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He prosecutes what he had before propounded, and illustrates it by an apt similitude, which is taken from grafting or planting. He takes it for granted, that believers are
planted together in the likeness of Christ’s
death, i.e. are made conformable to him in his death: see Phi_3:10. Christ died, and believers die; the one a natural, the other a spiritual death: the one by way of expiation, suffering, and satisfying for the sins of others; the other by way of mortification, killing and crucifying their own sins.
We shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection: in the original the sentence is elliptical and imperfect, the words running thus, we shall be of his resurrection; our translation therefore fills up the sense with a word borrowed from the preceding clause. See the like, Joh_5:36, I have a greater witness than of John, i.e. than that witness of John. The sense of the whole is this, That believers are not only dead, but risen with Christ, Col_3:1. They partake of such a resurection as resembles his; as Christ arose from the dead to a new life, so we rise from dead works to walk in newness of life, Rom_6:4. Moreover, they are raised and quickened by a power and virtue that flows from Christ and his resurrection: this is that virtue which the apostle Paul so earnestly desired to be made a partaker of, Phi_3:10. The graft revives with the stock in the spring, and that by a virtue which it receives from the stock; so as a believer is raised to newness of life, by virtue flowing from Christ, into whom he is ingrafted.
Question. Why doth he say believers
shall be planted, &c.? Are they not so already, upon their believing in Christ?
Answer. The apostle rather chooseth to speak in the future, than in the present tense; rather we shall be, than we are, or have been; because the work is only begun; it daily increaseth more and more, until it comes to a full perfection in heaven.