16. " How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 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. For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: knowing that Christ, being raised from the dead, dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God." (Rom. 6:2-132God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein? 3Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? 4Therefore 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. 5For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: 6Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. 7For he that is dead is freed from sin. 8Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him: 9Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. 10For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God. 11Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. 12Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. 13Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God. (Romans 6:2‑13).)
The argument of Paul seems here to be towards the proving by God's estimate of the death of Christ for the church, and the church's fellowship by the Spirit in that estimate, that the church is free from sin, and so free as to have no pretext for continuing to live in it. If God's object, says he, was, that as sin hath reigned unto death even so might grace reign, through righteousness, unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord, no one can say, We will continue in sin that grace may abound: And then the context quoted follows-the grand truth of which seems to be that our exemption from the charge and guilt of sin comes by God reckoning us dead with Christ by the Spirit: being planted in the likeness of His death, we were baptized thereinto and buried with Christ by baptism into death. That is, God, having given to us the Spirit of Christ Jesus, looks upon us as one with Him, and so imputes to us all that was true of Christ. Now He died under the charge and the power of sin imputed-but when He had died it had done its all, and being raised from the dead He dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over Him-for He liveth unto God. And now, if all this has been done by God to His Son for the church, let every member of it reckon himself dead indeed unto sin, so as neither to allow it to reign in the mortal body by obedience to its lusts, nor to yield the members of the body as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin. The whole weight of the argument seems to me to turn upon the mode in which the church got her freedom from sin, in the power and guilt of it, even by being identified of God, through grace in the Spirit, with that which was the all that the charge and power of sin imputed could effect upon Christ Jesus.
This passage has often been taken as if it applied to the death of Christ as presented to the world. That such a view involves a complete violation of the characteristic marks of the whole context, as well as very unsound doctrine, is plain. Perhaps the saints do not look enough at the inseparable union of their blessing and the life of the Son of God. If we know Him we must have His Spirit, and this Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, and identifies us fully in all things with Him, so that God looks upon us by virtue of it, as having that true of us which personally was only true of Him whose Spirit, we have received, and thus retrospectively we are said to have been crucified together with, died together with, and been buried together with, Him, as well as quickened together with Him: for though the life that was in the Lord was not fully manifested to man till the resurrection, when He became manifest the second Adam; yet I need not say that He was not intrinsically and personally, after the resurrection, other than what He was from the beginning, the only begotten Son of the Father, the Lord of all glory. The death of the Lord in this place seems presented as the place of the saints' and church's clearance from all the charge and power of sin.