Romans 6 - From spiritual death to spiritual life!
Recall these verses from Romans 5: ”12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned— 13for before the law was given, sin was in the world. But sin is not taken into account when there is no law.” Paul is drawing a distinction between legality and morality. This is an important distinction for those who lived before the law, because even without a law to break, there was still sin. There may have been no law upon which to base punishment, but sin was still in the world. After all, “14 …death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who was a pattern of the one to come.” In other words, Adam’s sin reigned over all his descendants, putting all under penalty of death, both those with a command from God, and those not.
Now, it sounds like Paul is talking about physical death, that everyone has physically died because all are under sin. However, look at the clarification he starts to make to the young church, in who at the time was mostly Jews who had been baptized into Christ. Paul makes the point that by becoming Christian, we have died to our life (the life that was under penalty of sin), and been reborn into Christ.
4We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.  5If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. 6For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin— 7because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.
So, whether you die for your sin (which might take an eternity) or die to your sin (which takes an instant!), you’re free from sin. Now for Christians, when we were baptized, it was into into Christ’s death, meaning we have in some respect died; likewise, we rose with Christ into a new life. Baptism in fact represents a type of dying (going under the water) and rising (coming out of it). Now clearly, our “death” in Christ is not a physical one. After all, we died and rose, but our physical bodies are still going to die. That wouldn’t be the case if physical death were the consequence for sin! Therefore, any death (or birth) that Paul is speaking of is not physical, but spiritual.
Before I go on, what I do I mean by spiritual? Do I mean our spirit literally died or was literally born? Neither. “Spiritual” is is just a convenient word for how we relate to the supernatural, to God, angels, and Heaven. When someone goes through a negative traumatic experience for example, they are no longer who they were; they have died to their old self and been reborn, though in the case they are not better, but worse. Being reborn in Christ is similar, but it is good. But the change is not one in our brain chemistry, like a trauma would be; it is a change in our spiritual awareness, our relationship to God, something that someone who’s experienced can sense, but someone who has not might only be confused about. Sorry, that’s the best I can do; it is one of those things where you already know what I mean because you’ve experienced it, or you don’t because you haven’t.
So, let us summarize: We physically live under the spiritual death of Adam, and then figuratively die to physically live in the spiritual life of Christ. So, during our physical life, we transition from spiritual death to spiritual life, because we are no longer under the rules of Adam, but those of Christ.
 8Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. 9For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. 10The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.
 11In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus.
Now, given that we will still physically die, what does that say about the death earned by Adam in the garden? It would seem that the death earned by Adam was always a spiritual one, not physical. God said that if Adam ate of the apple, then he would surely die, and so he did… but not physically. He died physically eventually, but that day in the garden, he died spiritually, and has passed that death on to the rest of us.  However, today we are free from the spiritual death of Adam, free because we are no longer in that life, but in a new life under Christ.