Robertson Word Pictures - Romans 6:4 - 6:4

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Robertson Word Pictures - Romans 6:4 - 6:4


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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

We were buried therefore with him by means of baptism unto death (sunetaphēmen oun autōi dia tou baptismatos eis ton thanaton). Second aorist passive indicative of sunthaptō, old verb to bury together with, in N.T. only here and Col 2:12. With associative instrumental case (autōi) and “by means of baptism unto death” as in Rom 6:3.

In newness of life (en kainotēti zōēs). The picture in baptism points two ways, backwards to Christ’s death and burial and to our death to sin (Rom 6:1), forwards to Christ’s resurrection from the dead and to our new life pledged by the coming out of the watery grave to walk on the other side of the baptismal grave (F. B. Meyer). There is the further picture of our own resurrection from the grave. It is a tragedy that Paul’s majestic picture here has been so blurred by controversy that some refuse to see it. It should be said also that a symbol is not the reality, but the picture of the reality.