Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.
Therefore we are buried with him, х sunetafeemen (G4916)] - rather, 'we were buried with Him;' for the thing is viewed as a past act, done and completed at once on their reception of the Gospel, and baptismally sealed on their profession of it,
By baptism into death. It is thus that this and the preceding clauses must be separated, to make the sense clear. It is not, 'by baptism we are buried with Him into death,' which makes no sense at all; but 'by baptism with Him into death we are buried with Him;' in other words, 'by the same baptism which publicly enters us into His death, we are made partakers of His burial also.' To leave a dead body unburied is represented, alike in pagan authors as in Scripture, as the greatest indignity (Revelation 11:8-9). It was fitting, therefore, that Christ, after "dying for our sins according to the Scriptures," should "descend into the lower parts of the earth" (Ephesians 4:9). As this was the last and lowest step of His humiliation, so it was the honourable dissolution of His last link of connection with that life which He laid down for us; and we, in being 'buried with Him by our baptism into his death,' have by this public act severed our last link of connection with that whole sinful condition and life which Christ brought to an end in His death.
That like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father - or, by such a forth-putting of the Father's power as made that act to be the effulgence of the Father's whole glory. Compare 1 Corinthians 6:14; 2 Corinthians 13:4; Ephesians 1:19, etc. So nearly all good critics. (Beza erroneously renders dia (G1223) tees (G3588) doxees (G1391), 'into, the glory of the Father'. See Grotius, Fritzsche, and Meyer, on this use of the word.) The resurrection of Christ is here, as generally in the New Testament, ascribed to the Father, who therein proclaimed His judicial satisfaction with and acceptance of His whole work in the flesh.
Even so we also should walk in newness of life. The parallel here is not (as the apostle's language might seem to say) between Christ's resurrection and our walking in newness of life, but between Christ's resurrection and our resurrection to newness of life-henceforth to walk in it. Believers, immediately on their union to the risen Saviour, rise to a new resurrection-life-the life, in fact, of their risen Lord-as is once and again emphatically expressed in the sequel. Here, taking this for granted, the apostle advances to the practical development of this new life, saying, in effect, 'That like as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also, risen with Him, should, as new creatures, walk conformably.' But what is that "newness?" Surely if our old life, now dead, and buried with Christ, was wholly sinful, the new, to which we rise with the risen Saviour, must be altogether a holy life; so that every time we go back to "those things whereof we are now ashamed" (Romans 6:21), we belie our resurrection with Christ to newness of life, and "forget, that we have been purged from our old sins" (2 Peter 1:9). Whether the mode of baptism by immersion be alluded to in this verse, as a kind of symbolical burial and resurrection, does not seem to us of much consequence. Many interpreters think it is; and it may be so. But since it is not clear that baptism in apostolic times was exclusively by immersion (see Acts 2:41), so sprinkling and washing are indifferently used in the New Testament to express the cleansing efficacy of the blood of Jesus. And just as the woman with the issue of blood got virtue out of Christ by simply touching Him, so the essence of baptism seems to lie in the simple contact of the element with the body, symbolizing living contact with Christ crucified; the mode and extent of suffusion being indifferent and variable with climate and circumstances.