"I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Gal. 2:20
The text before us today is sometimes regarded as a testimony to Paul's superior spirituality. And, it is sometimes taken up as a testimony by those who regard themselves as having made a superior commitment to Christ. The fact is, it is an expression of a principle which is true of every born again believer. It is the principle of the believer's union with Christ.
When a sinner trusts the Savior, he is regarded as having been united with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection. When Christ went to the cross, He took us there with Him, and in His person we died the death we deserved as sinners. Christ "died for our sins," and we died, in principle, with Him. Death is the only remedy for the life of sin. Long before, the Holy Spirit through the prophet Ezekiel declared, "the soul that sinneth, it shall die [Ezek. 18:4]." The New Testament counterpart is found in Romans 6:23, e.g., "For the wages of sin is death."
United to Christ by faith, when He died, I died. When He was crucified, I was crucified with Him. And that is the enduring position of the "old man." The apostle does not say here, "I was crucified…", but "I am crucified…" This is reinforced in such passages as Col. 3:3, "For ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." God's plan of redemption is not the reformation of our fallen humanity, but its abolition, to be replaced by a new and dramatically different life.
This leads logically to the next phrase, "nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me…" The trusting sinner, united with Christ in His death for sin, is by virtue of that same union invested with life; as one paraphrase puts it, "the very life of Christ Himself." The relationship between Christ and the believer is reciprocal. We are in Him, and He is in us. We are united with Him for the purpose of death, the judgment for our sins. He is united with us for the purpose of life, pure and eternal; His life. "Christ lives in me!" It was true for Paul, and if you have exercised faith in Christ as your Savior and Lord, it is true, just as true, for you as well. Writing to the Colossians, Paul continued, "…Christ… is our life [Col. 3:4]."
Life. The very life of Christ. This is the believer's invaluable, immeasurable, incomprehensible possession. It is not earned. He does not merit it. It is not the product of religious activity, or obeying a set of rules. It is bestowed upon us "by grace," if and when we have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, receiving Him by faith as Savior and Lord. The law and human works have nothing whatsoever to do with it.
The remainder of our text reveals the perspective that should logically accompany the experience of this glorious relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. That Christ is our life, is spiritually true from the moment we believe. The challenge every discerning believer will recognize is to make it practically evident in the "life [we] now live in the flesh," in the rough and tumble of the visible world. The same principle which established our union with Christ is the essential for manifesting it; namely, faith. We cannot live His life; we must allow Him to live it through us, and that by yielding to His Lordship and relying on His power, specifically, the power of the Holy Spirit. The resources are there, but they are His, not ours.
The Spirit of God has spelled it out in greater detail in Romans 6:3-22, where the central principle is, "…yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God [v.13b]." It is ours to purpose, but His to empower as we yield. And the motivation for that is found in Paul's recognition, "…the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself for me." True Christian experience is essentially a love story, beginning with His love for us. If we have learned that, and respond to His love with ours, we will be in a position, as Paul was, to live, for His glory by the faith of the Son of God and manifest to the watching world that "I am His, and He is mine."
Yours for HIS glory,
"Pastor" Frasier
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