Romans 6:5 also indicates that we will grow with Christ also in the likeness of His resurrection. This does not refer to a future, objective resurrection but to the present process of growth. When we were baptized, we grew together with Christ in the likeness of His death; now, through His death we are growing into His resurrection. Just as the element of Christ’s death is found only in Him, so the element of Christ’s resurrection is found only in Christ Himself. He Himself is resurrection (John 11:25). After experiencing a proper baptism, we continue to grow in and with Christ in the likeness of His resurrection, that is, to walk in newness of life.
Although the deep aspects of this truth have been lost to many Christians, Frederic Louis Godet, a famous expositor of the New Testament, has suggested in his Commentary on Romans that the growth revealed in Romans 6:5 is related to the notion of grafting. He translated this verse: “For if we have become one and the same plant [with Him] through the likeness of His death, we shall be also partakers of His resurrection.” According to Godet, the word grown denotes “the organic union in virtue of which one being shares the life, growth, and phases of existence belonging to another.” Through the organic union of two trees, accomplished by grafting, the one tree partakes of the life and characteristic of the other tree. Applying this understanding to our spiritual experience, we may say that we have been grafted into the “tree” of Christ, the Son of God, as the embodiment of the processed Triune God. Having become one with Him through grafting, we now partake of the life and characteristics of Him as the all-inclusive One, and in this way we grow in Him.
In this grafting, that is, in the organic union with Christ, whatever Christ passed through has become our history. His death and resurrection are now ours because we are in Him and are organically joined to Him. Such a grafting discharges all our negative elements, resurrects our God-created faculties, uplifts our faculties, enriches our faculties, and saturates our entire being to transform us.
We need to see the two aspects of grafting and growing together revealed in Romans 6:5: “For if we have grown together with Him in the likeness of His death, indeed we will also be in the likeness of His resurrection.” The first aspect is “in the likeness of His death” and refers to our being grafted into Him. The second is “in the likeness of His resurrection” and refers to His coming into us to grow in us. In order for grafting to take place, both trees must experience cutting. This cutting signifies the experience of being put to death. The initial grafting is related to the Lord’s death. He is the true vine. In His crucifixion Christ was thoroughly cut, and He still bears the marks of this cutting. This means that within the being of the resurrected Christ, there is an opening into which we can be grafted. Now His cut wound is waiting for the repentant sinners; His side has been pierced and His blood has been shed. However, if we would be grafted into Him, we too must be cut. Hence, we were cut on the cross as well. We experience this cutting when we repent and receive the Lord. Now Christ as the life-giving Spirit moves in us, searching our inner being, enlightening us so that we repent. Our grief and tears are the “cut” we receive. We have no choice but to believe in the Lord and ask Him to save us. Then we are joined to Him at the very place where both He and we have been cut. In a sense, the two cuts embrace each other. Through such an embrace, the grafting is accomplished, and the two trees—the crucified and resurrected Christ and the repentant sinners—become one tree. When we believe and are baptized, we are grafted into Him and grow together with Him in the likeness of His death. This grafting is the growing. It is not that we are grafted first, and then we begin to grow. Rather, we are grafted into Him in the likeness of His death and grow together with Him at the same time.
Once we are thus grafted into Him, His resurrection life comes into us and removes all the negative elements within. His life becomes ours in resurrection. He uplifts the original functions given to us at creation, and enriches, strengthens, and even saturates our whole being. This new life is a life of two lives grafted into one. In this union are victory, life, light, power, and all the other divine attributes. All these are ours by virtue of being grafted into Him. In this grafting we grow together with Him. Then in resurrection His life grows in us. The divine life is in us, supplying us. This is the Christian life.
In summary, grafting is the growing. Apparently grafting is a kind of cutting; actually this cutting is a kind of growth. When a tree is cut off and grafted into another tree, in this tree that is grafted we see both the cutting and the growing, that is, its growth through being cut. This is a picture of our growth in Christ by being buried into the death of Christ through baptism. This is to grow together with Christ in the likeness of His death, that is, to grow together with Christ in baptism. Therefore, to be baptized is to be grafted into Christ. This baptism involves growth.
After a person repents and believes in the Lord Jesus, he grows with Christ first in baptism, in the likeness of His death, and then in the likeness of His resurrection, in the newness of life. As a believer experiences a proper baptism, the divine Spirit within him puts to death the old man with his worldly, sinful elements. After he comes out of the water of baptism a new person, he begins to live and walk in the newness of life, in the newness of His resurrection. Therefore, he grows daily in the likeness of His resurrection and walks in newness of life. This is certainly the wonderful experience and enjoyment of the Christ who died and resurrected.