Charles Ellicott Commentary Romans 6:3

"Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" — Romans 6:3 (ASV)

Do you not know?—It should be, as in the Greek, Or do you not know? Do you not admit this principle; or am I to suppose that you are ignorant?

Were baptized into Jesus Christ—i.e., “into communion with Him and incorporation in His mystical body” . As many of you as have been baptised in Christ have put on Christ. Your baptism signified an intimately close and indissoluble attachment to Christ.

Were baptized into His death.—And this attachment had a special relation to His death. It involved a communion or fellowship with His death. This fellowship is ethical, i.e., it implies a moral conduct corresponding to that relation to Christ which it assumes.

Why has baptism this special connection with the death of Christ?

1. The death of Christ is the central and cardinal fact of the Christian scheme. It is specially related to justification, and justification proceeds from faith, which is ratified in baptism.

2. The symbolism of baptism was such as naturally to harmonize with the symbolism of death. It was the final close of one period, and the beginning of another—the complete stripping off of the past and putting on of the “new man.”