Lectionary Commentaries for March 30, 2024
Vigil of Easter (Year B)

The Gospel of John is an exhibit of contrasts. The Jesus we are presented with in this Gospel is often mysterious. This resurrection account is curious because the main characters seem bewildered about what is happening. The other Gospels are more straightforward in their telling of this story.

Unlike the other accounts of the resurrection, we are told here that only one woman—Mary Magdalene—went to the tomb early that Sunday morning. However, we are not told why. We often assume we know why because of the other Gospel accounts, but John has no explicit reason. It simply says, “Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb” (John 20:1 Common English Bible).

Mary Magdalene is a curious figure to highlight here, especially given her reception history. Despite being mentioned briefly in Scripture, Mary Magdalene has been held in high esteem for centuries, embodying the essence of Christian devotion and repentance. As a result, her image has been reimagined throughout history, taking on various forms, from a prostitute to a mystic and even a feminist icon. Her presence in this story raises cultural questions about remembering the past and sanctifying power. It also explores the role of tradition, revolution, fallibility, and devotion in shaping the legacy of the woman who was a close companion of Jesus of Nazareth.

Mary Magdalene must have been a prominent figure among those who followed Jesus. She hailed from Magdala, a village on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. (It should be noted that, like a man, she is associated with a geographical location, which is a form of status recognition.) From what can be gathered through different sources, she was most likely a woman of some financial means. However, the conventional trope that she was a repentant prostitute is almost certainly untrue. On that false note hangs the dual use to which her legend has been put ever since: discrediting sexuality in general and disempowering women in particular.

Mary arrives at the tomb during that period of transition from darkness to light, “early in the morning … while it was still dark.” Since she is not carrying spices to anoint the body, we can assume that this narrative, like many in John, is about enlightenment. For example, when Nicodemus comes to Jesus at night in chapter 3, the engagement leads to enlightenment. Likewise, when Jesus speaks of “living water” with the woman at the well in chapter 4, the point is not about the actual consumption of water.

The metaphors of dark and light make statements about the character of the individual involved. Nicodemus never quite understands what Jesus means by being “born again” (3:3). Although many translations pick up on the dual meaning of the Greek anothen and opt for “from above” instead of “again.” The ambiguity of the wording partly explains Nicodemus’ inability to understand Jesus.

By contrast, the woman at the well in the next chapter encounters Jesus “around noon” (4:6). She is confronted with the concept of “living water” (4:10). She discerns that he is the Messiah (4:25). He confirms her insight (4:26). And verbal ambiguity does not deter her understanding in this encounter in the middle of the day. And so, Mary’s arrival at the tomb as the day moves from darkness to light speaks to us about how we are to understand the story. The disciples are moving from a period of ignorance (darkness) to understanding (light). The story now draws together several important strands of the Gospel.

“They didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead” (20:9 Common English Bible). The resurrection experience begins the disciples’ understanding of the importance of Jesus. Although we are told that the other disciple believed (20:8), this statement is immediately followed by “They didn’t yet understand.” Understanding and belief are contrasted several times in this Gospel. They are not mutually exclusive, however. They coexist in the life of the believer. In this case, as in many, belief precedes understanding. 

The other disciple accepted the validity of the experience, although he didn’t understand the reason why the experience occurred. This highlights Jesus’ statement in 5:39, “You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life, and it is they that testify on my behalf” (New Revised Standard Version). The experience of the incarnated Logos provides understanding of what scripture teaches.

Mary sees angels. Yet, the character of the conversation suggests she does not recognize them as such. They say, “Woman, why are you crying?” (20:13 Common English Bible). She responds, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” 

This is followed immediately by the appearance of Jesus: “She turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus” (20:14). She believes he’s the gardener. He repeats the question asked by the angels. She repeats her plea with the added recognition that this gardener could be involved in the bodily abduction, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him” (20:15). This highlights the recurrent theme of duality where words have more than one meaning, events have meanings on distinct levels, and characters operate in two orbits of identification.

Jesus then calls her by name, and she immediately identifies him (20:16). This recalls what Jesus said in 10:3–4, “The gatekeeper opens the gate for him, and the sheep hear his voice … the sheep follow him because they know his voice.” With Jesus as the Good Shepherd, the relationship between shepherd and flock cuts through all ambiguity and duality. This then prompts the first telling of the core of the gospel message: the resurrection of Jesus.

You know this passage. Even if you weren’t a minister, or even a Christian, you would have heard the mighty King James invocation, “In the beginning …” In an age of ecocatastrophe, you have hopefully preached this passage up and down. There is no lack of commentary on it. But tonight, for the Easter Vigil, with your permission, I’d like to point to some of the features that our ancient Christian forebears pointed out.

I defy you to get out of the first five verses of our scripture without seeing glimpses of God the Holy Trinity. It’s not just that “God” (1:1) is always Trinity in our faith. It’s that a “wind from God” hovers over the waters: a resonance of the Holy Spirit. Light brings to mind Christ, the light of the world (John 8:12). Not that the eternal Son is created—no. He is the One in whom all things are made (John 1; Colossians 1:15–20).

Careful now—you can’t make these claims in a way that denigrates our Jewish forebears. Our elder siblings in faith have their own faith-filled, creative ways to fill in the gaps between Scripture’s words. This is specifically Christian “midrash,” or commentary. It’s designed to delight, to decorate, to accentuate. That’s no small thing. It’s precisely what our preaching is for, too.

God separates the waters from the waters (1:6–8). We cannot help but hear echoes of our baptism. The world is nothing but water. But it’s not drowning water, as in the flood. It’s life-giving water, “good” water. Barbara Brown Taylor says somewhere that she saw Desmond Tutu blow over the surface of the water in a baptismal font once. And that made her see God hovering over the waters, separating water from water. Anytime we see water we should remember our baptism and give thanks.

Only on day three do we start to get dry land—and how! We get seeds and fruit and vegetation and yet more seeds (1:9–12). The green things precede the human things. So we should see the hand of their Maker and give thanks. There is no violence in this creation. The plant life does not exist to be eaten (yet!) but simply because God wants it to. This is why every green thing is magic: give thanks for it.

And only now do we have the sun and moon, the greater light and the lesser light (1:16). Ancient commentators, both Christian and Jewish, have noted the oddity of having “light” and “dark” before sun and moon. There must be a different sort of light, a spiritual one, that preexists the one we can see with our physical eyes. Call it wisdom, call it the vision of God—whatever you call it, long for it. It is nothing less than God. As the lesser light rules over the night and the greater over the day, we see a glimpse of how we human beings are to “rule”: with beneficence—shining, not destroying; curating, not condemning.

And on days five and six God sets out to make more things, all of the nonhuman things: swarming things and flying things and winged things and creeping things and wild things. This is a mass of motion, a whirligig of creativity, every created thing there is. Imagine a cosmos fully alive, every single thing in motion, all delighted into being by the God who is nothing but life. They are not destroying or being destroyed. They are zooming and whooshing and caterwauling and crittering, each motion a response of praise to their Maker.

And then us. God does not neglect to make us. God makes us different—male and female specifically here—but this can refer more broadly to the differences that exist between any of us human creatures (1:27). The differences make for fruit-bearing, and in this fruit-bearing we see what we are made for: to multiply, fill, order, and curate the beauty of creation (1:28). All of it is a gift (1:29). Only the green things are for eating—no carnivores in this creation.

This sixth day is worth a moment’s pause. We Christians have been so fixated on what’s wrong with the world (for this, see Genesis 3) that we don’t luxuriate in what’s right: the abundance God makes and with which God entrusts us. Every difference between you and every other creature is a fruit-bearing gift. Treasure it. Notice it. Love God for it. Creation’s infinite difference is the will of our Creator. In more heavily Christian language, this is creation pre-fall. And it is glorious. It is nothing but life—we human beings have not had a chance to ruin it yet. But creation is not done yet.

On the sixth day God puts creation to bed, and on the seventh, God rests. And apparently when God rests, God hallows a thing, blesses it. In this case, the six days of a workweek. Our Jewish siblings point out that the Sabbath is the crown of creation. As is often said in Judaism, more than the Jews keeping the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jews. We Christians have discarded it at our peril. Rest. Do nothing. Luxuriate. Love the zooming, whirling, creeping creation, and your own creatureliness.

More contentiously now, we Christians have not been able to stop ourselves from seeing a glimpse of the Holy Trinity in the “let us make” of 1:26. We would never have thought this had we not believed in the Trinity from clearer passages, but since we do, we see a reference in first-person plural and we do a double-take. Who’s this “us”? A heavenly council, historians tell us. God and the angels, our Jewish forebears say. These interpretations are not false. And yet another might not be false either. This is the communion that God eternally is, making a communion among us creatures. There is no creativity, no creation, that is not communal, reflecting the mutual heart of God.

That’s the life that’s raised back to life, this and every Easter.

The church has often assigned the reading of the crossing of the Red Sea for the Easter Vigil. As our Israelite forebears were rescued from slavery through the sea, so too we are rescued from our sins through baptism. This is not mere piety. The Black church knows its political ramifications in her bones as she praises, “God makes a way where there is no way.” God is the raising one, for whom slavery and death are a pause, not the end.

Tombs normally only have a front door, no back way out, and there’s a boulder in front that no one can move. At the exodus, newly freed slaves have the great sea in front, the world’s greatest army behind; there is nothing to do but die. Until Moses raises a staff, the sea starts to move, and then the people do. In our faith, seas split and graves are just the beginning.

Some historians say the songs in Exodus may be some of the oldest portions of the entire Bible. As literate people, we trust the text written down: it’s linear and sturdy. Peoples less enslaved to the page trust the story or the song performed. And Exodus 15 is mostly song, it’s liturgy, it’s praise.

Poetry is not decoration. It’s original speech. And the Jewish people likely first set this story to paper and edited it and treasured it in exile in Babylon. “One people enslaved us once: Egypt. How’d that go for them? Another people is enslaving us now: Babylon. How’s that going to go for them?” This is a saga that makes a people. The exodus is the foundational level of biblical worship and identity, the bedrock we build on, and it’s borne through history in a song sung first by women. Songs are sturdy. They make us who we are.

Israel doesn’t like the sea very much. There are some ancient peoples who love the water. The Phoenicians tell stories of their seafaring prowess, turning tall timbers of Lebanon into great vessels. The Greeks have stories of island-hopping and trade across the Mediterranean and great naval battles. In Israel, the sea is full of monsters, and it’s where you go to drown. The flood is the ultimate terror. The world is nothing but sea.

One great sea story in the Old Testament is Jonah. The prophet uses the sea to run from God, gets thrown overboard, and is swallowed by a fish. It doesn’t get any worse than that. Jesus walks on the sea to show, “Hey, I can tame your terror.” And Revelation promises that one day the sea will be no more. Sorry, surfers and sailors: the Bible’s not your book. The sea in front is more terrifying than the soldiers behind.

But God made even the sea. God can undo it. The sea is like a drawn bath in a tub, and God pulls out the plug. And old people and tiny babies and sick people and animals stroll across where the sea was.

A way out of no way.

Here’s what Easter says: Death is not the end. In fact, it’s only the beginning. There is a back door to that tomb, blown open by Jesus. For he is risen, but he is not the last one to be raised. One day, we’ll all be raised, as surely as he is. And not just us. But every atom God bothered to create in the beginning. If creation was good enough for God to love it into being in the first place, it’s good enough for God to love it into new being in the last place. That’s why we celebrate Easter. It’s about Jesus, but not just about him. It’s about Israel, but not just about Israel. It’s about us, but not just about us. It’s about everything living being made new. And that’s worth a hallelujah or two.

There is an Easter tradition I love. It’s called Holy Saturday. What’s in between Good Friday and Easter Sunday? For the 36 or so hours that Jesus is dead? Well, the Creed says, “He descended into hell.” What’s he doing there? There are differing traditions about that, as you might expect. For some that’s the lowest level of his suffering. For some it’s the beginning of his exultation. He’s in hell liberating the place. He’s making a raid, taking everyone with him who’ll go. Lifting out Adam and Eve. Others say he is there looking everywhere for his lost friend Judas.

C.S. Lewis says no one is in hell involuntarily. To be in hell is to sit in a jail cell with the door wide open, and refuse to leave. Because on Holy Saturday, Jesus broke the locks.

For most of us, in our imaginations of the afterlife, there’s heaven for good people, hell for bad people. But here’s what the gospel actually says: There are no good or bad people. There are only sinners forgiven who know about it and sinners forgiven who don’t. Heaven is for those sinners glad to receive mercy. Hell is for those sinners who think they don’t need mercy. “Nah, I’m good, don’t need forgiveness, I like my jail cell.” And Jesus is Lord in all such places. Wherever there is misery, there is also Jesus offering life, raising the dead. No hell is safe from grace. Never will be again.

The first Christians shocked their Roman neighbors by celebrating at funerals. Roman funerals were tragedies with no reprieve—mourning and sorrow and endless tears. If you didn’t have enough people crying, you hired actors. Sort of like Victorian funerals in the 1800s, or godless ones anytime. Christian funerals became parties. Death is here. That means life is coming. Sort of like Irish wakes—with drinks and jokes and joy.

Death wants to be taken very very seriously. Don’t. It’s life that’s serious. Because life wins. We can tell a joke or two. And sing a song of freedom. Led by Miriam, the Black church, and all of God’s army of prophets.

Isaiah 55:1–11 highlights the power of God’s word to accomplish God’s intentions. It invites hearers into a place of anticipation alongside potent trust in God’s powerful provision. At this moment in the Christian year, preachers who embrace this message of hope may find resonance between the certainty of God’s word accomplishing its intention and the expectation of the resurrection of the one John’s Gospel calls the “Word” who “became flesh” (John 1:14).¹

The lectionary reading ends at verse 11, placing the image of the successful “word” in a climactic position. The comparison that culminates with “So shall my word be that goes out from my mouth” (verse 11) has been building since the parallel invitations “Seek the LORD while he may be found” (verse 6) and “Let the wicked forsake their way” (verse 7). The divine word’s effectiveness has implications for human responsiveness. This poem invites response and repetitively announces its command to the audience. They are to “come” (verse 1), to “listen” (verse 2), to “seek” (verse 6), and to “forsake” (verse 7).

The poetic patterning of “way” and “thoughts” in verse 7 draws attention to the stark contrast between the divine and human realms. Building on the initial command to “forsake” unholy “ways” and “thoughts” (verse 7), the emphasis on divine mercy (verse 7) is followed by a poetic structure that frames the reference to “the heavens” and “the earth” by repeated distinction between the audience’s “ways” and “thoughts” and God’s “ways” and “thoughts” (verses 8–9).

This framing structure draws attention to what is in its center. In that center is a merism, a poetic device that emphasizes contrast by naming opposite ends of a spectrum. Here, the difference between God’s “ways” and the audience’s “ways” is as extreme as the difference between “the heavens” and “the earth” (verse 9).

That “heaven” and “earth” distinction is further elaborated with imagery of “rain” and “snow” which fall from “heaven” and nourish “the earth” (verse 10). The impossibility of God’s word not accomplishing its purpose is likened to the impossibility of precipitation falling from heaven and failing to irrigate the ground (verse 10). God’s word not reaching its intended target is here just as likely as a raindrop getting caught somehow in mid-air. Not only do “rain” and “snow” water the ground; they contribute to the ground’s flourishing and produce.

The poem began with an invitation to “come” and “eat.” Ironically, the invitation was to those with “no money” to “come, buy and eat!” (verse 1). As with so many images in the exilic portion of Isaiah, it appears this poem has in view the profound overturning of Lamentations’ complaints.²

While hunger and thirst are pervasive images in the people’s cries over the destruction of Jerusalem (for example, Lamentations 1:11; 2:12, 19; 4:4, 9; 5:4, 9), this Isaian announcement of restoration breaks into a celebration of feasting. Thirst that was suffered by those who “must pay for the water we drink” (Lamentations 5:4) is answered by “wine and milk without money and without price” (Isaiah 55:1).³ Attentive obedience to the divine voice is promised a reward of “good” and “rich food” (verse 2).

The certainty of God’s word accomplishing God’s own intentions develops in an image of rain and snow that eventually results in giving “bread to the eater” (verse 10). God’s word accomplishes what the recipients need. They are invited to respond in trust and repentance, not seeking “that which does not satisfy” (verse 2) but placing themselves in a position to “call upon” God “while he is near” (verse 6).

This elaboration of the poem’s contrast between divine ways and words and human ways and words is vital to the poetic effectiveness of this poem. By growing the image from “heaven” and “earth” to “rain,” “snow,” and “bread,” it depicts an overflowing abundance of divine provision, a provision that is grounded in the certainty of God’s word’s effectiveness. Here the audience is urged to place their trust in the reliability of God’s good purposes.

God’s word will not return “empty” (verse 11)—a compelling phrase that by this point in the poem has gathered up the associations of the fruitful outworkings of the rainfall and snowfall so the promise that it will “succeed in the thing for which [God] sent it” (verse 11) clearly conveys that this certainty promises divinely given abundance toward those who “return to the LORD” (verse 7).

At Easter Vigil, waiting for the dawn of Resurrection Day, with a reading that ends with God’s “word” that will not “return … empty” (verse 11), the hearers are invited not only to “return” to God, and to “forsake” any “wicked … way” (verse 7), but to place their confident expectation in the promise that God’s Word made flesh is an incarnation of the reliability of God’s word. This is a word that will not “return … empty” (verse 11) but will “accomplish” (verse 11) what God intends.

This certainty is in stark contrast to human attempts to accomplish anything, and especially their own salvation. As far from each other as the heavens are from the earth, so different are our attempts at self-rescue from God’s purposes. God’s ways are infinitely effective. God will do what God intends, even in the apparent emptiness between Good Friday and Easter morning. God spoke before into the void of exile when all seemed lost. God answered the complaints of Lamentations, where all seemed ended. The same God calls Jesus out of the tomb on Easter morning, accomplishing what God intends, succeeding “in the thing for which [God] sent” him (verse 11).

Notes

1. Biblical quotations are New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition unless otherwise indicated.
2. On Isaiah’s exilic period chapters and Lamentations, see especially, Tod Linafelt, Surviving Lamentations: Catastrophe, Lament, and Protest in the Afterlife of a Biblical Book (London: University of Chicago Press, 2000); and Patricia Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things: The Recollection of Previous Texts in Second Isaiah, SBLDS 161 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1997).
3. Tull Willey, Remember the Former Things, 237.

Daniel 2–3 is one story with two episodes. In the first episode, Nebuchadnezzar dreams of a statue with a head of gold, below which follow layers of declining quality. Daniel interprets this dream as foretelling a succession of empires, each lower-quality than the one before, until the final empire has deteriorated to a mixture of “iron and clay.”

Daniel says that Nebuchadnezzar is the head of gold, the ruler of a gilded age. But the book’s readers find themselves living in the final age, a chaotic time ruled by corrupt kings. The statue in Nebuchadnezzar’s dream is destroyed by a divinely hewn stone that grows into a world mountain—a symbol of God’s kingdom ruled by the Messiah. This is episode one. 

In episode two, Nebuchadnezzar makes a statue entirely of gold, top to bottom, as if to claim that his reign will last through all ages without deterioration and be invulnerable to the crushing rock of God’s reign. His demand that all people worship the symbol of his everlasting reign constitutes an act of profound impiety and arrogance. Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego resist his imperious claims and remain faithful to God above all else, even above fear of a fiery execution.

Stories do not need to be factual to be true for moral and religious purposes. Like Jesus’ parables, the stories in Daniel 1–6 about brave and wise heroes of the faith are true, but it is unlikely they are factual. They were probably written just before the second century BCE, a time when Jews in the diaspora struggled to navigate political and cultural upheaval and religious conflict.

The book in its final form was composed in Palestine, where Jews were suffering persecution at the hands of the Seleucid Syrian tyrant Antiochus IV, who claimed to be theos epiphanos, “god manifest,” even minting a coin with this title inscribed. In 167 BCE he ravaged Jerusalem, desecrated the Jerusalem temple, and commanded the Jews to cease keeping Torah. Some who resisted were executed. 

In Daniel, Nebuchadnezzar serves as a cipher for Antiochus and for rulers in every age who arrogantly set themselves against God’s people. In contrast, Daniel and his three friends represent wisdom, courage, and uncompromising obedience to God, qualities the audience is called to emulate as they navigate the empire’s demands and temptations in their own time.

The story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego’s faithfulness and deliverance delightfully uses humor and exaggeration to mock the bloated ego of the king and the pretensions of empire. The narrator lampoons the empire by imitating ponderous imperial rhetoric—most obviously by listing repeatedly and at tedious length the officials called to bow down to the statue and the musical instruments used to prompt its worship. Reading the story aloud brings this out. The statue’s exaggerated size (90 feet tall by 9 feet wide!) subtly derides the pomposity of the king’s erection. 

The unappeased king’s face-distorting fury, the pointless choices to have the strongest guards bind the three unresisting Hebrew men and to heat the furnace seven times beyond usual—so hot that the soldiers die at the mouth of the furnace (oops)—amusingly contrast the king’s desperation with the calm firmness of the three men’s resolve.

Finally, the reversal at the end of the story exceeds any reasonable expectation. A divine being appears in the furnace, the three men survive with not even a whiff of fire on them, and Nebuchadnezzar not only immediately confesses the greatness of the Hebrew God and honors the three men; he also declares a terrible fate for any who would blaspheme the Hebrew God. 

It all provides a satisfying vindication of the Hebrews and an implicit humiliation of the king. The story is written to delight the oppressed and offer them the promise that in God’s economy, the last will be first and the first, last.

The likely intended audience of the story would naturally have identified with the three heroic Hebrew men, and readers today may too. But most who hear the story in our culture might well consider whether they are the three heroes—Jews whose religion and cultural identity are under attack—or whether they are Nebuchadnezzar—members of the empire who enjoy majority privileges. Few of us suffer the kind of oppression Daniel portrays. Most of us participate happily in the benefits of a powerful nation. 

Navigating the story in a sermon with both these possible points of identification in mind is challenging. We can imagine times when we might be called to resist compromising our faith in God, and we see ourselves standing firm, as the three heroes did. That’s the inviting point of connection in the story. It is less inviting to be reminded that the privileges that arise from our participation in the empire come at a price. Can we bow to symbols erected to celebrate the power and glory of our nation without compromising our confession that the kingdom, the power, and the glory belong to God alone?

As Christians, we pray that God’s reign will come as fully on earth as it is in heaven. But in the meantime, we are caught between competing reigns. Like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, we must choose between allegiance to God’s rule and compliance with the empire’s demand that we bow down to its values. We are called to “come out” of Babylon (Revelation 18:4), even if it means we forfeit the empire’s protections and privileges or suffer its reprisals. 

Not all stories of faithful resistance have happy endings. The books of 1 and 2 Maccabees, written around the same time as Daniel, relate the martyrdom of many faithful Jews during Antiochus’ reign of terror. We do not know, any more than did the three Hebrew men, if there will be an angel in the fire for us. But like them, we are called to say, “If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us …, let him deliver us. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.”

Death Baptism and Mutual Entombment

The idea of being “plunged into someone’s death” and being “entombed” with them, as in Romans 6:3–4, is unnerving. In most contexts, this language would strike us as peculiar and eerie. Yet, within the Christian tradition, these images have been so thoroughly assimilated that they have lost their spookiness. After all, many of us wear a symbol of death—namely, the cross—as jewelry on our person.

The word that usually is translated “buried with” (synetaphēmen) in Romans 6:4 literally means to be buried together, as in a shared grave. The image finds an unexpected parallel in the Roman author Aelian, who wrote some 150 years after Paul. In his treatise On the Characteristics of Animals, Aelian (rightly) extols dogs for their loyalty. As one of several illustrations, he tells the story of a lap dog who jumped into its dead owner’s coffin and so was “buried with” him. The account is meant to be humorous, if not also a touch gruesome. 

Gruesome death language permeates Romans 6:3–11. There is a distinct contrast in the passage between life and death. While the celebration of Easter predominantly highlights the former, it is crucial to recognize that the exaltation of new life is intertwined with death. Celebration of new life comes only through death. Easter Sunday follows Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Holy Saturday. 

In these verses, death language is paired with life language. Yet, in sheer numerical terms, references to death outweigh those to life. Thirteen times Paul mentions death, while life occurs six times.

Death:

• “We were baptized into his death” (verse 3)
• “We were buried with him” (verse 4)
• “By baptism into his death” (verse 4)
• “From the dead” (verse 4)
• “In the likeness of his death” (verse 5)
• “Our old person was co-crucified” (verse 6)
• “The one dying” (verse 7)
• “We died with Christ” (verse 8)
• “Christ was raised from the dead” (verse 9)
• “He died to sin” (verse 10)
• “We reckon ourselves dead bodies” (verse 11)

Negation of death:

• “He no longer dies” (verse 9)
• “Death no longer rules” (verse 9)

Life and resurrection:

• “He was raised” (verse 4)
• “We should walk in newness of life” (verse 4)
• “We will be united also in his resurrection” (verse 5)
• “We will live with him” (verse 8)
• “He lives to God” (verse 10)
• “We reckon ourselves living” (verse 11)

Death is past, life is present

The contrast in Romans 6 continues Paul’s juxtaposition from Romans 5:12–21 of two different domains that are associated with two different individuals. On the one hand, there is the realm of sin and death associated with the first human and his trespass. On the other hand, there is the new realm of grace, righteousness, and life associated with Jesus and his obedience. 

Romans 5 culminates with a comparison between the dominion of sin in the past and the potential reign of grace in the present and future. Sin ruled in the past, whereas grace might rule in the present and future. This grammatical dichotomy is emphasized through the use of the aorist indicative mood, denoting actions completed in the past, and the subjunctive mood, suggesting potential or probable future actions. In Romans 6:1–11, Paul extends this contrast, providing an exposition of its results for believers. Romans 5 presents the two different realms. Romans 6 elaborates how believers have moved from the old to the new. 

The contrast continues with the rhetorical question in Romans 6:2: “How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” (New Revised Standard Version) The English translation melds what is set in opposition in Greek. There are two distinct clauses that might be literally translated, “We who died to sin, how can we continue living in it?” The word signaling that the sentence is a question, pōs, does not appear until the second clause. 

The implication is that the first clause is a statement of fact, while the second is a rhetorical question that builds upon it. Like the rhetorical question in Romans 6:1—“Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound?”—the question in Romans 6:2 ought to be answered emphatically in the negative.

Question: How can we continue living in sin? 

Implied answer: We can’t!

Variation between the past and future tenses continues throughout Romans 6:3–11 to emphasize Paul’s contrast. Death is always associated with the past: we were baptized into death (verse 3), we were buried (verse 4), our old person was co-crucified (verse 6), we died with Christ (verse 8). In contrast, new life is always associated with present and future possibility: we should walk in newness of life (verse 4), we will be united (verse 5), we will live with him (verse 8), death no longer rules (verse 9).  

Sin and death are associated with the past, old realm. In baptism, Christ-believers have died to this realm and been made alive to the new one. Baptism was and is an initiation rite that signals one’s entry into a new realm. Whatever denominational practice of baptism one utilizes today, the verb “baptize” in its ancient context was used with respect to complete immersion of something into something else. Thus, it can also be translated “plunge,” “soak,” or “wash.” Again, the imagery is gruesome: we were plunged into Jesus’ death and stuck into his grave. 

But Jesus did not stay in his grave, and neither do we. Jesus’ death put the dominion of death to death. For Paul, death and resurrection are effective. The gruesomeness of Good Friday and Holy Saturday is transformed into the glory of new life on Easter Sunday. As Paul states in Romans 6:11, we are now “dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.”