He immediately sets forth the proofs. This single assuring word from the mouth of God’s messenger would have been enough. Yet “when death, torments, and bonds stood before them here, and Paul told his hearers that they would pass into eternal life, someone might not believe it. He might say: What are you preaching? How can this be? While I live, I die, and when I die, I shall live? Therefore, lest anyone think this, the Apostle sets forth an indisputable proof” (Saint Chrysostom).
This proof, as everywhere in Saint Paul, is taken from the Lord’s Resurrection. Since the Lord died in the flesh, rose, and abides in glory, all who become one with Him will also rise. They become one with Him by faith, by life according to faith, and by sanctifying grace through the Mysteries. Though they die, they will later be made alive in due time (cf. Jn 11:25), and they will enter the Kingdom, eternally glorious.
The Apostle’s attention is fixed on the risen Lord. He had already commanded Saint Timothy above to remember Him, for encouragement in the labors of pastoral ministry (verse 8). Now he points to another aspect of the same Resurrection. It is meant both to awaken faith and to encourage preaching about faith. Namely, believers will rise in Christ to eternal glory. If this awaits believers, then this hope is still more certain for those who proclaim the Gospel of faith.
“If we died with Him,” συναπεθανομεν, if we died together with Him. At the hour when one resolves to cleave to the Lord by faith and to follow His commandments, something still deeper lies at its foundation. It is the readiness at every hour to die for this faith and these commandments, if required, and not to depart from them, and thereby from the Lord.
Therefore everyone who has truly believed in the Lord has already died with Him by intention. If afterward someone actually must suffer and die, this is nothing new. It is only the meeting of what was foreseen and desired beforehand. Even if someone does not have to meet anything of this kind, that first inward determination unto death is nevertheless death in God’s eyes and in the conscience.
Everyone who cleaves to the Lord in these dispositions can say with complete sincerity, together with those who have actually died for the Lord: “We died with Him.” “We shall also live with Him,” συζησομεν, that is, we shall dwell together with Him, or live with Him. Since He is in glory, we shall live with Him in an eternally glorious life, as He Himself promised: “Where I am, there shall My servant be also” (Jn 12:26).
Saint Chrysostom says: “Indeed, if we share with Christ in afflictions and sufferings, shall we not also share with Him in blessings? Even a man would not do this, that having attained rest, he would not admit into communion with himself the one who resolved to suffer and die with him.” Blessed Theophylact adds to Saint Chrysostom: “A man would not do this. How much less would God, the source of righteousness and goodness?”
But what death is meant here? Believers in the Lord die spiritually and by intention when, in Baptism, they die to sin with readiness also to die bodily for the Lord, for His faith and commandments. They also die bodily when, in times of persecution, they endure torments for the faith and are deprived of life.
How, then, should “we died” be understood here? Considering the circumstances in which Saint Paul and Saint Timothy found themselves, bodily afflictions and death fit the flow of speech more closely. Yet not all believers suffer and die for the faith, while the promise is expressed universally. Therefore the thought of spiritual death cannot be denied here.
Moreover, Saint Paul and Saint Timothy had not yet died bodily. Yet spiritually, that is, to sin, and with readiness for bodily death, they had died. They constantly remained in this death, as Saint Paul testified of himself: “I die daily” (1 Cor 15:31).
Therefore it will not be mistaken to think that “the Apostle speaks here both of death in Baptism, that is, spiritual death, and of bodily death through suffering and martyrdom” (Blessed Theophylact). Blessed Theodoret says the same: “The Apostle said this, ‘we died with Him,’ not only of those put to death, but also of those baptized. For they too, believing sincerely and showing a life in harmony with faith, partake of the Master’s life.”
Saint Chrysostom admits that the Apostle also has spiritual death in mind, but he gives primary force to bodily death. “When did we die with Christ? The Apostle speaks of death both through the laver of Baptism and through sufferings. Thus he says, ‘We were buried with Him through Baptism’ (Rom 6:4), and again, ‘Our old man was crucified with Him’ (Rom 6:6). This is spiritual death.
“But ‘always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord’ (cf. 2 Cor 4:10), and again, ‘we were planted together in the likeness of His death’ (Rom 6:5), this is bodily death. Here he speaks also of death through temptations, and especially of this. For he was in temptations when he wrote this.
“The meaning of his words is this: if for His sake we died, shall we not also live for His sake? There is no doubt in this.” The continuation is in verse 12.
THEOSIS