3. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus
Christ--compare
1Co 10:2.
were baptized into his death?--sealed with the seal of heaven, and as
it were formally entered and articled, to all the benefits and all
the obligations of Christian discipleship in general, and of His
death in particular. And since He was "made sin" and "a curse for
us"
(2Co 5:21;
Ga 5:13),
"bearing our sins in His own body on the tree," and "rising again for
our justification"
(Ro 4:25;
1Pe 2:24),
our whole sinful case and condition, thus taken up into His Person, has
been brought to an end in His death. Whoso, then, has been baptized
into Christ's death has formally surrendered the whole state and life
of sin, as in Christ a dead thing. He has sealed himself to be not only
"the righteousness of God in Him," but "a new creature"; and as he
cannot be in Christ to the one effect and not to the other, for they
are one thing, he has bidden farewell, by baptism into Christ's death,
to his entire connection with sin. "How," then, "can he live any longer
therein?" The two things are as contradictory in the fact as they are
in the terms.
JFB.
Picture Study Bible