Session 4

Romans 6

Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore, we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

• In many ways, we have already covered the content of the passage, so it is fascinating to see such a direct, explicit resonance with our trajectory resonance. 

• Christ divinized and redeemed suffering (and also all of humanity united to Him), what was once a punishment is now a means of salvation and communion with the Divine. As we have seen throughout this study, Christ enters by Baptism into our spiritual plane. All the way down, as it were, into the depths of man's wanderings not by sinning Himself, but by joining Himself to us who have sinned, in the establishment this sacrament. By being baptized, we join ourselves the redeemed and primary act of suffering, the Passion of Christ. In doing so we also join ourselves to its fruits, the establishment of the Church, the resurrection of the body, Its ascension into Heaven, and adoption into the Divine family/communion. Death can never destroy us, we only pass through it just as Christ did leaving a man sized hole in it. 

• CCC 1002 Christ will raise us up "on the last day"; but it is also true that, in a certain way, we have already risen with Christ. For, by virtue of the Holy Spirit, Christian life is already now on earth a participation in the death and Resurrection of Christ

• CCC 1003 United with Christ by Baptism, believers already truly participate in the heavenly life of the risen Christ, but this life remains "hidden with Christ in God." The Father has already "raised us up with him, and made us sit with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Nourished with his body in the Eucharist, we already belong to the Body of Christ. When we rise on the last day we "also will appear with him in glory."

• CCC 1220 If water springing up from the earth symbolizes life, the water of the sea is a symbol of death and so can represent the mystery of the cross. By this symbolism Baptism signifies communion with Christ's death.

• CCC 1227 According to the Apostle Paul, the believer enters through Baptism into communion with Christ's death, is buried with him, and rises with him:

  • Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.

  • The baptized have "put on Christ." Through the Holy Spirit, Baptism is a bath that purifies, justifies, and sanctifies.

• CCC 1228 Hence Baptism is a bath of water in which the "imperishable seed" of the Word of God produces its life-giving effect. St. Augustine says of Baptism: "The word is brought to the material element, and it becomes a sacrament.

1 Corinthians

1. Chapter 1: There was confusion about what Baptism did. The people thought that they we only following those who baptized them and not Christ and that the power came from them, etc. 

2. Chapter 10: In the second verse, we see Paul use the language of the "baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink". This is key in connecting the Old Testament prefiguration for those He was evangelizing.

3. Chapter 12: Paul, briefly and seemingly perpetually, refers to baptism as an entry into the body of Christ.

4. Chapter 15: He mentions being Baptized on behalf of the dead which addresses a pagan or pseudo-pagan concept of extending an only once available sacrament on their behalf and Paul clearly finds that absurd. However, he uses that thought process as indicative of belief in resurrection of the dead. In other words, that if one thinks that there would be something attained in that, they would have to believe in life after death.

Galatians

1. 3:27 - Paul describes baptism as a clothing of Christ.

   1. CCC 1216, 1243-4 We call it...Clothing since it veils our shame...The white garment symbolizes that the person baptized has "put on Christ," has risen with Christ...Having become a child of God clothed with the wedding garment, the neophyte is admitted "to the marriage supper of the Lamb" and receives the food of the new life, the body and blood of Christ. 

Ephesians

1. 4:5 - Paul seems to assert that just as their is one Lord, body, Father, Spirit, hope and creed that one baptism is necessary. 

Colossians

1. 2:12 - This verse corresponds almost verbatim with our Romans 6 passage, previously discussed. He makes further comparison to the circumcision and what it represents, a giving of the self which recognize God as creator and Lord of life.

Hebrews

1. 6:2 - Paul writes about the risk of falling away, and mentions the teaching about Baptism as something that is a part of the faith. However, there is not much 

2. 9:10 - In the NRSVCE, "various baptisms" is used to translate what others call special washings. This further connect something of purity washings as a foreshadowing to the single purifying baptism Christ manifested.

1 Peter 3:18-22

For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit, in which also he went and made a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah, during the building of the ark, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were saved through water. And baptism, which this prefigured, now saves you—not as a removal of dirt from the body, but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who has gone into heaven and is at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers made subject to him.

1. Here we find where the Church connects Noah's ark with Baptism. This means that Baptism would have made scriptural sense to a then Christian and a previous Jew.

2. It is interesting He says it has a salvific effect since so many believe that sacraments are only symbols. Indeed, there is symbolism used, however, the difference is 

Meaning and Takeaways

• Christ describes his Baptism as one of suffering, this would be consistent with the spiritual landscape He entered into through His Baptism which commissioned Him for His divine mission which the Whole Trinity witnesses to in the scene of Christ's Baptism, and John foretold.

• We connected the water coming from an unexpected place in the Old Testament to Christ's definition of "living Water" in the New Testament.

• We see that the Apostles took Christ's command to Baptize all nation very seriously, and moreover that they did not believe there was a distinction from sacramental life and the meaning of the scriptures.

• The nature of Christ's Baptism is not symbolic as John's was, it is deeper and more efficacious. Even as far as John was concerned a heart of repentance was necessary and those that lack it cannot understand Christ. It is thus that Christ "fulfilled all righteousness".

• Interpreting the Scripture in light of Early Church traditions, the Church teaches that Baptism makes us a member of the Church, changes our soul, makes us a creature born a new, and forgives sins. Once one comes to believe and enters the ordinary process.

• St. Peter and Paul are clear on the salvific effect of the sacrament and how it unites us to Christ's death, resurrection, and ascension.