Here are Tom Wright’s words at the end of Romans 6:11: “If someone challenged him [Paul] and said that sin and death were just as powerful to them as they had been before their coming to faith, he would reply that they had not yet considered the seriousness of their baptism; just as if someone claimed that, now [that] they had been baptized, evil had no attraction wahtever for them, he would no doubt reply that they had not yet considered the seriousness of sin.”
Paul’s theory of the Christian life stands on resurrection ground.
This is realistic; it is not a fiction; and it is not playing pretend with one’s hopes and one’s theories. Sinlessness — nope that’s not realistic; sinfulness — nope that’s not baptismal life.
How then does one live in this life a baptismal life? By “reckoning” — that is, by learning what baptism achieved, by letting it sink in deeply, and by living a life of constantly reckoning ourselves to be baptized into Christ himself.
By reckoning that we co-died and we co-live. This co-co theory of the Christian life is entirely centered in Christ: his death and his resurrection, and our co-death and our co-resurrection. Trust the power of his death, trust the power of his resurrection.
To live a baptismal life is to live a life of faith. The evidence is not always there; though many of us know the realities of some progress in some areas of our life. Even when the evidence is not there, however, we have to “reckon” that we are baptized into Christ and he lives in us and we live in him and it is his life we are to live. What else does it really mean to “follow in the way of Jesus”? It is the way of baptism — a baptism into his death and into his resurrection.