Chapter 7
Christ
And Me
“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 2:20)
Paul has already shown us that if he were to rebuild
those things which he once destroyed, that is, if he were to return to the
Pharisaic teaching of salvation by legal works, he would be a transgressor,
because he would be acting contrary to his deepest convictions based on his
past experience. To this he adds that such action would also destroy the
meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. Paul had experienced such faith in
Christ crucified as to thoroughly replace any confidence he ever had in human
merit. This is the connection of verses 20 and 21 to the rest of chapter two.
Paul
introduces his declaration of oneness with Christ by this statement: “I am
crucified with Christ.” What a baffling assertion! Here is the great Apostle to
the Gentiles, at the love feast at Antioch, addressing an audience, which
consisted of both Jewish and Gentile believers. Peter and Barnabas were in the
congregation. Undoubtedly some of those false brethren who caused so much
dissension over the law of Moses were still there as well. At this meeting
place there was a deplorable situation. Strong cliques had developed, and
segregation was being practiced. Jews were eating exclusively with Jews,
leaving Gentile believers no other alternative than to eat with other Gentiles.
This violation of the principle of the “oneness” of all believers in Christ had
been caused by Peter’s dissimulation. He and the Judaizers were behaving as
though the cross of Christ had been of no avail in taking down the middle wall
of partition between them and the Gentiles (Eph. 2:11-22).
With this as the background, Paul declares, “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.” He has asserted clearly and boldly that no man was ever to be
justified by his own works, however righteous they may be, but only by Christ.
Now he brings his doctrine to its culmination and practical application in
these ringing words, “I am crucified with Christ.” Something marvelous had
taken place, rendering Paul a justified man, which had an eternally abiding
significance.
What Paul
here declares of himself is true of all God’s elect. All of God’s elect are in
such union with Christ that his righteousness, his life, his death, and his
resurrection are theirs. Everything our Savior was and is, everything he did
and experienced as a man as our Mediator is ours and we have done in him.
“I
am crucified with Christ”—Obviously, Paul is describing something
altogether spiritual. He was not literally, physically crucified with Christ.
Christ was crucified for him in his room and stead. He was crucified with him
and in him as his Mediator, Surety, Substitute and Representative. Paul is not
describing a present experience, but a finished work. This phrase would be
better translated—“I have been crucified
with Christ.” He is not talking about self-crucifixion. He is not talking
about self-mortification. He is not talking about something he had experienced,
but about something done for him by Christ.
The Lord Jesus
Christ was and is forever the Representative of all his people. All that he did
and suffered was in their name and on their account. When he obeyed the law of
God for us, we obeyed the law in him. When he suffered the unmitigated wrath of
God for us and died under the penalty of his holy law, we suffered and died in
him, representatively. When he was buried, we were buried. When he arose, we
arose. When he took his seat in heaven, we were seated with him (Eph. 2:5-6).
When our
Mediator was crucified, all our sins, the whole body of them, were laid upon
him. He bore them in his own body on the cursed tree, and bore them away. He
destroyed and made an end of them. He put away our sins by the sacrifice of
himself (Heb. 9:26). He has blotted them out, removed them from us as far as
the east is from the west, and cast them into the infinitely deep sea of divine
forgetfulness, so that they shall never be remembered by our God against us
again forever!
This was done when Christ died and we died in him. In regeneration (sanctification) we are delivered from the dominion of sin by the grace and power of God the Holy Spirit. By the power and efficacy of Christ’s accomplishments at Calvary, the world is crucified to us and we to the world in the experience of grace. But we were crucified with Christ when Christ was crucified for us.
“Nevertheless
I live”—This is our present experience of grace. Being born again by the
grace of God, having the gift of faith wrought in us by the invincible,
irresistible power of his grace, we who were dead in trespasses and in sins
live. Every believer is a paradox. He is dead to the law, and yet lives to God.
He has been crucified with Christ, and yet lives by Christ. Indeed, the
crucified Christ lives in him.
“Yet
not I”—What does Paul mean by this? He is telling us that he is now a new
creature in Christ (2 Cor. 5:17). He was no longer Saul the blasphemer, the
persecutor, and injurious man. He was no longer Saul the Pharisee. He is not
telling us that his old nature was gone, or even improved (Rom. 7:14-24).
Rather, he is telling us that a new man has been created in him by the grace of
God; and that new man living in him is Christ. This new life was not something
he had obtained by his own efforts, or by his own righteousness. It was the
gift and work of God in him (1 John 3:1-9). A new, righteous nature had been
created in him by grace. And that new nature implanted in him, that
righteousness imparted to him was Christ himself (Col. 1:27; 2 Pet. 1:4).
“But
Christ liveth in me”—Christ is the Author, Giver, and Sustainer of
spiritual life; but he is more than that. Christ is our life! He is formed in
us. He dwells in us. He is united to us, and we to him. We are “members of his
body, of his flesh, and of his bones.” We are one with him (Eph. 5:30-32). We
who are born of God are so united to him, so thoroughly one with him that his
life is our life and our spiritual life is his. It is Christ living in us!
“And
the life which I now live in the flesh”—Here Paul is speaking of his
temporary earthly existence, his physical existence in this world.
“I
live by the faith of the Son of God”—This is not the faith or faithfulness
our Savior exercised as a man while he lived in the earth, but the faith he
gives to his elect by the effectual call of his Spirit. It is the faith of
which he is both the Author and the
Object. This is the faith by which we live in this world.
Paul
did not say that he lived upon faith
in Christ, but “by” it. We do not
live before God upon our faith, but upon Christ the Object of our faith, ever
looking to him alone for pardon, righteousness, peace, joy, comfort, every
supply of grace, and eternal salvation.
He who is our
Savior, the Object of our faith is "the Son of God." He is himself
God, one with and equal with his Father, the only begotten Son of God, full of
grace and truth.
“Who
loved me”—How Paul must have delighted to write those words! He understood
that the Lord God his Savior loved him before the foundation of the world with
an everlasting, immutable, indestructible love. Let every believing heart be
assured of this great, glorious fact. God our Savior loved us from everlasting
and loves us freely (Jer. 31:3; Hos. 14:4). His love for us is not in any way
dependent upon or determined by us. He loves us eternally. And he loves us
personally and particularly with a distinguishing love.
Let others talk
as they may about “God’s universal love.” Such language is both contrary to
Holy Scripture and would utterly destroy all inspiration and motivation in us
to honor him and live for him. If God’s love for Jacob and his hatred of Esau
are made to be the same thing, Jacob has no reason at all to praise, worship,
and serve him. But that is not the case. God’s love for his own elect is a
particular, special love, a love by which he distinguishes his own elect from
all others, a love that inspires the hearts of those who know it to live for
him.
“And
gave himself for me”—Imagine that. Christ Jesus the Lord, the Son of God
gave himself for me! He gave himself into the hands of justice, gave himself
unto death, gave himself in my room and stead, as an offering and sacrifice to
God for sin to redeem me because he loved me! He gave himself for me freely and
voluntarily because of his great love for me.
Our Savior gave
his life a ransom for many. He died to redeem and save all his people, for his
whole church, all the members of his mystical body. That is a blessed fact of
divine Revelation. Yet, Paul speaks of this matter as singularly respecting
himself, almost as if he was the only person Christ loved and redeemed. It was
Christ’s love for him, Christ’s death for him that overwhelmed him. Faith does
not deal with indefinite ambiguities, but with blessed, personal realities
(Eph. 1:13-14). As John Gill put it, “Faith deals with Christ not in a general
way, as the Savior of the world, but with a special regard to a man’s self:
this is the life of faith; and these considerations of the person, love, and
grace of Christ, animate and encourage faith in its exercises on him.”
“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.” Here
is man, but here is the Son of God as well, and the two personalities are
singularly interwoven. Christ and the believer are one! As we are naturally one
with Adam, as he is our representative in the Covenant of Works, so we are one
with Christ as he is our Representative in the Covenant of Grace. How can this
be? (Rom. 5:18-19).
Paul says, “I am crucified with Christ.”
He means by this that we are one with Christ. “As in the womb, head and members
are not conceived apart, but together, as having relation to each other; so
were we and Christ (as making up one mystical body to God) formed together in
the eternal womb of election” (Thomas Goodwin).
“Lord Jesus, are
we one with Thee?
O height, O
depth of love!
Thou one with us
on Calvary,
We are with Thee
above.
Thou didst from
heaven come down,
With us of flesh
and blood partake,
In all our
misery, one.
Our sins, our
guilt, in love divine,
Confessed and
borne by Thee;
The gall, the
curse, the wrath, were Thine,
To set Thy
members free.
Ascended now in
glory bright,
Still one with
us Thou art;
Nor life, nor
death, nor depth, nor height
Thy saints and
Thee can part.
O teach us,
Lord, to know and own
This wondrous
mystery,
That Thou with
us art truly one,
And we are one
with Thee.
Soon, soon,
shall come that glorious day,
When seated on
Thy throne,
Thou shalt to
wondering world’s display
That Thou art
with us one.”
We have such a
union with Christ that when he died, we actually died in him, thus God’s wrath
was satisfied (Isa. 53:4-6, 8, 12; Matt. 20:28; Gal. 1:4; 3:13). Our union to
Christ is such that when he was quickened from the dead, we were made alive in
him (Eph. 2:3, 5, 6; Col. 2:12-14; 3:1; Rom. 8:1, 33-39). Because we are one
with him, living in him, we shall never die (John 10:28; 11:25-26).