In his letter to the Galatians 2:20 the apostle Paul wrote that he had been “crucified with Christ” and as a result Paul was no longer alive. Does this mean that Paul hung on the cross with Jesus and was crucified along with him physically? Obviously not. So what did Paul mean by “crucified with Christ”? The life and death referred to here are spiritual, not physical.
In the previous verse, Galatians 2:19, Paul states that in Christ he became dead to the Law, impervious to it in the same way that physical death renders a person impervious to all surrounding objects and influences. Paul says that he became insensitive to the Law as a means of justification. He lost his power over him and stopped influencing him.
Paul was also dead to the world, to ambition and to the love of money, to the pride of life and to the domain of evil and hateful passions. They lost their power over him; they stopped influencing him. They too were crucified with Christ.
What does Galatians 2:20 mean?
The apostle expresses in this passage that:
I am crucified with Christ.
Not literally, for thus only the two thieves were crucified with him, but spiritually; Christ was crucified for him in his habitation and in his stead, and was thus crucified with him, and in him, as his head and representative. Christ sustained the persons of all his people, and what he did and suffered was in his name and for their sake, and so they were crucified and suffered with him, as it is said that they were buried with him, and that they were raised with him, and that they sat together in heavenly places in it.
When we are crucified with Christ through faith in him, we must completely surrender all selfish desires and ambitions to God’s perfect will. Self-promotion and self-fulfilling desires are the greatest obstacle between man and salvation because it is man’s nature to want to please himself, and this self-recognition is a building block for sin.
All sin arises from the desire to please oneself, and this is what must be crucified with Christ in surrender to God’s will before salvation can bear fruit. This, as Paul attests, is an ongoing process because the sinful nature, which has been crucified with Christ, still resides within the flesh, which is still very much alive (see Romans 7:18-25).
Man cannot overcome his inherited sinful nature on his own and needs the power and help of the Holy Spirit to make this happen, but the surrender of his own will to God’s will is essential to the removal of powerful motivation and slavery of his own desire.
This is part of repentance. True repentance is not only asking for forgiveness for sin, but it is also a willingness and desire to change that conforms to God’s will. It is the surrender of one’s own control and will to the power and will of the Holy Spirit that is the beginning of being crucified with Christ.
This principle brings a quickening of the Holy Spirit within man.
That brings a new spiritual life in him by being born again of the Spirit of God. Old corruptible desires are replaced by a new and more powerful motivation to experience God’s holiness. The temptation of the old corruptible ways that enslaved him to sin is defeated, not by man’s own effort to fight his corruptible nature, but in the surrender of his own will to God’s will (see 1 Peter 1:23).
This proves to be a great challenge for many people because we try to control our sinful nature on our own with the result that by repeating itself the result falls back into the same old sinful ways that they are trying to escape.
If it had been possible for man to overcome his sinful nature by his own power and will, there would have been no need for Jesus to die for our sins. Man could have simply overcome his sinful nature, obeyed the Mosaic Law, and stopped sinning himself by the power of his own will.
But because man is not able to deny his sinful nature on his own, by the grace of God, man has been given this victory through the gift of spiritual rebirth if he is willing to surrender completely in repentant contrition to God’s will. Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil (see 1 John 3:8).
Many Christians want to be obedient but continue to stumble into sin because they try to hold on to parts of the old self that they believe they can control. This is a self-defeating reason based on the idea that man saves himself through his own works.
The Bible teaches us that nothing a man does can save his soul, and salvation is only by the grace of God (see Ephesians 2:8-9). Through this gift of grace, man can be born again and given a new nature to replace the old sinful self. He must be born again if he is to see the kingdom of God (John 3:3), and if he is to be born again, his sinful nature must be crucified with Christ, and he must be filled with God’s Holy Spirit. .
We invite you to read: “Iniquity; The Body Of Sin In The Life Of The Believer And The Unbeliever.”
And I no longer live
Not the same me as before, but another man, a new creature: he did not live now as in his non-regenerative state, and while in Judaism; Saul was not now the blasphemer, the persecutor, and an injurious person; neither did Saul the Pharisee now live: or the life he had was not of his own obtaining and procuring; his life of righteousness was not of himself, but of Christ; his being quickened of him, or having principles of life and holiness implanted in him, was not by himself, but by the Spirit; and the holy life and conversation that he lived was not due to himself, to his power and strength, but to the grace of God; or it was not really himself, or so much he who lived.
It must be understood, not from his natural life, but from his spiritual life; the life of justification lived, by faith, in the righteousness of Christ; and the life of sanctification that he had from Christ, by the quickening influences of his Spirit, by virtue of which he walked in newness of life. The believer is a paradox, he is dead to the law, and “lives” for God; he is crucified with Christ, and yet lives by him; yes, a crucified Christ lives in it.
But Christ lives in me.
That he was not only the author and maintainer of his spiritual life, but life itself; it was formed in his soul, dwelt in his heart, united with him, was one with him, from which sprang all vital principles and all vital actions, and flowed all communion and all the comforts of a life spiritual.
And what I now live in the flesh.
In the body, while in this mortal state, by which he distinguishes the spiritual life he had from Christ, and through the life of Christ in him, both from the natural life of his body, and from the eternal life which he expected live in another world; and what, he says.
I live it in the faith of the Son of God.
That is, not the faith that Christ, as a man, had, but the faith of which he is the author and object, by which the just man lives; not on it, because the believer does not live on any of his graces, no, not on faith, but by faith in Christ, the object; seeking in him forgiveness, justice, peace, joy, consolation, all provision of grace and eternal salvation: whose object is described as “the son of God”; that he is truly God, equal to his Father; so that he did not live on a creature, nor did he abandon the fountain of living water, but on the only begotten Son of God, who is full of grace and truth; of whom he also says that he loved me.
which loved me
Before the foundation of the world, from eternity, before her love for him; and freely, without any regard to worth or merit, and though he was a blasphemer and a persecutor; and he personally, and particularly, in a distinctive way, of which he had a special knowledge and application by the Spirit of God; and it was a reason, an argument that limited him, and prevailed in him to live who loved him, and died for him, or, as he adds.
And gave himself up for me
His whole being, his soul and his body, as in union with his divine person, in the hands of justice and until death, in his room and in his place, as an offering and sacrifice for sin, and that he made freely and voluntarily ; it is a strong and full proof of his love for him. Now, though Christ gave his life as a ransom for many, and for himself for all his church, and for all the members of his mystical body, the apostle speaks of this matter as if he had singular respect for himself, as if almost was the only person for whom Christ loved and died for; which shows that faith does not treat Christ in a general way, as the Savior of the world, but with a special consideration towards the human being.
Our crucifixion with Christ completely frees us from the obligation of the law. We have a perfect and permanent position in the eyes of God. God considers that we participate in the crucifixion of Christ so that we do not have to merit salvation or sanctification. We receive it as a gift from God. God freed us from a performance orientation and gave us a privileged position in Christ.
When Jesus begets us into a new state with God, we gain new power to live the Christian life. Just as a flower gets its energy from its roots, so too we get our dynamic from Christ.
Most people misunderstand the point of 2:20 even though it is a very popular verse. We cannot crucify ourselves. We died to the law at the crucifixion of Christ. The law cannot save or sanctify. We live our new life in Christ by faith. We live by faith, not by works.
When we believe in Christ, we acknowledge our inability to be saved or sanctified by works. Only by our identification with Christ in his death and resurrection can we live the kind of life that God expects. The misfortune of the cross is not in the One who died on it, but in us who made it indispensable.
dead to sin
By faith we keep sin in death where it belongs. We consider ourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Sin should not reign in our lives, so that we obey it in its concupiscences The desires that we experience that go against God’s will. In other words, a desire for anything sinful. (See James 1:1). Also called “sin in the flesh”. Although the expression “lust” is often thought of in connection with sinful sexual desires, lusts include anything that goes against what is good and just in the sight of God. (see 2 Timothy 2:22.; Galatians; Romans 6:11-12)
We have temptations in our life but we must not obey them. In other words, we are dead to our desires. We have been empowered to do this by taking this position of faith: dead with Christ, crucified with Christ.
If Paul could believe that he was crucified with Christ, it must be possible for us too. That is why it is written as a fact: “And the…