What does it mean to be planted together in the likeness of His death?

Les explains that Paul's analogy is planting a seed: when a kernel of wheat is planted, it first dies, germinates, and then produces new life. The whole system of nature and springtime pictures death, burial, and resurrection. Les says it is the same in the Spirit: we have to die. God told Adam and Eve that in the day they ate they would surely die, and Ezekiel later said the soul that sinneth shall surely die. The human race is born in sin and faces death, but there is a loophole: we can die in the person of Christ on the cross by identification, by faith, by trust—when He died, I died; when He died, you died. If we believe He died our death, then we shall also be in the likeness, or with Him, in resurrection. Les presents this as the believer's blessed hope: death for the saint is glorious and leads to something far better, while for those who have not experienced this identification, death is to be feared.