ROMANS UNWRAPPED 105

"For if we have been planted together in the likeness of His death, we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection."     Romans 6v5

Paul now summarises what he has been saying, by repeating it yet adding a further dimension.   There is no suggestion of doubt in the use of the word  "if", it is simply the old English way of saying since one thing is true then the other thing will be true; it is the "if" of certainty.   The verse is in two halves, the one in our likeness to His death, the other is our likeness to His resurrection.   He will now expand these facts in verses 6 - 10.

Here Paul magnifies the truth of the essential union that the believer has in Christ.   He uses the term  " planted together " both in connection with His death and His resurrection.   The word is very strong, and is nowhere else used in scripture, only here.   The phrase  "planted together " is one word in the Greek  "symphritos" and literally means  "congenital" born together, grown together, from the same genetic source.   It could almost describe twins in the same womb; so closely are we linked to Christ that we are from the same family, we are joined together by family tie, we are blood brothers.   He follows this thought from the phrase  " newness of life "  (verse 4); taken out of one sphere and placed into another, born again, regenerated in essential union with Christ.   He will qualify that later but we must not lose the magnitude of what he is saying.   He says something similar later in chapter 8 where he says  " we are joint heirs with Christ " and the Holy Spirit  " jointly helps with our infirmities " in our prayers.   Overall believers are seen to be one in the Father, and in the Son, and in the Holy Spirit.   We are planted together in His death and resurrection.   One day we shall be like Him, we shall be conformed to the image of His Son, that is the ultimate goal, but for now we are essentially and vitally linked to Christ in His death and resurrection. 

However since we are talking of the joining together of divine beings with human beings, he must put a difference, and he does.   He uses the word  "likeness ."   He does this to maintain the essential difference between God and man.   He does the same elsewhere; in Philippians 2v7  he says that  "Jesus became in the likeness of men."   He was a real man, but He took on Him the likeness of men, because at the same time He was also God possessed of divine powers unlike us.   In Romans 8v3 he says  " God sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. "   He did not say in the likeness of flesh  because He was real flesh, He said in the likeness of sinful flesh because as real flesh no sin was in Him as was in all of us.   Hence he uses the word likeness to differentiate between us and Him.   Though joined together in essential union, there always remains a difference because He is God.   The Lord Jesus in His resurrection said a similar thing to Mary in the garden  " go tell my brethren that I ascend unto my father and your Father and to my God and your God. "   John 20 v 17   Thus Jesus acknowledges the essential union between believers and Himself and His Father; yet He does not say our Father or our God, He says my Father and your Father etc., thus maintaining the essential difference between God and man.  

Nevertheless Paul wishes us to understand that this union with Christ in His death and also in the triumph of His resurrection, is as close a union as it is ever possible to be between God and man.   It is like the phrase used to describe the marriage of a man and a woman in Genesis chapter 2 prior to the Fall  " and they shall be one flesh."   The man said when he saw the woman for the first time  "this is now bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, she shall be called woman because she was taken out of man. "  

This is now gloriously true of all of us and is expanded in greater detail in other scriptures notably the teaching of believers being joined to Christ in the same way as a head is to a human body; and this is only the beginning, there is much more to come.

Tomorrow d.v. we visit the cross and find out what happened to us there.