The Israelites were enslaved by the Egyptians. Eventually, they crossed over the Red Sea, and once they were on the other side, the sea fell back upon their pursuers. They were no longer enslaved. This was a true liberation and deliverance.
Romans 5 describes the condemnation of death as an 'Egypt.' Paul writes: "The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation." (Rom. 5:16) The word 'condemnation' expresses a verdict, a stable expression of identity. Later, Paul writes, "...by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man..." (Rom. 5:17) Death 'reigns' in a type of kingdom of death. Later, Paul writes: "...just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." (Rom. 5:21). This is all the description of two different kingdoms, spheres, dominions, domains, world orders, orbits. Fleming Rutledge writes:
"The New Testament cosmology, most clearly displayed in Paul's letters but present to a greater or lesser degree in the Gospels and the other epistles as well, presents us not with two ways of life, but with two kingdoms - two spheres of power." (Rutledge, 546)
'Egypt' is a world order that gathers up a lot of symbolism in the Bible. 'Egypt' does not let Israel worship. 'Egypt' subverts the God of Israel and boasts against his power. Israel's identity is stomped out and systematically removed. Benjamin Skinner describes a tragic structural dynamic of slavery in Haiti in which rural families give their children to people from the city who, under the guise of benevolence, say they will give the children a better education, but instead turn them into slaves. He describes the enslaving process as becoming "zombified," assumed to have no will of their own, and entirely under the control of the malevolence of the slavemaster who has given the child a "second life." (A Crime So Monstrous, 38) 'Egypt' describes the world of the First Adam, a world under the power of death. We are 'zombified,' slaves to its whims and powers. Under it, we are dead.
When Paul moves from talking about the reign of death in Romans 5 to talking about baptism in Romans 6, he is telling us that baptism is a new crossing of the Red Sea. It is our exodus from the old regime of "zombified" death to the new regime of life in Christ. Christ's new kingdom is a new world. Leithart describes this:
"...Jesus died to form a people, the church, his body and bride. He died to preserve his new temple movement; his death was a day of atonement where he bore the liabilities and punishments of Israel to give them a new past and a new future. His own sacrifice was part of his ordination, and he rose again to preside as an immortal high priest qualified not by flesh but by the power of indestructible resurrection life. Jesus brought forgiveness because his death founded a forgiven people-temple where forgiveness continues to be freely offered: a temple where the single bath of baptism purifies and consecrates; where confession of sins without sacrifice cleanses from all unrighteousness; where the word of absolution is spoken with all the authority of the Son of God; where Jews and Gentiles, male and female, slave and free are invited to share a common sacrificial meal, eating Jesus' body and drinking his blood for the remission of sins. Salvation breaks into the world because God removes the veil, takes his gifts of word, bread and rod out of the treasure chest of the ark and hands them over to everyone everywhere who will receive them. Forgiveness comes to historical reality because by his death and resurrection Jesus establishes these simpler, fewer and above all more effective rites to unite us to God and one another." (Delivered, 173)
This is all a picture of what we would call the kingdom, sphere, dominion, domain, world order, orbit of the reign of life. Its foundation, as Leithart articulates, is that Jesus himself is the realm. He is the sanctuary, the temple, the new Eden, the high priest. Jesus' death is the great crossing of the Red Sea, the justifying death whose resurrection brings God's great verdict. Our baptisms are our participation in this great exodus. They are streams, tributaries that wash us into the great cleansing flood of Jesus' death and resurrection. Jesus' death operates through baptism. We are baptized into Jesus' death. (Rom. 6:3)
Baptism is a death to the former reign of sin and death. It is a 'death' to death. Paul makes an obscure reference in 1 Corinthians 15:29 about the "baptism of the dead." If Paul is talking about baptizing corpses or people being baptized on behalf of corpses, we don't have much to say about it. Perhaps this was just a strange first century practice in the Corinthian church. But if all people are dead in sins and trespasses, aren't all baptisms for the dead? The early church father John Chrysostom had a rite of baptism which included a confession of faith in the resurrection:
"I believe in the resurrection of the dead."
In response, the one pursuing baptism is told:
"...with a view to this art thou baptized, the resurrection of thy dead body, believing that it no longer remains dead." (quoted in Leithart, The Baptized Body, 43)
We all come to baptism dead because we hope there to participate in Jesus' resurrection. Paul writes:
"For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin - because anyone who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace." (Rom. 6:5-10)
Can we lean into what is said here? Leithart writes:
"Though it is clear from the rest of the New Testament that believers continue to commit sins (e.g., 1 John 1), the life of the justified is not properly summed up as simul iustus et peccator (simultaneously righteous and a sinner). The justified are dead to sin, justified from sin in their baptismal death, and are to conform their self-conception to what baptism declares about them." (Delivered, 349)
In other words, we are not 'sinners' anymore. What can this possibly mean, as great saints like Teresa of Avila become even more aware of their sin the closer they get to divine majesty?
We have several options here. One is P.T. Forsyth's. He writes about the question that will be put to us at the last:
"It will not be, How many are your sins and how many your sacrifices? but, On which side have you stood and striven, under which King have you served or died? A man may abide in the many-mansioned, myriad-minded Christ, even if the robber sometimes break into his room, or if he go out and lose his way in a fog. You stay in a house, or in a town, which all the same you occasionally leave for good or for ill. The question is, What is your home to which your heart returns, either in repentance or in joy? Where is your heart? What is the bent of your will on the whole, the direction and service of your total life? It is not a question settled in a quantitative way by inquiry as to the occupation of every moment. God judges by totals, by unities not units, by wholes and souls, not sections. What is the dominant and advancing spirit of your life, the total allegiance of your person? Beethoven was not troubled when a performer struck a wrong note, but he was angry when he failed with the spirit and idea of the piece. So with the Great Judge and Artist of life. He is not a schoolmaster but a critic; and a critic of the great sort, who works by sympathy, insight, large ranges, and results on the whole. Perfection is not sinlessness, but the loyalty of the soul by faith to Christ when all is said and done. The final judgment is not whether we have at every moment stood, but whether having done all we stand - stand at the end, stand as a whole. Perfection is wholeness. In our perfection there is a permanent element of repentance. The final symphony of praise has a deep bass of penitence. God may forgive us, but we do not forgive ourselves. It is always a Saviour, and not merely an Ideal, that we confess. Repentance belongs to our abiding in Christ, and so to any true holiness." (Forsyth, Christian Perfection, 34-36)
Another option is what Paul himself describes in Romans 6:13, that we ought to "offer" ourselves to God as those brought from death to life. "Offering" is a word that speaks to a continual pattern of death and resurrection in Christ. As Christ died and rose, in the same way, his body, the church, doesn't just strive for improvement on its own strength, but grows by continuous dying and rising. And baptism can continually speak to us about this as well. Baptism reminds us that we are no longer in the kingdom of death. We are no longer slaves. We have crossed over.
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