“3 Know you not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ
(plainly says that this Baptism is into Christ and not water [I Cor. 1:17; 12:13; Gal. 3:27; Eph. 4:5; Col. 2:11-13]) were baptized into His Death?
(When Christ died on the Cross, in the Mind of God, we died with Him; in other words, He became our Substitute, and our identification with Him in His Death gives us all the benefits for which He died; the idea is that He did it all for us!)
4 Therefore we are buried with Him by baptism into death
(not only did we die with Him, but we were buried with Him as well, which means that all the sin and transgression of the past were buried; when they put Him in the Tomb, they put all of our sins into that Tomb as well): that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the Glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life
(we died with Him, we were buried with Him, and His Resurrection was our Resurrection to a “Newness of Life”).
5 For if we have been planted together
(with Christ) in the likeness of His Death
(Paul proclaims the Cross as the instrument through which all Blessings come; consequently, the Cross must ever be the Object of our Faith, which gives the Holy Spirit latitude to work within our lives), we shall be also
in the likeness of
His Resurrection
(we can have the “likeness of His Resurrection,” i.e., “live this Resurrection Life,” only as long as we understand the “likeness of His Death,” which refers to the Cross as the Means by which all of this is done):”
Gal. 2:20-21
“20 I am Crucified with Christ
(as the Foundation of all Victory; Paul, here, takes us back to Rom. 6:3-5): nevertheless I live
(have new life); yet not I
(not by my own strength and ability), but Christ lives in me
(by virtue of me dying with Him on the Cross, and being raised with Him in Newness of Life): and the life which I now live in the flesh
(my daily walk before God) I live by the Faith of the Son of God
(the Cross is ever the Object of my Faith), Who loved me, and gave Himself for me
(which is the only way that I could be Saved).
21 I do not frustrate the Grace of God
(if we make anything other than the Cross of Christ the Object of our Faith, we frustrate the Grace of God, which means we stop its action, and the Holy Spirit will no longer help us): for if Righteousness
come by the Law
(any type of Law), then Christ is dead in vain.
(If I can successfully live for the Lord by any means other than Faith in Christ and the Cross, then the Death of Christ was a waste.)”
JSM