Identification with Christ

"What then shall we say? Should we continue in sin that grace may abound? Absolutely not! We who have DIED to SIN, how shall we still live in it? Or are you ignorant that all of us who have been baptized INTO Christ Jesus have been baptized INTO His death? We have been buried therefore with Him through baptism INTO His death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so also we might walk in NEWNESS of life. 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. (Roman 6:1-5)   

When we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into His death.  His death has separated us from the world and the satanic power of darkness and has terminated our natural life, our old nature, our self, our flesh, and even our entire history.  Our old man has been crucified with Christ, and it has been buried with Him through baptism into death.  In the natural realm, a person first dies and then is buried ; but Paul's word indicates that in the spiritual realm, we are first buried and then die.  We do not die directly ; we enter into Christ's death through baptism.