⁵ For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall also be in the likeness of His resurrection, ⁶ knowing this, that our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin; ⁷ for he who has died is freed from sin.

Water baptism is a “likeness,” a representation similar to the death of Jesus Christ. Paul uses the word later of God “… sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom 8:3). His humanity was “like” ours in every way (Heb 3:17-18, 4:15a), with the exception that He never sinned (Heb 4:15b). He was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, without the sin. In baptism, we begin the reciprocal arrangement of our becoming like Him. How interesting—this is the very goal of God in the first place, for He created humans in His own image (Gen 1:26-27). Adam and Eve’s temptation was to abscond God’s plan and to attempt the ultimate goal—to become like God—by their own devices. Hear again Satan’s sniveling suggestion, “God knows that in the day you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5). The rest of history brings us to the point where God will bring about His likeness in the image bearers through re-creation by grace through faith—beginning with becoming like God in death. The irony is that the death of humankind since the fall is a death in the likeness of Satan, but now there is a godly death, seen in the symbol of baptism.

This death in the likeness of Christ, though, is not another physical death like we have been experiencing since Adam’s fall. Paul puts it picturesquely: “our old self was crucified with Him.” Now obviously, we did not physically hang on the cross 2,000 years ago, and each of us does not exist as two physical selves, nor should we think of two disparate psychological selves. Paul means that our previous way of thinking and life in relationship to God has been put aside. But to bring out the profound nature of this, he speaks of it as a singular event like dying, intentionally and with finality. That old self, as he thinks of it, is as dead (in the likeness of a physical dead body) as when a person physically dies—actually, just like Jesus’ dying on the cross.

So if we are tracking with Paul, our relationship with God by grace through faith begins with the death of our old self, that is, as though we were united with Christ at the very moment He was crucified and died on the cross. And the goal is to free us from the slavery of the original problem that got us off track from being God’s image bearers. That is the crucifixion of the old self.

Thank You, Lord, for delivering me from the sin of attempting godliness in my own power.