Romans 6:3

Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

This verse is proof that justification by faith, as possessed by those Christians to whom Paul addressed Romans, included baptism. Not a single one of them was ever justified without it; for Paul wrote, "ALL WE who were baptized." Paul's focal purpose in this paragraph was to stress the fact that Christians who were dead to sin should not continue to live wickedly; but the manner of their being dead to sin necessarily brought the ordinance of baptism into his thoughts, with the consequence that many of the most positive teachings concerning that ceremony were included in this letter. In this verse, Paul explained HOW it is true that Christians are dead to sin, and WHEN they became so.

Baptism being the ordinance which brings people "into Christ," as stated here and in Galatians 3:26,27, and through means of the unity with Christ thus effected, the Christian actually enters the spiritual body of Christ, thus making it true that "in Christ" he is dead to sin, since Christ died. That is the thought here expressed by "baptized into his death," meaning "into the status of being dead to sin in Christ." Making the sinner dead to sin is a mighty act; and, as Wuest expressed it,

Paul now proceeds to show how this mighty cleavage was effected. He says that it was brought about by God's act of baptizing the believing sinner into Christ so that the person would share his death on the Cross, which identification of the believing sinner with Christ in his death, brought about the separation of that person from the sinful nature.[12]

Wuest's view of baptism as an act of God is correct, as a comparison with John 4:1,2 proves, thus making it impossible ever to classify baptism as a work of human righteousness. It is a work of God because God commanded it and because it is administered in God's name by God's servants. Nevertheless, inasmuch as this cannot be done except with the consent and submission of the believer, there is a sense in which baptism is an act of the believer himself. When Paul himself was baptized, the believer's initiative in the act was clearly indicated in the divine command uttered by Ananias (Acts 22:16). Vine's Greek dictionary has this:

In Acts 22:16, it ([@baptizo]) is used in the middle voice in the command given to Saul of Tarsus, "Arise and be baptized," the significance of the middle voice being, "get thyself baptized."[13]

Again, the diligence of people to avoid the significance of baptism as a part of God's plan of redeeming people, in the sense of bringing them into a status where they may receive redemption as God's gift, is evidenced by such as the following statement:

Nevertheless, a doctrine of justification by grace through faith necessitates a distinction between initiation into the spiritual body of Christ and identification with the visible body through baptism.[14]

But there is no difference! It is by the one baptism (Ephesians 4:5) that believers are baptized into the one body (1 Corinthians 12:13), into Christ (as here), into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18-20), into his death (as here), and into the kingdom of God (John 3:5). The false theory that one might indeed be in some mystical form of the body of Christ and not be in the visible body of his church was explicitly proved untenable by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, thus:

It is impossible to become a new man as a solitary individual. The new man means more than the individual believer. ... It means the Church, the Body of Christ; in fact it means Christ himself.[15]

As the New Testament writer Luke expressed it:

And the Lord added to them (the church) day by day those that were being saved (Acts 2:47).

Luke's statement justifies the deduction that if one has not been added to the church, neither is he saved.

Melancholy rises in the heart as one contemplates the magnitude and extent of human efforts to obscure and even deny the scriptural teaching before us in this verse. Why should people have decided that baptism has nothing to do with salvation and then have set about shouting it out of the New Testament? Why has God permitted it? Is it in order that people who do not truly love God may have some rational platform to support their rebellion? Why should not every man who believes in God and Jesus Christ accept and obey the holy teachings on this subject? Christ himself made the baptism of "all nations" (Matthew 28:18-20) to be the urgent and invariable mission of his church throughout ages; and no logic can support the view that Christ included a "non-essential" in the great commission. What human vanity it is to suppose that people have the right to take it out! Ten thousand angels swearing that baptism is not necessary to salvation could not make it so.

[12] Kenneth S. Wuest, Romans in the Greek New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1955), p. 96.

[13] W. E. Vine, Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (Westwood, New Jersey: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1940), p. 97.

[14] William M. Greathouse, op. cit., p. 130.

[15] As quoted by Greathouse, op. cit., p. 138.