Though Paul does not mention baptism in this passage—he will come to that a chapter later—the sequence of thought he describes here is exactly what, in his view, baptism is all about (as in Romans 6), which is leaving the old life behind and coming through “death” into a new life entirely. And insofar as he is still the same flesh-and-blood human being (“the life I do still live in the flesh”), he now finds his identity not in his human genealogy or status, but in the Messiah himself and his (the Messiah’s) faithfulness and loyalty.
