Wednesday, September 2, 2026 Thomas Buckley on Baptism in Romans Baptism and the Dialectic of Death and Life Through baptism into Christ Jesus we live (Rom 6:3, 4). Baptism works the palingenesis or rebirth (Tit 3:5). Supernatural in its essence and effect baptism should mean as much to humankind as its very genesis when God created man out of the dust. For palingenesis means literally a second genesis, a regeneration and rebirth. It is through baptism into Christ Jesus that we live (Rom 6:3, 4). In the New Testament baptism is intimately related to faith, as its complement really in the appropriation of God’s justice or his justifying grace. In his letter to the Corinthians Paul argues to the close association of baptism to justification. He writes to them in chapter 6, verse 11, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God” (1 Cor 6:11). The three verbs there are all repeated in the same tense, apparently referring then to the same event: washed, sanctified or consecrated, and justified. Washing, of course, refers to baptism. So baptism implies consecration to God. At the same time, this presupposes our justification before him. “You are justified,” Paul tells the Christians, and now that they are Christians he contrasts them to the unjust, or the unjustified of the preceding verses in 1 Corinthians 6:4-11. Hence a new life was implicit in their decision to turn to Christ. But that decision was inseparably connected with their baptism. Paul continues in our text, 6:3, ‘‘Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Rom 6:3) Thus the rite of Christian initiation introduces man into union with Christ, suffering and dying. And the Christian is not merely introduced to the suffering of Christ. He is introduced to the very action by which Christ died to sin. And what is this action but Christ’s extreme expression of obedience and love on the Cross? Through our baptism we can share that expression. We can follow Christ even to the Cross in a new obedience to God through the same love or grace which led him, the grace of the Holy Spirit which is poured forth at baptism (1 Cor 6:11; Tit 3:5). ‘(We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death,’’ Paul continues in verse 4, “so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom 6:4). Now the New Testament uses the word new as often as the word joy and both are fairly frequent. Kainos rather than neos is the word most frequently used and it implies something more than recent or fresh. It implies a replacement of the old, but of a higher order. In prophecy the epithet kainos denotes what was thought characteristic of a divine intervention in history. Certainly a new reality was to characterize the messianic era. Thus, Jeremiah spoke of a new covenant ( kainos ) which is in our hearts (Jer 31:31, 33). Ezekiel spoke of the new spirit which characterizes the messianic era. In Deutero-lsaiah the same promise is made and a generation in exile is admonished: Remember not the former things nor consider the things of old. behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness rivers in the desert (Isa 43:18). Through baptism and through the power as much as the glory of the Father (Rom 6:3), Christians may walk in the newness of life. Though they grow old in years, in the face of sin and death they can remain strong in spirit and inner strength. For their strength is from God. They are children of the resurrection (Rom 6:5). Upon such the burden of age and the claim of death itself can be but tentative and passing. ‘‘Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17). Yet the resurrection remains wholly eschatological. “If we have been united with him ina death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his’ (Rom 6:5). Käsemann notes well, ‘‘Participation in the resurrection is spoken of not in the perfect tense but in the future. Baptism equips for it, calls to it, but does not itself convey this gift. If baptism makes the new obedience possible, this is still only an anticipatory hint of what in the temporal sense is undoubtedly in the future.’ 54 And this is only consistent with Paul’s teaching in 1 Corinthians 15. The resurrection must be deferred to the last day. It is true also that the newness of life which Paul predicates of the baptized in verse 4 and the living with Christ in verse 8 are also spoken of in a future sense. Perhaps that is because such life must wait upon an eschatological fulfillment. “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face” (1 Cor 13:12). But already the Christian who has been baptized into Christ’s death is withdrawn from the sphere of sin and released from its power. ‘For he who has died is free from sin” (Rom 6:7). At least he is freed in that he is no longer a slave of sin (Rom 6:17, 20). In the light of the eschatological reservation which appears in this chapter (vv. 4, 5, and 8; especially 5), however, Christians are not wholly free from sin. ‘This we know,” Paul says in verse 6: “‘our old self was crucified with him so that the sinful body might be destroyed and we might no longer be enslaved to sin” (Rom 6:6). Here the old self, the sinful body, is tantamount to flesh or the natural man (cf. Rom 7:24), and the figure of the Cross is invoked because through the Cross the new man prevails and the sinful body is destroyed. Now the sense of our association with Christ is very strong in Romans. Baptism inaugurates a real union with Christ. It also admits the crucifixion of our old self, that the sinful body might be destroyed. The language is very strong in reference to the destruction of the body, that is, the body as enthralled by sin and doomed to die. To be sure at baptism the Christian dies to sin and through the same love or grace which led Christ to the Cross and victory over sin the Christian dies to sin (cf. 2 Cor 5:14-15). Yet in evoking the figure of our crucifixion with Christ “so that the sinful body might be destroyed” (Rom 6:6), Paul suggests also that an elementary ascesis be part of Christian life. Not that our body is to be destroyed but the extirpation of that sin which literally takes possession of a man’s members (Rom 6:12ff.; 7:23) implies some violence, an ascesis. He had already addressed the Christians in Galatia, ‘‘And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:24). Later he will admonish the Colossians, ‘Put to death therefore what is earthly in you...” (Col 3:5). But the program of this ascesis should be the way of the cross. In Galatians it is the flesh which is crucified with its passions and desires. Paul’s usage of desire ( epithumia ) would be familiar enough in the ancient world. The word was popular with Stoic moralists but here in Galatians it refers to the whole perspective of flesh or the natural man. Flesh is egocentric, alienated from God and prone to sin and death. It must be renounced. In Romans it is renounced through baptism and union with Christ but it is a union which revolves about Christ crucified. Again Paul had already written to the Galatians, “| have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer | who live, but Christ who lives in me...” (Gal 2:20). And as Schnackenburg notes, the perfect usage in reference to having been crucified with Christ, ‘‘makes it obvious that Paul not only considers entry into the fellowship of Christ as a becoming crucified with Christ, hence that he can bring the act of baptism into closest connection with the event of Golgotha; he also looks on the Christian existence itself as an abiding union with the Christus crucifixus .’’ But this union with Christ crucified and the overcoming of our old self is with a view to the resurrection. The way of the cross remains the path to glory. The resurrection is reserved to the last day. Paradoxically in this life we experience only through fidelity to the Cross, the power which derives from Christ. In 2 Corinthians especially Paul will draw out the dialectic between weakness and divine strength, between suffering and divine consolation, between the drifting toward death and the life of Christ in those whom he had addressed. He will write to the Corinthians that Jesus may also be revealed in our bodies, “For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you” (2 Cor 4:11, 12). In the weakness of Christ’s servant the divine power can express itself (cf. 2 Cor 12:9). Death with Christ that we might live with and through him derives from baptism. The way of the Cross strengthens the union and deepens the wellspring of Christian life and heroism. To be, to act, is the privilege of men to an exceeding degree. A blade of grass may glorify its Creator in the exquisiteness of its texture, a drop of rain in its purity, and dumb animals in their simplicity, but man is the moral counterpart of God. He can return love for love and in God’s overruling purpose engage freely and bravely. ‘‘Yield yourselves to God,” Paul urges the Christians (Rom 6:13). “Eor sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under the law but under grace” (Rom 6:14). As in the letter to the Galatians Paul argues that grace or God’s love is the key to Christian liberty. Otherwise sin can tyrannize and before its power the law itself is powerless. Grace alone is of advantage. For the balance of the chapter (Rom 6:15-23) Paul contrasts the deference to sin with that offered to God. The verses are a kind of homily on what he had already set forth in w. 1-11. The Christian who through his baptism into the death of Christ was freed from sin (Rom 6:7, 1) especially should realize that he ought to sin no longer. One cannot serve two masters. For the claim of the one excludes the other. Freedom from the power of sin depends on the deference to God and grace implied in baptism. Certainly we have no license to sin because we are no longer under the law. We are under grace and grace alone can be our principle of liberty. Freedom from sin’s power means freedom for the new obedience which, adhering to the standard teaching (Rom 6:17), leads to justification (Rom 6:16). This obedience derives from the heart (Rom 6:17) where God’s grace can penetrate (Rom 5:5). The wellspring of such obedience then is finally grace or love. And, as we have seen, whatever is done out of love is done freely. Paul does speak of a kind of ‘‘slavery” to righteousness (Rom 6:38) and to God (Rom 6:22) but the compulsion must be one of love. Christ’s love constrains, Paul writes to the Corinthians (2 Cor 5:14). If God is indeed his master how could a Christian defer to the tyranny of sin (Rom 6:20)? Sin does offer recompense to its slaves: death. “For the wages of sin is death’ (Rom 6:23). But the surpassing gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 6:23). In chapter 6, then, Paul argued that in the wake of the redemption men were set free from sin so that they were discharged from the law (Rom 7:6). Christians are now under grace. (Thomas Buckley, An Apostle to the Nations: The Life and Letters of St. Paul [Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1981], 185-90) ▼ 2026 (1320) ▼ September (5) Examples of Gaudentius of Brescia (d. 410) Teachin... Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) on John 17:5 Thomas Buckley on Baptism in Romans Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) on John 8:58 and πρὶν ... Robert R. Cargill on Psalm 110:1 (LXX: 109:1) ► August (110) ► July (69) ► June (182) ► May (271) ► April (186) ► March (81) ► February (195) ► January (221) ▼ September (5) Examples of Gaudentius of Brescia (d. 410) Teachin... Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) on John 17:5 Thomas Buckley on Baptism in Romans Faustus Socinus (1539-1604) on John 8:58 and πρὶν ... Robert R. Cargill on Psalm 110:1 (LXX: 109:1) Examples of Gaudentius of Brescia (d. 410) Teachin... 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