Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?  (4)  Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life.

Romans 6:3-4 

Explanation:

In this text Paul uses baptism as an illustration of what happens to our relationship with sin when we are saved.  When we come to know Christ as Savior we are “in Christ.”  Our identity with Christ means that we identify with his person, death, burial, and resurrection.  This means that as those who identify with Christ, we are dead to sin.  Our old selves are identified with sin, but our new life is in Christ.  We are no longer slaves to sin.  We are no longer under sins power.  Now we walk in newness of life.

This doesn’t mean that we no longer sin.  Until heaven we will not be sinless.  What it does mean is that sin is no longer our master.  It is no longer our identity.  Christ is our identity.

Application:

If you don’t know Christ as Savior, sin is still your master.  God wants to free you from sin, and make you alive in Christ. 

If you do know Christ as your Savior, we are going to see in the coming verses that we must consider ourselves dead to sin and alive to Christ.  Since Christ died for our sins, and we are identified with him, we must forsake sin, and by faith ask God to help us walk in newness of life.

Response:

We need to be controlled by the Spirit today to fight or flee from temptation in our lives.  If we have unconfessed sin, we must confess and repent today.