Romans 6:4

we are buried with him Better, we were buried, &c.; the reference being to the past fact of baptism. Burialis the final token of death, and so the strongest expression of death as a fact. Perhaps there is an allusion to the immersion of baptism, as a quasi-burial. (The only parallel passage is Colossians 2:12.) But the significance of the rite would not depend on such a form of it: the essential is that every true baptism is the ratification of covenant connexion with Christ and His Death. It thus lays the baptized Christian, as it were, with the Lord in that gravewhere He lay as the slain Propitiation; i.e. it ratifies our share in the Justification of the Cross.

by baptism by means of baptism, i.e., of course, not by the mere act, but by all that is involved in a true baptism. Baptism is not an isolated thing, but a summary and seal.

into death Better, into the death, the Lord's Death. Connect these words with "we were buried." The whole idea is a union with Christ as the Slain One, so real that it is expressed by the figure of a share in His grave.

that, &c. The sequence indicated is as follows: Our new position and conduct as Christians was both to be, and to seem, radically new; as new as resurrection-life after death. Therefore our admission to the covenant was by a rite essentially connected with the Lord's Death, and thus intended both to remind us of the price of justification, and of the totally new position, principles, and conduct, of the justified.

by the glory of the Father By the majestic harmony of His Power, Holiness, and Love; all consenting in the great miracle. Perhaps the thought is suggested here that the same "glory" shall be exercised in the "new life" of the justified.

walk in newness of life i.e. move and act with the new principles and powers of those who, as the justified, are "born againto a livinghope." "Newness:" the Gr. word expresses not so much youthas novelty;a condition without precedentin our experience. "Life:" in the sense not of a course of life, but of the principle of life. Through the Death of Christ, the justified "live;" in the "newness" of that condition they are to "walk." Here again (as in Romans 6:2) note the transitionof ideas; from a "death to sin" (with Christ) in respect of penalty, to a "life" (with Christ) in respect not merely of remissionbut of new principles and acts; i.e. from Justification simply to Justification as resulting in Sanctification. The "life" is not merely the extension of existence to a pardoned man, but the condition and use of that existence where the pardoned are also, as such, accepted among the "brethren" of Christ.