bible generally describes as Hades. It is
viewed as the domain of the angels, part of which is the abyss where there are
certain demonic armies confined until the second half of the Tribulation. This
gives us a picture of Sheol or Hades as it is described in Luke 16.
Abraham’s bosom is where
Old Testament believers went when they died, because the door hadn’t been opened
to heaven yet because Christ is the firstfruits and
is the first to open that. They were there until Christ dies, and at that point
we are told that Paradise goes to heaven—2 Corinthians 12:1-4. So
Paradise as a compartment in Hades or Sheol is vacated after the resurrection
when all the Old testament believers are led into
heaven. Torments remains as well as Tartarus. Torments is the holding cell for all unbelievers until they
are resurrected at the end of the Millennial kingdom for the great white throne
judgment. “ … [20] who [the spirits in prison]
once were disobedient, when the patience of God kept waiting in the days of
Noah …” This clearly states that these spirits did something at the time of
Noah that is the cause of their incarceration. What could it be other than the
sons of God and that infraction as they took on the form of human beings and
sought to pollute the genetic pool of humanity. This
was a satanic attack in order to prevent the seed of the woman being truly
human. “… during the construction of the ark, in which
a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through {the} water.”
The eight persons are Noah
and his three sons and their four wives. They are brought safely through the
water. The NKJV
translation there is not accurate when it says “brought safely through the
water.” The verb is an aorist form of the preposition dia [dia] plus the verb sozo [swzw],
which means to be saved through something. So it should be translated “they
were saved through the water.” They didn’t get wet though. Nobody gets wet in
the real baptisms except those who are judged by God. But in the case of Noah
they were saved through the water, it becomes a means of delivering them. They
are elevated above everything in the ark and they are saved through the water.
Then we have an interesting
statement that is difficult to capture in the next verse. 1 Peter 3:21 NASB
“Corresponding to that …” What does that mean? Corresponding to what? The ark? Salvation through the water? English breaks down there because
we don’t have relative pronouns and pronouns that have gender and indicate
precisely the word to which they are referring. It is not “ark” because that is
a masculine noun. It has to be water because water is a neuter noun and the antitupos [a)ntitupoj] and the pronoun translated “that” is a neuter pronoun. So
“that” has to refer back to a neuter noun. The only neuter noun in the
immediate context is water, so it is corresponding to the water. antitupos means a copy or a symbol. In
the Lord’s table there are two elements: the symbol
and what the symbol represents. The term that is used for the symbol is the
Greek word tupos [tupoj] meaning a type, an image, a mark, a mould for something.
Then what it represents/pictures is called the antitupos.
So the type is the symbol and the antitype is the reality that the symbol
represents. For example, the Passover lamb is the type, the symbolic
representation. The Lamb of God, Jesus, is the antitype. That is what the type
is depicting. In the same way what this is saying is that the flood water is the type; it is picturing something. Noah and
his family are saved through the water.
We should ask another
question. What kind of “saved” is this talking about? For Noah and his family
that salvation is a physical deliverance. But when we get to 1 Peter 3:21 and
it says, “Corresponding to that, baptism now saves you,” is this phase one
(justification) or is this phase two (sanctification)? What is Peter talking
about in this chapter? He is not giving us a dissertation on how to be
justified or how to be regenerated. He is not talking about phase one in this
chapter at all, he is talking about phase
two—spiritual life truth. What Peter is saying here is that corresponding
to that act of the deliverance of Noah and his family through water baptism now
in the Christian life is the basis for our sanctification growth.
What baptism is he talking
about? He tells us: “not the removal of dirt from the flesh.” This isn’t about
ritual baptism; it is not believer’s baptism because it is not talking about
that physical water baptism. It is “not the removal of dirt from the flesh, but
an appeal to God for a good conscience,” and that relates to the cleansing of
sin. Is that phase one or phase two? It has to be phase two. Then he says,
“through the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” Is the resurrection of Christ
related to justification, phase one, or the spiritual life, phase two?
Resurrection is a spiritual life illustration. The death of Christ and His
payment for sin is a justification focus—phase one. When we trust in
Christ the penalty of sin is removed. But we still have the presence of sin. We
have to be saved from the present reality of sin, and that is
sanctification—newness of life.
The antitype is a baptism
that is a present tense reality. There are only two options: water baptism or
baptism by the Holy Spirit. It can’t be water baptism because Peter makes it
clear it is not the removal of dirt by the water (it is not a physical thing)
but it is a cleansing of the conscience. That is what it stands for. And it is
through the resurrection of Christ.
Romans 6:4 NASB
“Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death …”
Justification. That is identification. “… so that as
Christ was raised from the dead (resurrection) through the glory of the Father,
so we too might walk in newness of life.” Resurrection is related to newness of
life. That is phase two. So Romans 6:4 is saying the same kind of thing that is
said by Peter in 1 Peter 3:21. So Peter is saying that the baptism by the Holy
Spirit has an ongoing reality because of our new position in Christ that is
related to the resurrection model and imagery that is the basis for our new
life in Christ. It is the same thing Paul is saying, that the baptism of the
Holy Spirit, while it happened instantly at the time we were justified, the
reality is that we have to understand this because it is going to revolutionise
how we think about ourselves. We don’t think of ourselves anymore as someone
who is a sinner (we are, by the way), that is not our
fundamental identity anymore because our real identity is in Christ and we have
been identified with His death, burial and resurrection. So we
are no longer a bond slave to sin; we are a bond slave
to righteousness. So why keep going back and making ourselves
a slave to the sin nature? We don’t have to, but we all make those
choices far too frequently.
All through the early
church baptism was not viewed as something that was optional for the believer.
If you trusted in Christ as your saviour you were expected to
be baptised almost immediately.
Acts 19 is at the end of
Paul’s second missionary journey. Paul finds that there is a group of people
who have learned about John the Baptist and his baptism and they come to him to
hear what he has to teach. So he is asking questions to find out what they have
understood and what their background is. Acts 19:3 NASB “And he
[Paul] said, ‘Into what then were you baptized?’ And they said, ‘Into John’s
baptism.’” Remember that John’s baptism was for the Jews in relationship to the
kingdom message, so they are Old Testament believers. They don’t know anything
about Jesus, about the day of Pentecost, anything about church age doctrine. So
Paul tells them, [4] “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the
people to believe in Him who was coming after him, that is, in Jesus. [5] When
they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.”
At the same time roughly he has written in his opening chapter to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians, a passage that sometimes has been misunderstood. The Corinthians divided up into little factions. Paul asks: 1 Corinthians 1:13 NASB “Has Christ been divided? Paul was not crucified for you, was he? Or were you baptized in the name of Paul? [14] I thank God that I baptized none of you except Crispus and Gaius.” He is saying he is glad that he was not getting into this divisive battle that is going on in their church. [15] “so that no one would say you were baptized in my name.” His associates did the baptizing. But he is not making a blanket statement here that there is something wrong with baptism. What is wrong is the Corinthians’ attitude of using it as a foundation for division. At the same time that Paul is making this statement he is also baptizing the disciples of John the Baptist in Ephesus.
Getting back to the baptism
of the Holy Spirit, there is a lot of confusion about just what this is since
the beginnings of the holiness movement and the Pentecostal movement.
Pentecostals and holiness people believed in two baptisms because they were
building their doctrine off of the translation in the KJV, which basically translated
the same Greek phrase with two different English translations. So in Matthew
3:11 John the Baptist said that somebody would come after him who would baptize
with the Holy Spirit. In 1 Corinthians 12:13 the statement is made: “For
by one Spirit …” It is “with” the Holy Spirit in Matthew 3:11;
“by the Spirit” in 1 Corinthians 12:13. But the Greek phrase is exactly the
same in both places—en [e)n] with the dative of the Greek noun pneuma [pneuma] for Spirit, indicating means. They are not two different
baptisms, but the Pentecostals made the mistake of thinking that because there
is with in one passage and by in another passage that there must be
two different baptisms; one you get at salvation and one you get sometime after
salvation.
What we have in 1 Corinthians 12:13 is a clear statement: “For by one Spirit we were all [all Christians] baptized into [eis/ e)ij] one body …” The verb is an aorist passive indicative, which means we are receiving the action of that verb. That is important because in the Matthew 3:11 passage it is an active voice—Christ will baptize you. So who performs the action there? Christ, not the Holy Spirit. Jesus performs the action and He uses the Holy Spirit. Just as John used the water to indicate the new state of the repentant Jew, Jesus uses the Holy Spirit to identify us with His death, burial and resurrection, and to bring us all into one body.
The
baptism of the Holy Spirit is first prophesied by John the Baptist. In all the Gospels it is a prophecy and then Jesus Christ
reiterated it in Acts 1:5, and in all of those times
that baptism of the Holy Spirit was future. In Matthew the subject, the one who
performs the action, is Jesus: “He will baptize you by means of the Holy
Spirit.” Just as John performed the action, so Jesus performs the action of
baptism. And He uses the Holy Spirit just as John used the water as the
instrument for the baptism. “For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body …” It states the direction of the baptism, which is
into Christ, i.e. the new body of Christ which is the church. That is what is
symbolised by water baptism but is the abstract doctrine that is the foundation
for the new spiritual life.
Paul now states the reason
for this in 6:4, which is that we should now walk in newness of life. This
break has occurred so that each of us has the capability to live this new life
that he is talking about. It is not just magic, it is a reality, but we have to
get into our head what has happened. That phrase “newness of life” is indicated
by the noun kainotes [kainothj]. It is used in Romans 7:6 NASB “But now we have
been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that
we serve in newness of the Spirit …” So we connect the new life with the Holy
Spirit. They are both talking about this new life that we have and the Holy
Spirit is the one who makes that possible.
Conclusion: The purpose for
the baptism of the Holy Spirit is to break the tyranny of the sin nature by
identifying us with the death, burial and resurrection of Christ. That
authority of the sin nature in our life is broken. Unfortunately, it is still
there. But it no longer has the right to dictate terms. The problem is we let
it all the time.
What Paul says in these
first four verses is that believers should no longer abide or continue to walk
by the sin nature. Just stop it. Believers have been separated from the
authority of the sin nature, or died to sin, vv, 2, 9, 12.
This identification with Christ’s death equals a death or separation from the
authority or tyranny of the sin nature. It is a reality. Believers are also
identified with Christ’s resurrection to new life, which means we now have this
new life for ourselves. It is a new mode of living and we have a new authority:
we are slaves of righteousness. That is who we are. We can’t act as slaves of
sin anymore because we have been freed from sin.
This is stated in a hymn we
often sing:
O for a thousand tongues to sing,
My great Redeemer's praise,
The glories of my God and King,
The triumphs of His grace!
He breaks the power of cancelled sin,
Notice
how brilliantly that is written.
“He breaks” is a present tense. When we trust Christ that is when it is broken
in our life. “Of cancelled sin,” it is already cancelled—expiation, which
is the cancelling of the debt which occurred at the cross.
And sets the prisoner free: -- present tense, it is when we trusted in Christ as
saviour.
His blood [indicating His death] can make the foulest clean;
His blood availed for me.