Baptism

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In Romans 6 Paul discusses several things about baptism and why we do it the way we do in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. One of the first things that Paul teaches is that before baptism we must recognize and stop doing the things we were doing that were against the commandments (verses 1-2). He goes on to talk about why Jesus Christ was baptized the way He was and the symbolism of His baptism. In verses 4-10 Paul compares baptism to the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. He says that when we are baptized we are leaving behind our old life of sin and starting a new life as a follower of Jesus Christ. That is the reason that we are baptized by immersion in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, we must go completely under the water so that our sins are completely washed away and we can begin that new life. Paul also talks about how to stay on that path and maintain the "newness of life" (verse 4). He talks about being dead to sin and not going back to the things that we did before and trying our best to stay on the path. He also talks about not yielding to temptations that arise. This is also linked to Mosiah 3:19 where King Benjamin counsels the people to "put off the natural man" or those things that are tempting to us as human beings. That is what we want to leave behind when we are baptized, we want to become a new person and follow Christ throughout our lives.
In the last half of the chapter (verses 14-23) Paul talks about serving God throughout our lives. He says that we become servants to whomever we obey so if we are obedient we are serving God and if we are not than we are serving Satan. He says that we can know whom we are serving by the things that happen in our lives or the "fruit" of our lives. We will be blessed as we are obedient to the commandments of God (although sometimes those blessings don't come immediately) and we are not blessed when we follow Satan (even when it may seem like things are fine for a time. I love the last verse of the chapter, "for the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." It sums up the rest of the chapter very nicely because when we are obedient and trying our best then the Lord will bless us, but if we aren't than He can't and we have to suffer the consequences on our own.