The Earth itself, into which the blood of Christ seeped, will be redeemed and renewed, just like our spirits in Holy Baptism, just like our bodies on the day of the resurrection.
Our passage from Romans steers us between these two dangerous misconceptions: The mythical monster Scylla of believing the body to be evil on the one shore, and the beast Charybdis of believing the body constitutes all there is on the other.
St. Paul asserts the baptized have died in Christ but this death then makes them free to live unto Christ. Complicated? Yes, a little. Let us try to clarify things a bit.