Interpreted in connection with the whole trend of the Epistles, the sixth chapter of Romans contains an appeal to the outward sign of an inner experience. It is perfectly natural that Paul should here appeal to the outward sign rather than to the inner experience. Paul desires to strengthen in his readers the conviction that the life which they are leading as Christians is a new life in which sin can have no place. Unquestionably he might have appealed to the faith which had been the means by which the new life had been begun. But faith is not something that can be seen. Baptism, on the other hand, was a plain and obvious fact. To use a modern term, it "visualized" faith. And it is just the visualizing of faith that Paul here desires. When the Roman Christians were baptized, they were convinced that the act meant a dying with Christ and a rising with Him; it meant the beginning of their Christian life. It was a solemn and a definite act. It was something that could be seen as well as felt. Conceivably, indeed, the act in itself might have been unaccompanied by faith. But in the early Church such cases were no doubt extremely rare. They could therefore be left out of account by Paul. Paul assumes--and no doubt he is correct--that, whatever might conceivably have been the case, as a matter of fact when any one of the Roman Christians was baptized he died and rose again with Christ. But Paul does not say that the dying and rising again was produced by the external act otherwise than as that act was an expression of faith. Here, however, it is to the external act that he appeals, because it is the external act which can be seen and can be realized. It can only be because the newness of the Christian life is not realized that Christians can think of it as permitting a continuance in sin. What enables it to be realized is that which can actually be seen, namely, the external and obvious fact of baptism. In other words, baptism is here made to discharge in typical fashion its divinely appointed function as an external sign of an inner experience, and an external sign which is made the vehicle of special blessing.