Romans 6:5Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Baptism has power not only to wipe away former sins, but also to protect against future ones.

As you offered faith for the wiping away of former sins, so you must show a change in zeal, in order not to be defiled again by sins after baptism.

Advising this very thing, the apostle says, "For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death, we shall also be united with Him in the likeness of His Resurrection."

Do you see how he raised the hearer, leading him directly to the Lord Himself and striving to prove a great likeness with Him?

And so that you would not object, the apostle did not say "death," but "likeness of death," because the essence itself did not die in you.

Rather, the sinful man died, that is, wickedness.

Nor did the apostle say, "If we have shared in the likeness of death." What does he say? "For if we have been united," literally, "planted together with Him."

By the word "planting" he alludes to its fruit in us.

As Christ's body, buried in the earth, bore fruit, the salvation of the world, so our body, buried in baptism, bore fruit.

It bore righteousness, sanctification, adoption, and countless blessings. Later it will also bear the gift of resurrection.

And since we are buried in water, but Christ in the earth, you with respect to sin, and He in the body, the apostle did not say, "we were planted together with death."

He said, "with the likeness of death," because, though both are death, they do not concern one and the same thing.

"For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death," he says, "we shall also be united with Him in the likeness of His Resurrection."

Here he means the future resurrection.

Above, when he was reasoning about death and said, "Do you not know, brethren, that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death?" he said nothing clear about resurrection.

Instead, he spoke about life after baptism, commanding us to "walk in newness of life."

Here, using the same expression, he already foretells to us the future resurrection.

So that you may understand that the apostle speaks precisely of the future resurrection, and not of resurrection in baptism, observe what he says.

After saying, "For if we have been united with Him in the likeness of His death," he did not say that we shall be planted together with the likeness of the Resurrection.

He simply says, "we shall also be of the Resurrection."

So that you would not object, "If we did not die as Christ died, how shall we rise as He rose?" the apostle makes a distinction.

When he mentioned death, he did not say, "planted together with death," but "with the likeness of death."

But when he speaks of resurrection, he did not say, "with the likeness of resurrection," but "we shall also be of the Resurrection itself."

And again, he did not say, "we were," but "we shall be," indicating by these words not a resurrection already past, but the future resurrection.

“For if we have become kindred,” symphytoi gegonamen. Compare: “we are united with Him,” and “we have been grafted together with Him.” Yet the direct meaning of the statement, as also St. Cyril’s interpretation, rather presupposes our identity, or conformity, not with Him, but with His death.

Compare: “we were conformed, that is, planted together, to the likeness of His death.”

“To the likeness of His death,” and so on. The divine Paul says that those who are buried with Christ should expect that they will also rise with Him. “Kindred” may mean something like “conformed and identical in kind,” symmorphoi te kai tautoideis.

This same expression occurs in St. Cyril’s dialogues On the Holy Trinity to describe the natural unity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, into which we also are transformed by virtue of adoption, in an intelligible sense.

Yet it is necessary to pay attention to this. Emmanuel laid down His soul for us and died according to the flesh. In what way, then, have we, being baptized, been buried with Him? Have we suffered the death of the flesh with Him? Not at all.

Let us now say how we became kindred to the likeness of His death. Christ died according to the flesh in order to deliver the world from sin. We die not according to the flesh, for how could that be, but to sin (Rom 6:2), as it is written.

That is, we make sin inactive and powerless by mortifying the earthly members: fornication, uncleanness, passion, evil desire, and covetousness (Col 3:5).

Thus we have become kindred not only to the death of Christ according to the flesh, but even to the likeness of His death. This likeness may be understood in this way: He died for sin, yet not for His own sin, not at all. For God is undefiled and utterly far from the possibility of sinning.

Rather, as I have said, He died for the sin of the world. For “the death that He died, He died to sin once” (Rom 6:10). Thus we became kindred to the likeness of His death.

But we shall also certainly be kindred and identical in kind with the likeness of His resurrection. For we shall live in Christ, and the flesh will return to life. Yet we shall live in another way as well, dedicating our own souls to Him and being transformed, by sanctification, to a glorious way of life in the Holy Spirit.

It ends the former life and begins the life that follows. How, then, do we accomplish the descent into Hades? By imitating Christ’s burial in baptism, for the bodies of those being baptized are, as it were, buried in the water.

Therefore baptism symbolically signifies the putting away of the works of the flesh, according to the Apostle, who says: ‘You were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the putting off of the body of the sins of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with Him in baptism’ (Col 2:11-12).

It is, as it were, a cleansing of the soul from the defilement produced in it by fleshly-mindedness, according to what is written: ‘You shall wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow’ (Ps 50:9).

Therefore we are not washed in the Jewish manner at every defilement, but we know one saving baptism. For there is one death for the world and one resurrection from the dead, of which baptism serves as the image.

For this reason the Lord, the Steward of our life, established with us the covenant of baptism, which contains within itself the image of death and life. Water serves as the image of death, while the pledge of life is given by the Spirit.

“Since two aims are set forth in baptism, to destroy the body of sin so that it no longer bears fruits of death, and to live by the Spirit and have fruit in holiness, water represents death by receiving the body as into a tomb.

The Spirit communicates life-giving power, renewing our souls from sinful deadness to the original life. This is what it means to be ‘born from above by water and the Spirit,’ because our mortification is produced by water, while life is wrought in us by the Spirit.

Therefore the great mystery of baptism is accomplished by three immersions and by invocations equal in number to them. Thus the image of death is imprinted in us, and the souls of the baptized are enlightened through the handing down of the knowledge of God.”

He wishes to say: we have grown together with Christ the Lord. Therefore everything that is in Him must also be our possession.

He died and rose. It cannot happen that we participate only in His death and stop there, without also becoming participants in His Resurrection.

No. If we share in His death, then it is already necessary for us to share in His Resurrection.

So that no doubt about this would remain, he used the word "grown together." For where the tree is, there its graft must also be.

What does it mean to be planted together with Christ's death?

It is dying to sin, accomplished by grace and mystery in the baptismal font, and to be preserved after baptism by our free choice and our own diligence.

Chrysostom says: "The apostle understands two mortifications here. One is accomplished by Christ in baptism, and the other we ourselves must accomplish by our diligence after baptism.

That our former sins are buried in baptism is Christ's gift. But to remain dead to sin after baptism must be the work of our own diligence.

Yet in this struggle too, God helps us most of all.

For baptism has power not only to wipe away former sins, but also to guard against future ones.

As for the wiping away of former sins you contributed faith on your part, so, in order not to be defiled by sins after baptism, show a change in disposition."

Why did the apostle not say, "planted together with death," but "with the likeness of death"?

Chrysostom answers: "Because in you the essence itself did not die, but the sinful man died."

And again: "Since we are buried in water, and Christ in the earth; since our sin was buried, but His body was buried, the apostle did not say, 'we were planted together with death,' but 'with the likeness of death.'

For though both are death, what is put to death by each is not the same."

How should we understand, "we shall also be of the Resurrection," that is, we shall also be planted together with the likeness of the Resurrection?

According to the flow of the discourse, this should be understood like being planted together with the likeness of death. That means a moral and spiritual resurrection to holiness and righteousness.

In that case, the word "shall be" must be given the force of exhortation: let us be, let us indeed be, or we must be and appear planted together with the Resurrection.

"We shall also be" in Greek is αλλά και... έσόμεθα. Perhaps it is permissible to translate it, "let us also be."

Judging from this, the apostle here offers an exhortation, or lays an obligation upon us.

After baptism, by our life we must become like the brightness of the risen Lord.

That is, he teaches the same thing as before: "As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life."

In our commentators, support for this thought can be found only in their general definition of the content of this verse.

That is, the apostle speaks here of how we should live after baptism, namely by fleeing sin and being zealous for righteousness.

Yet they directly see in these words an indication of the future resurrection. Its beginning is laid in regeneration, which is resurrection in spirit, through baptism.

This understanding cannot be blamed, because the grammatical structure of this verse precisely requires it.

While agreeing with this, we may only ask: why did the apostle mention the future resurrection when the whole discourse concerns moral change for the better?

He did so in order to indicate, in the brightness of the Resurrection, a motive for the brightness and purity of life here after baptism.

He speaks as if saying: we died with Christ in baptism; without doubt we shall also rise with Him.

See, then, that you keep yourself pure after baptism, so that you may rise in glory and unto glory, and not unto shame.

Theophylact writes: "We shall be partakers also of the Resurrection and shall inherit eternal life, since we have shown forth the resurrection that consists in good works."

Here one may transfer Chrysostom's words from the preceding verse.

"The apostle requires of us that, while awaiting the future resurrection, we should rise in another way.

Namely, in this present life, having changed our former ways, we should begin to follow new rules.

For when a fornicator becomes chaste, a lover of money becomes a lover of poverty, and a hardhearted man becomes meek, then even here resurrection takes place in a person.

This serves as the beginning of the future resurrection.

In what sense is this called resurrection? In this sense: sin has been put to death, and righteousness has risen.

The old life has been abolished, and a new and angelic life has begun."

How then is it better to understand this, according to the first indication or the second? As each prefers.

Only this must not be lost from view: the apostle's intention in this discourse is to dispose believers to live holy and undefiled after baptism.