Biblion Bible Commentary
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United in His Death
Romans 6:5-7
5 For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; · WEB
The union is organic — the word is grown-together — and the old man's crucifixion has a stated purpose ending in freedom.
For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection.
The word behind united is botanical — grown together, as a graft grows into a stock until the life is shared. The image corrects any reading of chapters 3 to 5 that leaves justification as a merely legal arrangement between strangers: the believer's connection to Christ is described as organic union, one life flowing through joined stock. And the union is with both ends of his story — grown into the likeness of his death, therefore certain of his resurrection. The logic is a graft's logic: what happens to the tree happens to the branch.
Verse 6 states what the union did to the person the believer used to be: knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin.
Three clauses, each doing distinct work. Our old man was crucified with him — the self that stood in Adam's history Romans 5:19, executed in Christ's execution; the tense is past and the mode is violent, because that self does not reform, it dies. That the body of sin might be done away with — the body as sin's instrument and base of operations, rendered unemployed; the verb means put out of work, stripped of function, not annihilated. And the purpose at the end of the chain: so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin — freedom, stated as the design of the whole crucifixion-with.
Then verse 7 grounds it in a principle every court recognizes: for he who has died has been freed from sin — and the verb is the letter's own: has been justified from sin.
Death discharges. No summons reaches a grave; no master collects labor from a corpse; the law itself holds jurisdiction only over the living Romans 7:1. Sin's claim on the believer ran through the old man — and the old man is dead, executed at the cross with full legal effect. The chapter is not urging believers to die to sin by effort; it is informing them that the death has occurred, and the next verses draw the only conclusion such news permits Romans 6:11.
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