I Have Been Crucified With Christ

Jul 26, 2026

Linked Podcast: After The Amen - Ep. 39

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:55

Well, before I got married, my life looked a lot different. My schedule was my own, my decisions were my own, my money was my own, my plans were my own. I lived my own life because I did not belong to any other person. But then 17 years ago I got married and all that changed. In a moment, my life changed forever. Now the truth is, even though I was married, it didn't mean that right from the get-go, everything about me changed overnight. It took some time to adjust to my new identity as a married man. I had to figure some things out along the way. I had to learn what it looked like to be a husband. In fact, if I'm being honest with you, I'm still learning things all the time. If you haven't noticed, men and women are very, very different creatures. We think differently. We okay, there you go. We process differently, right? We we operate differently. We function very, very differently. So truthfully, I am learning all the time, more and more about my wife. I'm learning to live out this relationship all the time, more and more. Day by day, the point I'm trying to make is I'm learning to live in light of who I now am. And in many respects, in many ways, that's exactly what the Apostle Paul was saying in Galatians chapter 2 as he wrote this letter to a group of very young Christians who are now being misled about what it truly means to live out the Christian life. You see, these people were saved by God's grace and they were joined to Jesus. Their lives were transformed by the gospel. By grace and through faith, they had been united to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. But now, instead of living out that new reality in and through the power of the Spirit, they were being deceived into believing that had that what had begun by the Spirit could somehow now be completed in the flesh. And I believe that this letter that Paul wrote to these Galatians 2,000 years ago is a letter that's relevant to us today. And so if you want to see what Paul has to say about how we live the Christian life, then I want to invite you to open your Bibles to Galatians chapter 2 today. Galatians chapter 2 is where we're at. If you brought your Bible today, wonderful. If you you didn't, um we got you covered. There's a Bible in front of you. We open our Bible every Sunday, so you're welcome to use that Bible in front of you today. Um Bible, take that Bible home. We'd love for you to have a Bible. And if you're looking for the book of Galatians, let me help you out. The book of Galatians is in the New Testament. It's kind of near the end of your Bible if you've got the seatback Bible there. And so you have the New Testament, it's about three-quarters of the way in. You have the four Gospels, you have Acts, then you begin to have these epistles that Paul wrote, these letters to churches. Romans, first and second Corinthians, Galatians. If you hit Ephesians or Philippians or Colossians, you went too far. Galatians 2 is where we're at. Uh Galatians chapter 2 is where we're at. And as you're turning there, just a reminder, we're in a series called Digging Deep. This series looks at some of your favorite Bible verses and it really digs deeply so we can understand them in a better way. And the reason we've chosen to do this series is we firmly believe that some of the verses that you know the best are the ones you need to be reminded of and taught the most. And there's a reason for that, because if you know something really well, which it's good to know the Bible well, it's good to be familiar, but if you know it so well and it becomes so familiar, at times those verses become common. And when they become common, we often overlook them and we don't want to do that. And so the goal of this series is to revisit these verses and to dig deeply so we can truly understand what they mean in a far deeper way. This morning we're looking at uh, I think one of my all-time favorite verses. In fact, I talked to somebody this morning as I was prepping for the message, and I told them the verse, and they're like, oh, that's like my life verse. Uh this is Galatians 2.20. Uh often we will quote the first half of Galatians 2.20. We'll look at the whole verse today, but usually when we quote this, we'll say, I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. This is our verse, Galatians 2.20, an incredible verse. But if we want to understand this verse rightly, we not only need to dig deep and understand what these words mean, but we also need to understand the context behind why Paul said these words in the first place. And so before we dig in, can we just take some time to establish some context? I often like to do this. I think it's helpful for us to understand what we're reading. We're in the middle of a letter. And so it's important for us to know what this letter is about, who it was written to, who wrote it, what's happening. Um, this is a letter. So Paul wrote this letter to a group of churches in a region called Galatia. So as we read the book of Galatians, we're reading somebody else's mail. So we have this letter. It's written to the churches of Galatia. The churches of Galatia were churches that were scattered in a region known as Galatia that's located in Asia Minor. This is modern-day Turkey, but Galatia kind of was up through this area. So Galatia was the region, and this was a series of congregations who had recently heard the gospel and started and began, because these were churches that were started after Paul's first missionary journey. So this book was written before Paul ever took a second missionary journey. These were churches that heard the gospel during the first missionary journey of Paul. You can read about the missionary journey of Paul in Acts chapter 13, just a reminder. That's when Paul was with Barnabas in the city of Antioch, and through the power of the Spirit, uh the church was led to send those two out to begin planting churches all around the Mediterranean. And so Paul went out and they began to plant these churches, he and Barnabas from Antioch. His pattern was he would go to the synagogue first, and then he would often preach to the Gentiles. In this region, there were some Jews, there were some synagogues, but predominantly the people who comprised these churches were mostly Gentile believers, non-Jewish believers. So these are people who never lived under the law of Moses. That was given to Israel. These were Gentiles, they were never living under the law of Moses, but nevertheless, when they heard the gospel of grace, when they heard about a loving God who sent his one of a kind son, Jesus Christ, to come and suffer and bleed and die on the cross for their sins and rise for their salvation, they believed, they believed the gospel and they received the free gift of salvation. Now, what's significant about this is this apart from the law, right? They were never under the law. Apart from the law, they were declared righteous, not because of anything they had done, but because of what Jesus did on their behalf. By faith they were justified. The righteousness of Jesus was, this is the technical term, imputed to them. It was credited to their account. That's what justification means. It means that we have a right standing. We can stand before God, and he sees us as righteous, not because of what we've done, but because of what Jesus has done. It's not our own righteousness, it's Christ's righteousness in us. And I'm sharing that with you, this doctrine of justification, because this is central to what Paul unpacks throughout this letter. He talks about this over and over again, even in chapter two, our chapter, because unfortunately, after the gospel took root in Galatia with these Christians, after these Gentiles were justified by faith apart from the law, there was a group of false teachers who started to creep into the churches of Galatia. These were all baby Christians, and these false teachers came in and they started to say that if these believers wanted to continue to live a righteous life before God, then now they also needed to conform to the law of Moses. They needed to add righteous deeds on top of their faith by adopting things like circumcision and other aspects of the law. And while this teaching may have subtly been presented to the Galatians as simply living obedient lives, while that may have been presented in that way, what Paul saw in their teaching was a counterfeit gospel. What he saw was a group of people who were being deceived into abandoning the gospel of grace in order to embrace another gospel, which according to Paul is no gospel at all. He saw a group of young Christians who were now being led astray. They were bewitched, they were beginning to falsely believe that righteousness, which was given to them as a free gift by the Spirit when they became Christians, could now be perfected in their life, in the Christian life, in the flesh and under the law. And this was a problem for Paul. This is why he wrote this letter. He wrote them to remind them of the true gospel. That's our context. And so with that, we can begin to prepare to jump into the passage. But before we do that, let me just give a subtle reminder. I think what Paul is saying to the Galatians is maybe something we need to hear today. That means that there was a point in our life where we recognized before God that we could not make our way to heaven because we were insufficient to do so. And so what we did was we looked to Jesus, we saw what he did on our behalf, we turned from our sin, we placed our faith in Jesus, and we came to know him in that moment. Most of us in the room who consider ourselves Christians, that's the reality. We recognize that, we trusted in Christ, we realized that Christ died for us and he was raised for us. And so that's just our story. But then here's the thing: subsequent to that salvation, for all of us, if you're a Christian, as you begin now to live this new life in Christ, you start to notice something, don't you? Some of the sins that Jesus died for are the very things that start cropping up in your life. You begin to notice certain aspects of your life that are rearing their ugly head throughout the Christian life. You know exactly what I'm talking about. There's a conflict that we seem to be engaged in. There's an inward war that we have with sin. The things that we don't want to do, we sometimes still do them. And the things that we want to do, we often don't do. We notice this conflict within our life. Sin still surfaces when we're alone, when no one's around, struggles, temptations, things like greed or anger or lust or envy or jealousy. These things don't just disappear overnight when we become Christians. Sin is still active. Sin continues to surface throughout the Christian life. And so because we know these things are wrong, right? Because the Bible tells us the law tells us that they're wrong, and because our conscience also convicts us and confirms that these things are wrong, we begin throughout the Christian life, in the flesh, to just do better, be better, to live more righteously, because in our mind that's what God requires of us. We we know deep down that God declared us righteous by grace and through faith, through the power of the Spirit, but now we begin to think that it's up to us to complete that righteousness through adherence to the law and and through our flesh. This is often what we think about the Christian life. Christian, there is another way. There is a better way. This is what Paul wants to talk about in our text. He wants to show us this. And so as we now jump into the passage, and now that we have context and now that we can apply this to our life, let's look at the first thing that Paul begins to say in our text. It's going to begin number one with this our death with Christ. Our death with Christ. Looking at verse 19, which is the verse right before our passage, Paul says these words For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. Now, what is Paul saying here? Well, this statement comes on the heels of Paul explaining the truth that I already referenced earlier, that justification. By that I mean righteousness. It does not come through the law, but it comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Now, for the Jewish community, that notion that righteousness does not come through adhering to the law, that would be a common misconception. They would disagree with that for the most part. After all, God gave the law to the nation of Israel. That law was meant to reveal God's standards. That's true. But according to Paul, his argument here in the book of Galatians is the purpose of the law was never intended to actually make people righteous. That's not the true intent of the law, according to the book of Galatians. So if the law isn't able to actually make us righteous, well, then what's the purpose of the law? That's the natural question. Well, Paul answers that throughout this letter. In fact, he gives at least three reasons for the law. First of all, he says the law reveals to us our sin. So the law is like a mirror, right? When we look to the law and we see God's righteous standards, we can see that we don't measure up. We can see our own transgressions. And in the book of Romans, Paul says it this way he says, Through the law comes the knowledge of sin. So the truth is, God has a standard, the law shows us that standard, and when we actually look to the law honestly, we realize that we fall tragically short of that standard. We just can't do it. We totally miss the mark. No matter how hard you try, you cannot follow God's law perfectly. We can't do it. Why? Because we're sinners by nature. We cannot keep God's law. And that leads now to the second purpose of the law that Paul unpacks in this letter. The law is a guardian who leads us to Christ. The law was put in place to be an instructor, to instruct us and direct us to Jesus. The law itself cannot justify, but it leads us to the one who does. Jesus is the righteous one who perfectly obeyed the law of Moses that we could never keep, and he died to pay the penalty for the law that we broke. And that last piece is the other intent of the law that Paul mentions in this letter. You see, the law has a very clear intent, a very clear purpose. The law condemns us. Paul says here in Galatians that to be under the law is to place ourselves under the curse of the law. And the curse is this: if we do not abide by every single demand written in the law, if we fall short in just one area, we have violated the entirety of the law and we stand condemned. This is what the law demands. If we do not keep the law and we cannot keep it, if we do not keep it, there is one sentence death. The law demands that we die. But what does Paul say here in this passage? He says, For through the law, I died to the law. Listen, the law has one ultimate demand, one final decree. You must die. The gospel declares you did die. You did die. Beloved, if you are a Christian today, you have died. And you might be like, whoa, what? I don't know if I've heard that. What are you talking about? How have I died? When did I die? Well, you died when Christ died. You died when Christ died. Notice what Paul says next. It's the beginning of our verse. Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ. You see, this verse today, our verse today, is an incredible verse because it begins to unpack for us this doctrine, this truth that by grace and through faith, part of our salvation means that we are now united with Christ. Scripture tells us that the moment that we trust in Jesus for salvation, not only are we forgiven, not only are we declared righteous, but we are also united to Christ in his death, burial, and resurrection. By faith and through grace, we've been joined to Jesus Christ. And the moment that that happens, the moment that we're united to Christ, what is true of Jesus is now also true of us. So under the demands of the law, yes, we stood totally and completely condemned. Justice demanded that we die. But listen, the gospel declares to us that that person, that person who stood under the law and was condemned to die, that sinner who violated God's standards and was unable to keep God's law, that old person who you once were, that unrighteous you who Paul says is in Adam in the book of Romans, that person died with Christ. That person has been crucified. That condemned sinner who you once were was nailed to the cross in the body of Jesus. Christian, hear me. You have been crucified with Christ. Your old identity is dead and gone. That's the gospel. Your sin, past and present, no longer defines you. It no longer condemns you because that person who you once were, that old you is dead and gone. That man who once existed no longer exists. In Christ, you are no longer under the curse of the law because you died. You died to the law, and you've been crucified with Christ. Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, Paul says. That sinner condemned to die, if you're in Christ, that person died. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You're no longer condemned for your sin because that person died. You know, it's interesting because we're so focused on preserving life. Thinking about our culture, thinking about our society. There are so many things about our lives that we are constantly careful to try to preserve and protect. I mean, especially in the state of Michigan recently. There have been so many threats to us, and we're trying to watch out for all these various things. You know what I'm talking about? It's been a crazy month, hasn't it? We've had to deal with extreme heat, we've had to deal with extreme smoke, and we've had to deal with extreme lettuce. Right? Anyone out there like just throwing caution to the wind and eating lettuce right now? Man, all right. It's amazing. You guys are living on the edge. I tell you what. I'm avoiding it. I'm a salad guy. I've had no salad for a while here. I am I'm I don't want a parasite this summer, not risking it. Trying to preserve my life. We're so focused on preserving our lives, aren't we? But the truth is the gospel tells us that the path to life, to true life, it begins with death. And in Christ, that death has already happened. That old life that stood condemned to die under the law is now dead and gone. We've been crucified with Christ. When Christ died on the cross, we died with him. That's the first point that Paul makes. He wants to make the gospel clear to them. The first point is this our death with Christ. But now as he continues in the verse, the next thing Paul unpacks for us, number two, is this Christ's life in us. Christ's life in us. Notice how verse 20 continues. He says, I've been crucified with Christ. And he goes on to say, It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. You see, what Paul is saying here now is that his old life, his old identity is dead and gone. And now there's a new life being lived. And there's a new life specifically being lived in him. According to our text, this new life in Paul is Christ's life in him. This is another amazing truth of the gospel and our union with Jesus. The moment we trust in Christ for salvation, not only are we united with him in his death, burial, and resurrection, but by the power of the Spirit, Christ now takes up residence in us. What does this mean for us? Well, it means that as our life begins to change, And grow more and more throughout the Christian life, it's all because Christ lives in us. Now, before we unpack all that, let me be clear about something. The gospel is clear that our old identity, our old self, as Paul says it in the book of Romans, that person who stood condemned is now dead and gone. Under the demands of the law, that person has already died. They were crucified with Christ. The gospel tells us that person was put to death when Christ died, that person died. Who you once were in Adam is dead and gone. But listen, our sin nature, that part of us that has this inclination towards satisfying the desires of the flesh, that part of us is not dead. Not yet, at least. It's very much so alive and at times very active. It's important for us to understand this distinction as Christians. Yes, we have died with Christ. Sin hasn't died, not yet. In fact, in other letters, Paul says that that specific part of our life that rears its ugly head, that has this inclination toward sin, that's the part of our life that we need to die to daily. We need to put that part of our life to death daily. Our old identity is already dead, but those sinful desires that are associated with the old identity, those are the things that need to be put to death on a daily basis. But this is where the gospel comes into the equation. We do not battle sin today through the flesh, under the law. That's Paul's whole point in the letter. Paul makes this abundantly clear. There is a new way of living, a new path forward in the Christian life. It is life by the Spirit. You see, that same grace that began our Christian life is the same grace that sustains our Christian life. Our life as Christians is not our own life, it's Christ's life in us. That's the beauty of what the gospel teaches. It's Christ's life in us through the power of the Spirit. Progressively, the life of Jesus is being made manifest in and through us. There's an illustration I heard from Daniel Stevens that was phenomenal. I want to steal it, but I'll use my own story and connect it to this. When I was a kid, when I was seven years old, my parents bought a new house. Now, the funny thing about this, and that's the house I grew up in, but the house they bought was my grandparents' house. So before the age of seven, I would go to my grandparents' house and it was wonderful. I'd enjoy being there. But then at seven years old, my parents bought my grandparents' house and my grandparents moved out. And so now their house became our house. Now, what's funny about that, it was strange at first because I remember moving into the house and it was just so unique, so different because it was like my grandparents' house. It smelled like my grandparents' house, it felt like my grandparents' house, looked like it. But over a period of days and weeks and months and ultimately years, we began doing things to that house. I I remember we started painting walls pretty early on. We moved our furniture in, right? We started renovating the kitchen. That was a big project later on. We redid the flooring. Little by little, the signs of my grandparents, the previous owners, began to change because someone new was living there now. Christian, someone new is living in you now. There is someone new who lives in you now. Christ lives in you. He has taken up residence. He owns you. He dwells in you now. The signs of the old owner are fading, and you're now reflecting him more and more each day as he lives his life in and through you. Now, to be abundantly clear about this, the Christian life is not a passive thing. We don't sit back and just let Jesus do all the work, right? This is not a let go and let God situation, Jesus, take the wheel. I'm gonna get real comfortable and you just live your life through me. That's not how it works. No, we're active in our, it's called sanctification, our growing in holiness. We're active in pursuing righteous living, but we do so in and through the power of the Spirit and recognize everything that we do, everything, all our obedience, it's a gracious gift from God who enables us to do this. We don't take the credit for anything good we do. Jesus deserves the credit. It is Christ in us. In fact, that righteousness of Christ that was imputed to you by grace and through faith when you first believed, we know that was a gift. But also the righteous activities you pursue today as a follower of Jesus, those are also a gracious gift. Both our justification and our sanctification are gracious gifts from God. And anytime we start to get confused about that reality, anytime we start thinking that we can complete our righteousness in the flesh and through the law, we are deceiving ourselves and we are embracing another gospel, which Paul says is no gospel at all. Christian, you have been crucified with Christ. Through your union with Jesus, the old you has died and you have a new life. You've been crucified with him. You died to the law, you died with Christ, and now by God's grace, in this new life and through the power of the Spirit, Christ now lives in you. He's taken up residence in you in all the righteous deeds that are done in the body throughout your Christian life that you participate in, they're gracious gifts. It's Christ in you. Paul calls these later on in the letter. These are the fruits of the Spirit, the fruit of the Spirit. The fruit is what the Spirit produces in and through you. The point I'm making is this, as Christians, we're offered a new life today, here and now. We're no longer slaves to sin. We are free. Free to live for God, free to serve Him, but this life is only made possible because of Christ in us. And so as we look at this text, Paul wants the Galatians to understand this clearly. This is the reality of the Christian life. And so he begins by saying, number one, our death with Christ. We died with Christ. We were crucified with him. Number two, it's Christ's life in us. He now dwells within us. He's beginning to live out this life little by little. We're growing and changing and being conformed more into the image of Jesus because of Christ in us. And thirdly, now he ends by talking about our life by faith. Notice how our text ends. This is the end of verse 20. He says, I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me, and the life I now live in the flesh. I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. As Paul wraps up this incredible verse, he explains the Christian life in an amazing way. There is a sense in which the old you already died. The old me was crucified with Christ. And through my union with Christ, I'm now raised with Christ. I have a new life in Christ. I'm a new creation in Christ. The old is gone. Behold, the new has come. As Christians, we have a new life in Christ, a new identity found in Christ. That is a fact. And Paul then begins to say, and now the life I now live in the flesh, and just for clarity, because the word flesh in Paul's letters can be confusing. It can mean different things. By flesh, I don't think Paul is saying here our sin nature. By flesh, I don't think he's talking about the part of us that wars against the spirit or the part of us that tries to operate independent from the spirit. I think in this context, Paul means in the flesh is just in your body. It's the life you're living today. You're living a new life in Christ, but you're in a body. We are to live each and every day the way that we we live today, very specifically. It's an instruction for how to live today. We're called as Christians to live this new life in Christ, and we are to live by faith. So the same response to the gospel when we first became a Christian, which was faith, is now the very same response to the gospel throughout the Christian life. We are to live by faith. When you're gripped by fear, you are to trust that Jesus will never leave you nor forsake you. When you're the person in the room who's feeling tempted, you are to trust that he will always give you a way of escape. When you're weary with the burdens of life and the world around you, you are to have faith that there is a final resting place for the people of God that's prepared for you. When you face sufferings, you are to trust that those afflictions are light and momentary compared to the surpassing greatness of what we can expect in glory. When you're facing trials of various kinds, you're to count them all joy, knowing that God is using those to both grow you and do things for your good. When you're riddled with guilt and shame because you failed over and over and over again, you are to remember that your old self died, and there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. And finally, when you begin to doubt his love, which we do at times, don't we? We look at our life, we look at who God is, we begin to look at the way that we've lived, the choices we've made, the decisions we've made in the past, the ways that we've failed. We begin to question whether or not God truly loves us. When we begin to doubt his love for us, we live by faith. And we live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. I want you to notice how Paul is writing this in the first person. This is personal to Paul. This should be personal for you as well. The Son of God loves you. If you're questioning this morning whether or not God loves you, remember that he loves you because he gave himself for you. The cross is the demonstration of his love for you. Jesus loves you. This is personal. Jesus suffered and died for you, Christian. He expresses it through the cross. He did it so that you could be saved, so that you could be forgiven, and so that you could join your life to his life forever. You know, as we walk through this entire passage, I think the big idea that really comes from the text today very simply is this our life is joined to Jesus. We have been united to Christ. We've been brought into this new relationship, this covenant relationship where his life is our life and our life is his life. That's an astounding truth. You have been joined to Jesus by grace and through faith. And now, as you live the Christian life, you have to learn and grow and figure out what it looks like to live in light of who you already are in Christ. Just as I'm learning to live out that union that I have with my wife over 17 years, I'm still growing and learning. You're called to do the same thing. You have been united to Christ. And Christian, the way that you live the Christian life today is not by reshackling yourself to a law that you died to, and it's not by pulling up your bootstraps and operating in the flesh. No, you are to live by faith, trusting in the Lord each and every day, believing in his promises, trusting in his plan, resting in the confidence that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion in the day of Christ Jesus. This is what our passage teaches us today. You've been crucified with Christ. You've been raised with Christ. Christ now lives in you. And today you have the opportunity to live in him in union with him because you've been graciously given a new life. So live that Christian life by faith and live it with confidence because beloved Jesus loves you. He loves you so much that he gave himself for you so that your life could be joined to his life for all eternity. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the gospel. I don't know how this message hits certain people in the room, but maybe there's the person in the room who's been walking through the Christian life, self-condemning, looking at your standards, realizing their failures, and they are repeatedly feeling guilt and shame. Their conscience has condemned them. Lord, I pray that you would remind them of the truth of the gospel, that if they are in Christ, that person is dead. They've been crucified, they no longer stand condemned before you because the righteousness of Christ is now seen in them. They are forgiven, they are restored, they are reconciled to you. Lord, for the person in the room who's just a consummate legalist who knows that they're saved by grace, but somehow thanks the Christian life is lived by works in the flesh, under the law, I pray that you would give them the freedom to know that they died to the law, they died to that old way of life, and now Christ lives in them, and they can participate in the beauty of living in a new way in and through the power of the Spirit. Lord, help us to believe your word and believe these promises that you've given. We have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer us who live, but Christ who lives in us. And the life we now live in the flesh, we are to live by faith in the Son of God who loved us and gave himself for us. We thank you, Lord. We love you. We pray that you would enable us to just continue to pursue these amazing truths through the power of the Spirit, by your grace, for our good, for your glory. In Jesus' name we pray.

unknown 35:47

Amen.