Introduction
Most of you have heard of the puritan minister and Bible commentator, Matthew Henry. And whether you realize it or not, one of the reasons you’ve heard of him is because his father, Phillip Henry, sought to raise him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Often, whenever his children would misbehave, Phillip said he would grab them by their baptism. He would remind them who they were and whose they were. That they were baptized children of God, in covenant union with Christ, and that they were to live up to that reality. They were baptized into the name of the triune God, and therefore they were called to live up to the family name. And that’s exactly what God’s Word is going to call us to do today. So with that in mind, look with me at Romans 6:1-4.
Context
Thus far in Romans Paul has shown us the depravity of man—both Jew and Gentile—and the sufficiency of Christ to save even the worst of sinners. All, both Jew and Gentile, are dead in sin in Adam, but in Christ, the New True Better Adam, all are made alive. Like Abraham, we are justified by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone, but that justification and that faith doesn’t stay alone… It has massive implications. In chapter 5, Paul unveiled Christ’s obedience as the New Adam, and our union with Him as the ground of a new creation—just as Adam’s trespass brought condemnation and death to all under his headship, so Christ’s righteous obedience brings justification and life to all under His, and in and through them—because of God’s abounding grace—restoration to the world. But now, in chapter 6, Paul is going to press that cosmic reality down to the personal and ethical level: if Christ’s reign of grace truly restores the world, what does that mean for you? If we are to take all things captive for Christ we must first start with our own faithfulness. We must stop living in sin.
Romans 6:1-4
Paul begins in verses 1 and 2 with questions that must be answered in light of his bold statement that where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. He says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?”
The assumption Paul’s addressing is the foolish idea that grace somehow gives us permission to sin—that a sinner might justify their rebellion by twisting God’s mercy. “If my sin allows God to display His glory through His grace,” the reasoning goes, “then surely the more I sin, the more gracious God will look. So why not keep sinning?”
Paul tosses this out as a hypothetical objection, but we all know it’s not really hypothetical. We’ve all met people who think this way. I’ve had people tell me flat out during evangelism, “Me and God have a deal: I sin, He forgives.” But that’s not the gospel—that’s a delusion. And before we look down our noses, we should realize that every time we knowingly sin while presuming upon God’s grace, we are functionally saying the same thing. Every time we excuse our anger, indulge our lust, justify our gossip, or coddle our pride, we are living as though we and God have an arrangement—He’ll forgive, and we’ll keep sinning. But that’s not how grace works. Grace doesn’t partner with sin; grace kills it.
As you all know, I can’t stand the phrase, “Not perfect, just forgiven.” You love to tease me about it, but the reason I hate that line is because it misunderstands and belittles the gospel. It reduces the cross to a divine clean-up operation. It imagines salvation as a kind of moral insurance policy—sin freely, pay no penalty, heaven guaranteed. But Paul’s gospel is far bigger, far more covenantal, and far more transforming than that.
Here’s why: humanity doesn’t exist as isolated individuals floating around making private deals with God. From the beginning, we have always been represented by a covenant head. When Adam sinned, he didn’t just mess up his own life; he plunged the entire human race into guilt, corruption, and death. He was our federal representative—our covenant head—and what he did, we did in him. His sin became our sin. His death became our death. In Adam, all die.
This is why in Romans 5 Paul said that because of Adam, and in Adam death reigns. And as I’ve stated before, death is the common thread running through the worldview of the unbelieving world. Every idol they serve carries the stench of death. Abortion is death to children—an open war on the image of God. Euthanasia is death to the aged and the suffering, cloaked in the lie of compassion. The LGBTQ+ movement is death to the created order itself, rejecting the fruitfulness of male and female and replacing life-giving union with sterile imitation. The globalist and Marxist projects are death to the household and the nation; they dissolve real communities into faceless masses and destroy the fruit of honest labor through envy and coercion. And when liberty dies in the name of forced equality, responsibility and gratitude die with it. The pattern is always the same: reject God’s Word, enthrone man’s will, and the result is death—spiritual, moral, cultural, and eventually physical. That is the way of Adam. And wherever Adam’s way is followed, death reigns. Through one man’s sin, death entered the world, and it’s still spreading like a virus wherever man tries to be his own god. And it shows itself in us every time we choose sin.
But praise God, the story doesn’t end there. Just as all who are in Adam share his death, all who are in Christ share His life. Christ came as the second Adam, the faithful covenant head of a new humanity. And just as what Adam did counted for all who were in him, what Christ has done counts for all who are in Him. When Christ lived in perfect obedience, we lived in Him. When He died to sin once for all, we died in Him. And when He rose again to newness of life, we rose again in Him.
Christ lived, died, and rose again for us. So to be sure, Christ is our substitute—but not in the shallow, sentimental way people often imagine. His substitution isn’t like a basketball player tagging in while we sit safely on the bench. He’s our covenant representative—a head who acts for us and with us—carrying us in Himself. Think of how an elected official acts on behalf of his people: his decisions are binding because he represents those he serves. He is an approved representative.
We’ve all heard the gospel illustrated with the image of a man on trial—guilty, condemned to die for his crimes—when suddenly another steps forward and offers to take his punishment in his place. It’s a moving picture, but it’s not quite right. Because in the real world, no just judge would ever accept that. No righteous court would knowingly condemn an innocent man in place of the guilty. Justice doesn’t allow random substitution. A stranger cannot simply volunteer to die in the place of a murderer and call that justice. But like David and Goliath, two armies could choose a representative to fight for them instead of engaging in all out war.
Covenantally, this makes sense. In Scripture, humanity is not a collection of disconnected individuals; we live and act in covenantal solidarity under our representatives. In Adam, we all sinned because Adam acted as us and for us—as our covenant head. Likewise, Christ obeyed, died, and rose as us and for us—as the new covenant head of a redeemed humanity. He was not a random substitute; He was our rightful representative. He stood in our place because we were in Him even as we were once in Adam.
This is why Paul’s gospel can hold both justice and mercy together without contradiction. God did not condemn an innocent outsider; He condemned sin in the flesh of our true covenant Head, the One who fully identified with His people. In Adam, the verdict of death was rightly ours. In Christ, the verdict of righteousness is equally and covenantally ours. When Adam disobeyed, his sin was our downfall. When Christ obeyed, His righteousness was our restoration.
This means Christ’s work isn’t merely instead of us—it’s for us and in us. He doesn’t just take our place so that we can stay where we were; He takes our place so that we can take His. Grace doesn’t give us permission to sin—it gives us participation in Christ. We are not “just forgiven.” We are made new. We are to follow Him where He leads.
So Paul’s point in these opening verses is simple but devastating to cheap grace: if you’ve truly died to sin in Christ, you cannot go on living in it. To live in sin is to live in Adam. To live in Christ is to live in righteousness. Grace doesn’t make sin safe—sin is always suicidal… It’s always linked to death. Grace makes us see sin for what it is, a liar that belittles our God and Savior, Jesus Christ. We cannot justify sin. We cannot presume upon forgiveness, choosing sin and trusting that grace will abound. In so doing we are abusing grace and proving to misunderstand the gospel.
Living in sin means living in Adam, which means covenantal death—death and eternal condemnation. But Paul says that we who are in Christ, we Christians—the church, have died to sin. We were dead in sin, but now we are dead to sin. Because of the gospel, because of the person and work of Christ and our union with Him, when He died for sin we died to sin. And this is where Paul goes next.
In verse 3 he says, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” It’s interesting that Paul jumps to baptism here given that he’s been addressing justification by faith. We might expect him to say, “Do you not know that all of us who have been united to Jesus by faith were united with Him in His death?” But that’s not what he says. And that makes sense given what he’s doing here. Paul is calling us to something we are to know… that is know for sure. And he’s doing that because he’s calling us to be who we are objectively, to live up to and in line with the covenant reality we find ourselves in. To live under the reign of grace, not the reign of sin. And so pointing us to something that has nothing to do with our feelings or emotions, but to the promises of God, gives us all the more incentive to live rightly in Christ.
We might not feel forgiven or justified. We might not feel righteous in Christ. And we certainly might not feel dead to sin and alive in Christ. But if we have been baptized into Christ—which is no different than being baptized into the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as it is three persons but one God and thus one name… if we have been baptized we have been brought into a New Covenant reality. To be baptized is to be brought into the Body of Christ, to be a member of God’s covenant people the church. And with that membership comes certain expectations and responsibilities that every church member must live up to by faith. To be baptized is to be marked by the name of God, and to have the sign and seal of God’s Covenant of Grace upon you, pointing to the accompanying blesses and curses.
As we read earlier in Deuteronomy 7:9-10, “Know therefore that the LORD your God is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, to a thousand generations, and repays to their face those who hate him, by destroying them. He will not be slack with one who hates him. He will repay him to his face.” Or as God says of Himself in Exodus 34:6-7, “The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands [that is, to a thousand generations], forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Blessings for those who love Him, and curses for those who hate Him, dealing covenantally with households, with believers and their children.
Because we tend to be so individualistic and emotional about things, we tend to think that baptism only matters if the person being baptized really understands what it all means, and really means it when they get baptized. But that’s not how it works. Baptism is more like marriage. When I do premarital counseling with a couple in the weeks leading up to the wedding, I try to prepare them for the marriage as best I can, but no matter how good the counseling goes they can’t really understand what all it means to be married. And even if they don’t really mean it with all their heart when they say I do, once I finish the ceremony and say, “What God has joined together let no man separate” then regardless of what they know or how they feel, they are now married. They have entered into covenant with each other and with God, with God and His people as witness. They are under oath. They have taken vows. And so it is with baptism.
Baptism, like Communion, is a sacrament. Sacrament comes from the Latin word sacramentum meaning solemn oath. It has military roots, tying to the oath of loyalty a soldier would take to his commander and cause. The church adopted it, but also linked it up with the Greek word for mystery like that tied to the gospel in Ephesians, when they translated the Greek into Latin. The reason they did this is because the gospel sacraments of baptism and communion mysteriously minister grace to us in and through Christ by the Spirit. We can only explain so much when it comes to baptism and communion. We can only understand so much when it comes to these great means of grace. To be sure baptism is initiation into the church and communion is continuation in the church, but that’s because they are mysterious means of union with Christ.
Just as God uses pastors like me to officiate weddings and bring husbands and wives together in holy matrimony, so too are believers and their children brought into covenant union with Christ through the means of baptism. No one truly understands what all their baptism means or if they truly mean it with their whole heart, especially if they are new believers or children. In that sense all baptisms are infant baptisms—we all grow into what it means. But regardless of what we know or how we feel, if we have been baptized by the church with water in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—in the name of Christ—then we are truly baptized and under covenant obligation in Christ and to Christ. Indeed, as Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” Regardless of what you know or feel, you are under a solemn oath to do just that.
Like being citizens of the state of Texas who moved here, or were born here, yet didn’t know what all they were getting into, didn’t know all of the laws and the like… There are still expectations and obligations regardless of what we know or how we feel. If you get pulled over by a State Trooper because you’re speeding down HWY 20, the officer is not going to ask you if you have accepted Texas into your heart. He’s simply going to hold you accountable. And so it is for all who have been baptized.
Think of it this way. A man who says I do to his wife, has a great honeymoon, and then comes home and immediately starts cheating on her is a horrible husband. Indeed, you could say he’s not really being a husband at all. But before God, covenantally he is still the husband of his wife. He just needs to repent and act like it. He needs to live up to the covenant reality of his life. And so it is with baptism. Baptism is an objective reality. In that sense, everyone who has been baptized into Christ, who hasn’t been excommunicated, is a Christian. That doesn’t mean that they are faithful Christians, but covenantally they are Christians nonetheless. It’s not that their baptism didn’t take, it’s that they are in rebellion, they are in rejection of their baptism. What they need to do is repent and live up to their baptism by faith. And this is Paul’s point here.
But we must also remember that baptism is first and foremost God’s sacrament—a solemn oath bound up with the gospel itself. It is, in a real sense, the gospel in and through water. Like the Lord’s Supper, baptism is both a sign and a seal of the New Covenant. As a sign, it visibly points us to the saving work of Jesus Christ; as a seal, it guarantees that God’s promises are true and dependable for all who receive them by faith.
In the ancient world, a king would seal a royal decree with his signet ring, impressing his mark into the wax as a pledge of authenticity and authority. That seal assured the recipient that the letter was truly from the king—and that the king himself would stand behind every word written within. In the same way, baptism is God’s covenant seal upon us. Through it, He marks us as His own and guarantees that He will keep His promises to all who trust Him by faith.
Martin Luther famously described baptism as “a daily drowning of the old man.” Whenever he battled temptation, doubt, or despair, he would remind himself, “I am a baptized man.” By this, Luther didn’t mean that the water itself saved him, but that his baptism testified to God’s steadfast promise and unbreakable covenant. His confidence rested not in his own efforts or emotions, but in God’s oath—God’s sacrament—sealed in baptism.
That’s the point for us as well. Baptism seals us with the faithfulness of God and the grace of Christ. It reminds us that God has pledged Himself to us, and it calls us to live in light of that reality—to walk as those who belong to Him, who have died to sin, and who now live under the reign of grace.
Christian baptism is always a baptism into Christ Jesus, and thus into His church, into His covenant people. So when we were baptized we were baptized into His death, not only because we were united to Him covenantally and where our federal head goes we go, but also because in our baptism we were brought into the body of Christ, which is a new humanity in Christ that has died to sin and lives to righteousness in and through Christ. Which is what Paul explains in verse 4.
He says, “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” In and through our baptism, in and through our new and better covenantal head, we have died to sin because we died with Him. We can’t live in sin if we have died to sin in Christ. Where He goes we must go. And Jesus went into the grave and came out again in newness of life.
Because we have been baptized into Jesus’ death His death is the end of all our shame. It is the end of all our guilt. Grace abounds! But that’s not where it stops. If it did we might assume that we can continue in sin. His grace abounds far beyond our guilt and shame, far beyond our forgiveness. Jesus didn’t just die for our sins—He died and rose again. And because we died with Christ, we are also raised with Christ to live in newness of life. His death and resurrection is the end of our bondage to sin. In His death, the old man was cut off and the chains of the old master were broken. His cross dismantled the devil’s war machines and shattered the weapons of the enemy. As we saw last week, He bound the strong man and plundered his house. So His death and resurrection is our certain hope that the dragon—that ancient serpent, the accuser of the brethren—has been cast down, and that the kingdoms of this world have become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ.
We are God’s baptized people who have been brought under the reign of grace, and are to advance that reign to the ends of the earth. And because we have been baptized into Christ’s life, death, and resurrection, we can. But it starts with us. We have been marked by the sign and seal of God’s grace, and now grace abounds to us, not so we can continue to sin, but so we can walk, so that we can live in newness of life to the glory of God the Father, like Christ. No matter how we feel. No matter what our experience or our emotions tell us, we can fight sin and follow Christ because we have the authenticity and the authority of the triune God sealed upon us. We are His and He is ours, and by His grace we can live like it. We can become who we already are in Christ. We can live up to our baptism by faith.
Conclusion
Beloved, baptism means that God Himself has grabbed hold of you—marked you with His name, joined you to His Son, and brought you under the reign of grace, the reign of life, the reign of Christ. Don’t fall for the lies of sin and the culture of death. Look to Christ and follow Him into life. Like Phillip Henry grabbing his children by their baptism, God in His mercy seizes us by that same mark and says, “Remember who you are. Remember whose you are. You bear My name—so live like it.”
That’s what Paul is calling us to here: be who you already are in Christ. You have died with Him. You have been raised with Him. You are no longer under the reign of sin—you are under the reign of grace. So when sin tempts you, don’t negotiate with it, don’t make excuses for it, and don’t make peace with it. Look it in the face and remind it that you are baptized—that you belong to Christ, not to Adam. You are not fighting for victory; you are fighting from victory.
And because you are united to Christ in His death and resurrection, you actually can do this. Grace reigns. Grace abounds. The Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead is the same Spirit who lives in you, empowering you to put sin to death and to walk in newness of life. So when anger flares, when lust tempts, when despair whispers, when pride rises—remember your baptism. Remember that the old man was drowned, and the new man is alive in Christ. Repent, believe, obey, and keep becoming who you already are in Him.
Fathers, lead your homes as baptized men who live under grace. Mothers, nurture your families as baptized women who embody grace. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, because you have been baptized into His family name. Church, together we bear the name of the Triune God—so let us live like a people who truly belong to Him.
And remember, baptism is not ultimately a sign and seal, or an oath of our faithfulness, but of the Lord’s. It is a gospel sacrament that reminds us that Christ is our foundation. His life, His death, and His resurrection are the rock upon which we stand. That’s what baptism points us to. That’s what fuels our obedience and steadies our hope. Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ reigns, and because you are in Him, you can walk in newness of life. So heed your baptism and stand on Christ come what may.
Amen.