Chalmers on Romans

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 23, 1883

Chalmers on Romans.

"Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death; 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." Rom. 6: 3, 4.

The original meaning of the word baptism is immersion, and though we regard it as a point of indifferency, whether the ordinance so named be performed in this way or by sprinkling, yet we doubt not that the prevalent style of the administration in the apostle's days was by an actual submerging of the whole body under water. We advert to this for the purpose of throwing light on the analogy that is instituted in these verses. Jesus Christ by death underwent this sort of baptism, even immersion under the surface of the ground, whence he soon emerged again by his resurrection. We, by being baptized into his death, are conceived to have made a similar translation. In the act of descending under the water of baptism, to have resigned an old life, and in the act of ascending, to emerge into a second, or a new life, along the course of which it is our part to maintain a strenuous avoidance of that sin which as good as expunged the being we had formerly; and a strenuous prosecution of that holiness which should begin with the first moment that we were ushered into our present being, and be perpetuated, and make progress toward the perfection of full and ripened immortality.

"Baptized into his death," or regarding ourselves as if, like him, we had actually been slain and buried, and like him brought forth anew and made alive again, before that God who for our sins had swept us beyond the circle of his favored creation. This would have been had not Christ died; and though he, by pouring out his soul for us, has kept us in the favor that else would have been forfeited, and that forever, yet the argument is the same, if prevented from going down into the pit, as if after being cast headlong into it for our sins, we had again been extricated therefrom. How shall we whom sin had at that time blotted out from the family of life, now that we are readmitted, again indulge in it? How shall we run counter to those holy antipathies of the divine nature, of the strength and irreconcilableness of which we already, in our own persons, have had so fell a manifestation? How shall we, rescued from destruction, again welcome to our embraces the destroyer? Or, living anew under the eye of that God who could not endure the presence of sin, and so consigned it to the exile of death everlasting, shall we live again in that very course which made our former existence so offensive to him, and so incompatible with the whole spirit and design of his government? Has he changed his taste or his character? or makes it any difference to the argument that a mediator interposed and took upon himself the whole weight of that avenging arm which was lifted up for our extermination? Is not the exhibition of God's hatred and hostility to sin just as impressive, that the stroke of jealousy fell upon the head of his own Son, as it would have been had it fallen on the guilty millions whom this mighty Captain shielded from the vindictive discharge that else would have overwhelmed us? And whether these billows of wrath have all been broken on the Rock of our Salvation, or first made to pass over us, we had again been summoned from the depth and caused to emerge anew into the sunshine of God's reconciled countenance, does it not equally prove that he, the everlasting enemy of sin, will, in any new economy that he may institute, still evince it to be that hateful thing for which he has no taste, and can have no toleration?

So much for the application of the phrase "dead unto sin," when understood forensically. We trust that however imperfectly we may have illustrated this part of the argument, you have been made to perceive that there is in it the force and the power of a most impressive consideration; and you have have seized upon it or not, be at least very sure of this, that, such is the fact of the matter, there is no indulgence for sin under the dispensation of the gospel. It is a restorative dispensation, by which you are alike kept from the penalty of sin and cured of its polluting virulence. It restores you to the favor of God, but it restores you not to the liberty of sinning; and the argument wherewith we would arm and fortify the principles of all who now feel themselves alive in Christ Jesus, is, shall we continue in that hateful thing which would have brought me to the death, had not my Saviour, for my deliverance and preservation, bowed down his head unto the sacrifice?

We have already tried to set forth in your hearing the forensic interpretation that might be given of the phrase "dead unto sin"—dead for sin—not that the sentence was inflicted, but that the sentence was pronounced; and the argument why they should not continue in sin is as strongly applicable to those who are delivered from a doom that was impending, as to those who are recalled from a doom that was actually executed. There were a most direct force in the consideration—should a revived criminal press it upon his moral feelings—how can I recur to that which is so odious in the sight of my country's government that I had to suffer a death for it, from which I, by a miracle perhaps of mercy, have been restored? And it ought to be as powerful a consideration with a reprieved criminal, whose sentence has been suspended, and perhaps by the intercession of a mediator been finally withdrawn. The recurrence to that which brought down the sentence were just as monstrous a violence done to the whole spirit and object of the administration under which I live, in the one case as in the other; and be assured that there were the very same violence done to the spirit of Heaven's administration, should those who are redeemed from death under the economy of the gospel live in that which had sunk them under so fearful a condemnation. For sin we were ready to die. For sin we would have died had not Christ interposed, and undergone in his own person that shedding of blood without which remission is impossible. The demonstration given of God's antipathies to the power and existence of sin in his kingdom is as strong by the falling of the deadly blow upon the head of a Mediator as if it had fallen directly upon the head of those for whom he died. And shall we, from whom the stroke of vengeance has been averted—shall we who are still in life but virtually in a life from the dead—shall we who in Christ may so read what but for him would have happened to ourselves, as to be baptized into his death and to be planted together in the likeness of it—shall we, kept from falling into the abyss of condemnation, and therefore as good as if summoned again from its depths on the platform of God's favored and rejoicing family—continue in the hateful thing which but for Christ would have destroyed us, and of God's abhorrence to which the atoning death of Christ gives so awful and impressive a manifestation?