I Am Crucified With Christ

Galatians 2:20 KJV 1900

20 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:15-21 is considered by most commentators to be the theological heart of Galatians. Almost everything that comes after this section is either an argument in support of this truth (Galatians 3:1-4:31) or an appeal based on this truth (Galatians 5:1-6:18)

Galatians through Colossians C. Paul’s Further Defense of the Gospel (2:11–21)

These two verses are, in my judgment, the key verses of the book. Paul is not only sharing something of his personal testimony; he is defending the superiority of the gospel of grace over the legalistic gospel preached by his opponents, the Judaizers. They argue that salvation by grace opens the door for Christians to continue living in sin. Paul shows from his own experience that salvation by grace leads not into sin but into a life of faithful service. Christ has given up his life in death; Paul is crucified with Him in the sense that he is giving up his life in service.

The phrase “I am crucified with Christ” translates a Greek perfect tense (sunestauromai). The perfect tense of the Greek language implies both past action and continuing result. The meaning is that Paul has been crucified with Christ and the result of that crucifixion is still very much present in his life.

This phrase probably implies several different ideas. First, Paul has shared in the benefits of Christ’s crucifixion. Second, he has shared in the spiritual fellowship which Christ’s crucifixion made possible. Third, he has died to the world with Christ. Christ had died to the world in a physical sense at Calvary. Paul had died to the world in the sense that the world no longer controlled and dominated him. He had died to the law in the sense that he no longer trusted in obedience to a code of laws as the means of salvation.

(Gal 2:20-21)

The consecration of spiritual energy

by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world. Gal. 6:14.

If I brood on the Cross of Christ, I do not become a subjective pietist, interested in my own whiteness; I become dominantly concentrated on Jesus Christ’s interests. Our Lord was not a recluse nor an ascetic, He did not cut Himself off from society, but He was inwardly disconnected all the time. He was not aloof, but He lived in another world. He was so much in the ordinary world that the religious people of His day called Him a glutton and a wine-bibber. Our Lord never allowed anything to interfere with His consecration of spiritual energy.

The counterfeit of consecration is the conscious cutting off of things with the idea of storing spiritual power for use later on, but that is a hopeless mistake. The Spirit of God has spoiled the sin of a great many, yet there is no emancipation, no fullness in their lives. The kind of religious life we see abroad to-day is entirely different from the robust holiness of the life of Jesus Christ. “I pray not that Thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from the evil.” We are to be in the world but not of it; to be disconnected fundamentally, not externally.

We must never allow anything to interfere with the consecration of our spiritual energy. Consecration is our part, sanctification is God’s part; and we have deliberately to determine to be interested in that only in which God is interested. The way to solve perplexing problems is to ask—‘Is this the kind of thing which Jesus Christ is interested in, or the kind of thing the spirit that is the antipodes of Jesus is interested in?’

Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest: Selections for the Year (Grand Rapids, MI: Oswald Chambers Publications; Marshall Pickering, 1986).

My Utmost for His Highest March 21st—Interest or Identification?

Interest or identification?

I have been crucified with Christ. Gal. 2:20.

The imperative need spiritually is to sign the death-warrant of the disposition of sin, to turn all emotional impressions and intellectual beliefs into a moral verdict against the disposition of sin, viz., my claim to my right to myself. Paul says—“I have been crucified with Christ”; he does not say, ‘I have determined to imitate Jesus Christ,’ or, ‘I will endeavour to follow Him,’ but, ‘I have been identified with Him in His death.’ When I come to such a moral decision and act upon it, then all that Christ wrought for me on the Cross is wrought in me. The free committal of myself to God gives the Holy Spirit the chance to impart to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.

“… nevertheless I live …” The individuality remains, but the mainspring, the ruling disposition, is radically altered. The same human body remains, but the old satanic right to myself is destroyed.

“And the life which I now live in the flesh …,” not the life which I long to live and pray to live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh, the life which men can see, “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” This faith is not Paul’s faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith that the Son of God has imparted to him—“the faith of the Son of God.” It is no longer faith in faith, but faith which has overleapt all conscious bounds, the identical faith of the Son of God.