But what means our being joined with Christ in the likeness of his death? Here and elsewhere, Paul explains abundantly. “He died by sin,” our sin, as being the meritorious cause of his death. “He was crucified through weakness,”—the weakness of his humiliation, under the law and the curse. (2 Cor. xiii, 4.) He died by the cross, the agonies of which he voluntarily assumed. And he lives again, by the power of God who raised him from the dead. So we also, if truly baptized into him, “are weak (_en autō_) in him, but we shall live with him by the power of God toward us.”—2 Cor. xiii, 4. We are weak in him, in a realizing sense imparted by his Spirit in us, of the desert and condemnation of sin, and of its prevailing power, which renders our emancipation from it a crucifixion of the flesh, the agonies of which we voluntarily incur. And we live with him, in the present life of the new man after his image, created by the baptism of his Spirit in us, as we shall finally live with him in the life of glory. Thus we are joined with him in the likeness of his death, and also of his resurrection. From this analysis, it is evident that the assumption of allusion to a supposed ritual burial is wholly unnecessary to the exegesis of the passage. In fact, the supposition of such allusion is altogether incongruous and confusing to the argument of the place. (1.) The real baptism and its effects are the alone subjects of the discussion; and any exegesis which ignores this must lead to error. (2.) The burial of which the apostle speaks is spiritual, as well as is the baptism. The two are in no sense identical; but the one is, by the apostle distinctly and sharply discriminated from the other. The baptism is the primary cause, of which the burial is _one_, and but one, of the results. The baptism is the shedding upon us of the Holy Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. The burial is the putting away, and obliterating of the old man out of our lives. It follows, that in any parallel figurative or ritual system, each one of these spiritual realities must have its own analogue, as distinctly defined and discriminated, each from the other, as are the realities which they are designed to represent. And, in fact, such is the figurative system of the Scriptures, which represent the one by the figure of the outpouring of water, and the other by the burial of the dead. To interpret, therefore, a ritual _baptism_ as symbolic of the spiritual _burial_, is as incongruous to the Scriptural conception, as would be the employment of the burial of the dead to represent the outpouring upon us of the Spirit of life. And to understand the apostle, by the expression, “buried by the baptism” to mean directly the spiritual phenomenon which the phrase designates, and at the same time to convey an allusion to a ritual _baptism_ as being a symbol of the _burial_, is an absurdity which does violence to the whole conception, to the destruction of its propriety and significance. For, not only are