Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?
Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ - `Christ Jesus' it should be; for that is the reading not only of all the manuscripts, but even of the Received Text, and yet our version (as printed, at least) has "Jesus Christ." The meaning is, "baptized," not into the acknowledgment of Christ only, but 'into the participation of all that He is for sinners' (cf. Matthew 28:19; 1 Corinthians 10:2; Galatians 3:27), sealed with the seal of heaven, formally entered and articled (so to speak) as to all the benefits, so also to all the obligations of Christian discipleship in general; but more particularly,
Were baptized into his death? - as the hinge of His whole work. That it is so, must be manifest on the surface of the New Testament to every impartial reader. But the growing tendency to regard the death of Christ as but the completion of a life of self-devotion-which men have simply to copy-may render it fit that we should here set down a few of the more emphatic expressions of its sacrificial and life-giving virtue: Matthew 1:22; Matthew 20:28; Luke 22:19-20; John 1:29; John 3:14-16; John 6:51; John 6:53-56; John 10:15; John 10:17-18; John 12:32; Acts 20:28; (and passing over our own Epistle) 1 Corinthians 1:23-24; 1 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Corinthians 15:3; 2 Corinthians 5:14; 2 Corinthians 5:21; Galatians 2:20; Galatians 3:13; Galatians 4:4-5; Ephesians 1:7; Ephesians 2:13; Ephesians 2:16; Ephesians 5:25; Colossians 1:20-22; Titus 2:14; Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:10; Hebrews 10:12; Hebrews 10:14; Hebrews 10:19; Hebrews 13:12; Hebrews 13:20; 1 Peter 1:18-19; 1 Peter 2:24; 1 John 1:7; 1 John 2:2; Revelation 1:5; Revelation 5:9; Revelation 7:14.
Since, then, He was "made sin," yea "a curse for us," "bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," and "rising again for our justification," our whole sinful case and condition, thus taken up into His person, has been brought to an end in His death. Whoso, then, has been baptized into Christ's death has formally surrendered the whole state and life of sin, as in Christ a dead thing. He has sealed himself to be not only "the righteousness of God in Him," but "a new creature;" and as he cannot be in Christ to the one effect and not to the other-for they are one and inseparable-he has bidden farewell, by baptism into Christ's death, to his entire connection with sin. "How," then, "can he live any longer therein?" The two things are as contradictory in the fact as they are in the terms. Of all this the apostle says, 'Know ye it not?'-as if it were among the household truths of the Christian Faith, lying as it does at the foundation of our standing as believers before God. Not that as put in this Epistle they had ever been brought before these Roman Christians, probably, until they read them here; nor is it likely, indeed, that any of the churches except those who were favoured with Pauline teaching were much better off. But they were of that nature that they only needed to be presented to intelligent and teachable believers to be recognized and acquiesced in as the very truths in which they had been rudimentally instructed from the first. Compare the similar saying of our Lord to His disciples at the Supper-table, John 14:5 (on which see Commentary, p. 434).