Do you have to be buried with Christ in order to receive new life?
Yes. Paul’s seed analogy in Romans 6 teaches that unless a person is planted in the likeness of Christ’s death and buried with Him, new life cannot follow. There must be an experience of death before resurrection life. Burial with Christ is therefore presented as necessary for receiving that new life.
Les explains this with the picture of a kernel of wheat. A seed is buried; a good farmer does not just throw seed on top of the ground but plants it, and planting means burying it. Out of the death of that seed comes new life, a hundredfold. Paul uses that same analogy in Romans chapter 6: unless we have been planted in the likeness of His death, unless we have been buried with Him, we cannot have new life. Les emphasizes that there has to be an experience of death before you can have new life. In the context, this is what Jesus was explaining before His death, burial, and resurrection, when He could not yet be the true object of faith to a Gentile because He was on covenant ground and dealt only with the Jew.