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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘We are buried with Him by baptism into death.’
Rom_6:4
I. The believer is formally united to Christ in baptism.—He is then called by Christ’s name, and the vows of the Lord are upon him. He accepts Christ as his representative before God, and Christ accepts him as His representative among men. He is to be henceforth a living epistle of Christ, to be known and read of men.
II. The believer dies with Christ in baptism.—As Christ died on the cross for sin, a man who surrenders himself to Christ (baptism being the seal of this surrender) dies to sin. He thereby declares that holiness, not sin, is the great end of his life.
III. The believer rises with Christ in baptism.—‘Even so we also should walk in newness of life.’ As he who disappeared for a moment in the flowing stream seemed to rise with his impurities carried away from him by the unresting current, so the child of God in the baptism of the Spirit, of which baptism by water is the type, rises in the pure air with his sins washed away, not only from his conscience but from his heart’s desires.
IV. The believer becomes with Christ a sharer in Divine strength in baptism.—As Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so the believer walks by Divine strength in ‘newness of life’; as the Spirit descended and abode in Christ at His baptism, so does the Spirit strengthen and uphold and guide those who sincerely take upon them the name of Christ.
Illustrations
(1) ‘As Arthur’s knights rose from their inauguration with the image of Arthur himself lighting up their features, and his purpose filling their hearts, so the man who gives himself unreservedly to Christ has henceforth His image stamped on his heart and life, and looks abroad on life with new eyes, and walks abroad with other and higher and purer aims. “Old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” ’
(2) ‘A child, seeing how helplessly and inertly his father’s ship lies, or is pulled from berth to berth, in the dock, might well wonder how she is to carry father thousands of miles away and bring him back again; but when he sees her out on the free sea with her sails spread, and the wind swelling them and speeding her on, he begins to understand how different a ship is when moored to the quay from what she is on the ocean with its billows under her and its fresh breeze bearing her on its wings.’
‘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.’
Rom_6:4
I. Newness of life.—We are continually surrounded by evidences of the power of resurrection, and those evidences all point to the manifestation of a newness of life. We cast seed into the ground and it springs into a plant. When the winter months are over it seems to blossom into new beauty and freshness; surely that reminds us of the resurrection of the body. Our body will be raised with all its perfection; it will be raised spiritually; a spiritual body raised in power, not in weakness. There will be no dullness of the intellect, no dullness of the eye, no disease of the body. Nothing was created to be destroyed; everything is raised again. You put a piece of coal into the fire, and think that it has burnt itself out, but it simply requires the scientific man to collect the gases which the smoke gives forth in order to produce the same substance again.
II. Men need to be raised from a lower to a higher stage in the spiritual ladder of life.—There may be one here who has fallen from the path; you may remember having given way to some sin, some grievous sin. This message touches your heart, and if your eyes become gradually enlightened, then your conscience is commencing to work, you feel drawn towards the ‘newness of life.’ If this is so, then your resurrection from the state of spiritual death to the life of righteousness is the beginning under the guidance of Almighty God. He is speaking to your soul. He is asking you to confess your sins to Him and to ask for His forgiveness. He loves you, He needs you, and He is calling you to Himself.
III. Some one may need help in their daily life.—You may not perhaps be conscious of living at this moment in any special sin. but the world presents many difficulties and temptations, and the question is, how may you fight them? They may come to you in your home, in your business, or your profession. You will find that place of refuge which you are seeking in the love of Jesus, and when you know that love it will constrain you to walk in ‘newness of life.’ Have a fear of doing anything that may displease Him, for Jesus is ever abiding with you. Avoid entering upon engagements or friendships which may come between your soul and God. Try to let some of the light of heaven stream down upon your life and work here. Let us try to carry into practice the life of Christianity. It calls for the highest standard of straightforwardness and goodness in our transactions with others. It acts as a check against everything unfair, unprincipled, even though the world may call it shrewd or sharp. It bids us seek not only our own interests, but the interests of those whom we employ, or by whom we are employed. It tells us that we must lay aside all uncharitable and harsh thought of others. It insists upon our thoughts, words, and actions being pure, and it reminds us that our bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and that wrong and sinful passions are sure sooner or later to bring their inevitable punishment.
Rev. D. Aikin-Sneath.
Illustration‘If any one wishes to know, how far the “life” of a Christian is a “new life,” he will find it in the comparison, of which these words speak—“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.” By which we are taught—that, such as was the difference—not between Christ’s “life” after His resurrection, and His “life” before it, as it is generally taken; but such as was the difference between the Christ shackled in the grave, and the Christ free and spiritual after He left it—so is “the new man” to be different from “the old.” ’
A PERMANENT FACTOR IN SPIRITUAL LIFE
I. Holy Baptism as a permanent factor of our present spiritual life.—We cannot think of this Sacrament as an arbitrary thing imposed by God on mankind under pains and penalties, to be accepted without any clear recognition of its value, to be rejected on pain of eternal damnation. Its obligation is rooted in the very nature of man and in the weakness of his nature. With this doctrine of birth-sin belonging to the children of Adam, and of further hereditary taint descending from parents, Christ, we may say with reverence, had first to deal in delivering man from the bondage of moral death. Man had to be made capable of the higher goodness, and therefore ‘Ye must be born again’ is the first and most obligatory command which meets the Christian entering on his life here on earth. And so Baptism, or the Sacrament of New Birth, is lifted out of any arbitrary or artificial position which it might have been supposed to hold, and takes its place, as being as necessary to the spiritual life as natural birth is to the natural life. To those who will accept Christ’s gift, with the hand of faith, Holy Baptism, not as a charm acting independently of the man, but co-operating with his faith, will give him that nature which will enable him to produce in his poor, weak, crumbling humanity that image of Christ which would have been impossible without it.
II. There is hardly any question more pressing at the present day than the precise hearing of what we call our nature or our conduct.—Is nature a weight tied round our neck to render futile from the very first the frantic plungings which we mistake for the efforts of freedom to escape drowning? Is nature, on the other hand, a carefully adjusted lifebuoy, so that without any effort or struggle on our part we can trust it to sustain us amidst the breaking waves of this troublesome world? Has Baptism anything to say to these difficulties? Every child who is brought to the font brings with him, if this be true, a vast series of hereditary moral tendencies to be worked out in his life. When he passes down into the death of Christ, and is buried in the waters of Baptism and rises again to newness of living, he does not enter on life deprived of his characteristics, his tendencies either in the direction of good or evil inherited qualities. Baptism is not a levelling process, which starts all men on an equality from the first, to pick up for themselves fresh distinction. Surely at Baptism we may believe that two things happen:—
(a) A fresh power is given to the will of dealing with the vast number of characteristic trails and tendencies which are marshalled under the name of Nature.
(b) The characteristics themselves are spiritualised, the very poisons invested with a salutary power. And so accordingly we find in the lives of men two phenomena which answer to this suggested process of regeneration. We find men triumphing over what has obviously been an hereditary taint, and further, even more than this, we find people turning the hereditary taint into a source of positive virtue.
After all, God made us, and not we ourselves. And not only did God make us, but He regenerated us at the font, and if it was His will that we should still retain these tendencies and desires which frighten, and sometimes even impede us, let us be sure that our perfection lies in their right and proper treatment; and that God wills to save us as we are, and not, except in the last resource, as those who have had to cut off the right foot, or pluck out the right eye, in the desperate struggle for salvation.
—
Canon Newbolt.
Illustration‘We hear little about Holy Baptism. Large numbers of people have never even seen the Sacrament administered, and are little concerned with it as a practical event in their own lives; unless it be that some belated survival of better times causes them to procure a certificate of their Baptism as a preliminary to the occupation of some post to which they hope to succeed, or as a sign of their membership in the Church of England, at a period when it is profitable or necessary to make such a declaration. It is viewed at the best, as something of interest to fond parents, and to such as happen to be called to be sponsors—just as others are called to be bridesmaids—as a picturesque ceremony to which some people attach importance, and others do not; but as to its having any present spiritual bearing on their life, unless it be certain promises conducive to a good life were then made in their name—they would ridicule the idea as fantastic, or at least as fanciful, perhaps even superstitious. But it is necessary to repeat once more that there is an obstinate persistency in the Bible, and in the unbroken tradition of the Church in another direction. Holy Baptism, so far from being a piece of fanciful symbolism, which may be cast away by a majority of ratepayers into a lumber-room of denominational peculiarities, or which might certainly be abolished in favour of some new forms of initiation into Church membership—is treated in the Bible as fundamental, as one of the main exhibitions of the permanent victory over sin won by Christ in His Resurrection.’
‘Even so we also should walk in newness of life.’
Rom_6:4
I. New in its formation.—In this present life, our souls begin to be drawn up to ascending desires, to nearer communion, to loftier enjoyments, to a more heavenly-mindedness. Afterwards, at the resurrection, by the same process, our bodies will be raised up. When He appears in the heavens, by a necessary, irresistible, attractive force, our bodies will be raised from the grave, and we shall be ‘for ever with the Lord.’ So that the Divine life in a man’s soul does not take place till there is first a death, and a burial, and a resurrection within him; and all that is the result of a certain union with the Lord Jesus Christ; so that Christ’s death, and Christ’s burial, and Christ’s resurrection are, to that man, not only facts done for him, but things done in him, things actually taking place at this moment, real, felt, producing direct, visible results. And when you trace the secret inworkings, in a Christian’s soul, of such strange, unprecedented things as these, surely, to such deep and wondrous mysteries, we can only justly apply the Apostle’s words, and say, It is ‘newness of life’!
II. New in its constitution.—But as the formation of it is ‘new,’ so it is in its own constitution. God’s way of making a ‘new’ thing is not man’s way of making a ‘new’ thing. God uses up the ‘old’ materials; but, by His using and moulding them, makes them ‘new.’ Thus, ‘the new heavens and the new earth’ will only make another heaven and earth formed out of the old materials. It will not be a second creation, and ‘new’ to that which now is; but there will be such a purifying, and restoring, and beautifying the earth and sky, as will constitute them as ‘new’ as if they had just started into another existence. From that moment everything to that man is with reference to Christ. What it is to Christ, that he wishes it to be with reference to him. To hold converse with Christ, to please Christ, to glorify Christ, to be like Christ, to wait for Christ, this is ‘life.’ And if you contrast that singleness of purpose—the tenderness, the unselfishness, the largeness which this element of a forgiven sinner’s love throws into that man’s constitution—with that little, Christless, hopeless, loveless thing that that man used to be; can you use any better word to express the change than ‘newness of life’?
III. New in its variety and progression.—But, once more, the Christian’s ‘life’ is ‘new’ by reason of that ceaseless variety and never-ending progression—that constant ‘newness’—which it has in it. The enemy of souls knows well the importance of this feature in true religion. He knows that the fact of novelty, or the love of novelty, is a part of our constitution; and therefore he calls a religious life one of sameness; and I am persuaded that it is he who carries on that thought a little further, so that many men have a feeling that it will be a dull thing to be praising God for ever and ever. But is it not the world which has the sameness? To go on, day after day, with tastes and perceptions which are continually diminishing by age or repetition, in the midst of objects, of which we are soon able to take the true measure, and which, if they never deteriorate, at least can never increase—this is what makes ‘life’ such a flat thing to many of you! But he who has set himself to be a Christian—he has to do with the infinities of God.
‘Newness of life.’
Rom_6:4
From that singleness of aim and end, as soon as a man has it, three results immediately ensue.
I. Having now one great, high object before him, gives a fullness and consistency to his character.—It is just what every man wants to make him really happy, or really useful, or really great; a definite intention—a scope, a purpose worthy of his being; and that concentration of purpose gives strength of character. A thousand things, which used to seem very great to him, grow into littleness. He has a grand design. That design lies on far in eternity; and he lives up to his mark. And so, with greater force than he ever had before, he gathers himself to attain that which is eternal.
II. As soon as God’s glory is your chief pursuit in life, your will must necessarily be conformed to God’s will, and God’s will is always for His own glory—and everything He does in this world is for His own glory—therefore, if you desire God’s glory, whatever is His, must be after your mind, and nothing can offend it. And this oneness of the will with the will of God is rest, the only rest which it is possible to have in this world, because it is rest in God, and rest on God, being at rest with God.
III. Whoever lives for the glory of God must live to do good to his fellow-creatures; for God is glorified by the extension of His own kingdom, by the propagation of truth, by the salvation of souls, by the reflection of His own image, by the happiness of His creatures. To promote these things, therefore, that man must now begin to live. Therefore he becomes a labourer in God’s vineyard—he wins souls—he has a daily work to do. And therefore he is never listless. He is a man engaged and busy. And, all the while, he is serving the tenderest Master, Who loves him well; and Whom he loves well. And that service is perfect liberty. That is health; and that health is happiness; and that happiness is ‘newness of life.’
Illustration
‘Every man must live according to his level; and no one could, honestly, live above his level. But, where the grace of God is, the level is always rising. And thus these “new” pleasures coming in necessarily drive out the “old” ones, and so make “the new life.” ’
A NEW CREATURE
Let us trace where the ‘newness’ lies.
I. A new motive.—First there is set, in that man, a ‘new’ motive, a ‘new’ spring welling up—‘I am forgiven, God loves me, God has made me His. Oh,! how shall I pay Him? Never! But how can I show Him that I do indeed love Him Who has been so exceedingly kind to me?’ That is ‘newness’; and ‘the the dew of its birth is of the womb of the morning.’
II. A new principle.—Bars and fetters have been falling off from that man’s soul, and he feels a ‘new’ principle, and it is as delightful to him as it is strange. He is emancipated from a long dark bondage—he is ‘free among the dead’—free to pray from his heart—free to speak out everything. The thoughts of deep communion with God run leapingly—he can go into His very presence—the burden is gone—the barrier of unbelief, the charnel-house of wicked lust, he has got out of them—they are left behind—the past is an empty grave, and there is a ‘newness’—the ‘newness’ of constant resurrection morning. And a ‘new’ current flows in his very life-blood, he feels the springs of his immortality, he carries in him his own eternity. And he goes forth, that man, into the old world—its scenes are just the same, but a ‘new’ sunshine lies upon everything—it is the medium of his ‘new-born’ peace—it is a smile of God. And oh.! how changed that world looks to him; every day and every moment there are secret comings in of grace to his soul—hidden supplies of wisdom, patience, power, holiness, sweetness, love; and each one brings its own gushing.
III. A new standard.—And so his standard is always rising. He leaves the past attainments behind, as nothing to the heights which are opening before him. He has ever a new ambition; and new aspirations bear him up to new ranges in the Christian journey, and therefore he enterprises new works for God. This soul and that soul wake up an interest in his thoughts and prayers. Another and another mission for Christ forces itself upon his mind. His charities go forth ‘beside all waters,’ into wider and wider circles. He can never do enough; the more he does the more he feels undone—the greater his works, the deeper his un-profitableness. And all the while, Christ reveals Himself to him with ever-increasing clearness.
—
Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustration‘In everything which is really of God there is a singular freshness; it is always like that “tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month”; there is a continual novelty. And yet some people speak of the sameness of a religious life. Strange! how often things are least rightly read in their characterising features. Through a new spirit—endowed with a new heart—by a new and living way—in obedience to a new commandment—with mercies new to us every morning—carrying a new name—we travel to a new heaven and a new earth, where we shall sing a new song for ever and ever. Well might Christ say of Himself, “Behold, I make all things new.” ’
A RELIGION OF NEWNESS
Christianity is a religion of newness.
II. It imposes a new commandment.
III. It announces a new creation.
IV. It constructs a new humanity and a new man.
V. It imposes a new name.
VI. It teaches a new song.
VII. It promises a new heaven and a new earth.
VIII. It summons to a new life.
Illustration
‘There is a daily renewing of the Holy Ghost, there is a freshness of spiritual fervour and achievement, which points on to the time when God shall make all things new, and when the great and final regeneration shall be Divinely consummated.’