Death is usually the end of the story.
But in Romans 6, Paul uses death as the beginning of one. Not a metaphor for feeling bad about your sin. Not a spiritual concept you nod at in church and move on from. An actual death — and an actual burial — that happened to you when you were united with Christ.
“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)
Buried with him. That’s not a small claim. That’s a complete reorientation of who you are.
Why Paul Starts with Death
Romans 6 opens with a question that apparently needed to be asked: “Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Someone had heard Paul’s teaching on grace and drawn the wrong conclusion — that if grace covers sin, more sin means more grace. Why not keep sinning? The logic is internally consistent, if you’ve missed the point entirely.
Paul’s answer is essentially: you don’t understand what happened to you.
He doesn’t respond with a list of rules. He doesn’t appeal to willpower or moral effort or the importance of trying harder. He goes straight to identity. “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?”
The question isn’t “are you trying hard enough?” The question is “do you know who you are?” Because if you knew who you were, the question of whether to keep sinning would answer itself.
Union With Christ: The Foundation
To understand Romans 6, you have to understand the doctrine underneath it: union with Christ.
When a person comes to faith, something happens that is more than forgiveness. More than a legal transaction in which guilt is transferred and righteousness is credited. Those things are real and they matter enormously. But union with Christ goes further. It means that by the Spirit, the believer is genuinely, spiritually joined to Christ — so that what is true of Him becomes true of them.
His death becomes your death. His burial becomes your burial. His resurrection becomes the pattern and the power of your new life. You are not merely someone who has been forgiven by Christ. You are someone who is in Christ — and that changes everything about who you are and how you live.
This is why Paul can say things that sound almost shocking: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20) That’s not hyperbole. That’s the theological reality of what union with Christ means. The old self — the one that was enslaved to sin, oriented away from God, living under the power of the flesh — that self was crucified with Him. And then buried.
The Logic of the Burial
Burial matters. Burial is the confirmation that the death was real. You don’t bury something that’s still alive. The burial of Christ was the seal on His death — the stone rolled across the entrance, the guards posted, the finality made official. And Paul says your burial with Him is the seal on yours.
The old you is not on life support. It’s not in a coma, waiting to be revived under the right conditions. It’s not lurking in the background, ready to reassert itself as the real you the moment you stop trying. It’s buried. The death was real. The burial confirmed it.
Which means it doesn’t get to run your life anymore. Not because you’ve successfully suppressed it through discipline and effort, but because it’s dead. You are not fighting to kill something that’s still alive. You are fighting to live from the reality that it’s already dead.
That’s a fundamentally different fight.
“In Order That” — The Purpose of the Death
Paul doesn’t leave you in the grave. The death and burial have a purpose: “in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.”
The resurrection of Christ isn’t just a historical event you believe in. It’s the pattern for your life right now. Just as He was raised, you too — present tense, ongoing, daily — walk in newness of life.
Not newness of effort. Not newness of religious performance. Newness of life. A fundamentally different kind of existence, animated by a different power, oriented toward a different end. The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you. (Romans 8:11) That’s not a metaphor. That’s the engine of the Christian life.
Reckon It to Be True
Romans 6:11 gives us the practical application: “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”
The word translated “consider” is an accounting term — to reckon, to count, to calculate. Paul is saying: run the numbers. Look at what is actually true about you in Christ, and let that calculation shape how you live.
This is not positive self-talk. It’s not pretending you don’t struggle with sin. It’s not willing yourself into a feeling of victory. It’s the deliberate, faith-based act of agreeing with what God says is true about you — even when your experience doesn’t feel like it yet.
Because here’s the tension every honest Christian lives in: the old self is buried, but the flesh remains. The decisive death has happened, but the full experience of that death won’t be complete until glory. You are dead to sin positionally — in terms of your identity, your standing, your fundamental orientation — but you still feel the pull of sin experientially. The already and the not yet.
Reckoning is how you live in that tension. You don’t deny the pull. You don’t pretend the struggle isn’t real. You reckon — you count it as true — that the pull is coming from something that is already dead, and that the life you’ve been raised into is more real, more permanent, and more powerful than anything the buried self can offer.
The Identity That Changes Everything
Here’s the practical weight of Romans 6: Paul is giving you a new way to think about yourself. Not as someone who struggles with sin and hopes to do better. Not as someone defined by their failures or their patterns or their history. As someone who has died to sin and is now alive to God in Christ Jesus.
That identity is not earned. It’s not achieved through spiritual discipline or moral consistency. It’s received — given to you in your union with Christ, sealed in your baptism, confirmed by the Spirit who now lives in you. And it’s the foundation from which everything else in the Christian life flows.
You are not the old self anymore. That self is buried. You are someone who has been raised with Christ into newness of life. The question is not whether that’s true. The question is whether you’ll live like it is.
That’s not a command to try harder. It’s an invitation to live from what’s already true.
Go Deeper
1. Paul says the way to fight sin is to “reckon” yourself dead to it — to count it as true. What specific sin or pattern in your life do you need to reckon against, agreeing with what God says is true about you rather than what your experience feels like?
2. Union with Christ means His death becomes your death and His resurrection becomes your life. How does that change the way you think about your identity — not just what you do, but who you are?
3. The old self is buried, but the flesh remains — the already and the not yet. Where do you feel that tension most acutely right now, and what does it look like to live from the reality of the burial rather than the feeling of the struggle?
— Todd Wallace, 4HG
If this is the identity you’re living from, the Buried With Him tee is a confession that the old self is buried — and you’ve been raised into something new. Shop at 4HG.
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