Galatians 2:20-21: Part 1

Galatians 2:20-21

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"

Galatians 2:20-21 is one of my favorite passages of scripture. It is so rich in meaning and contains truth that is vital for living a life that honors God. If the New Testament only contained John 3:16 and Galatians 2:20-21, that would be enough to convey the whole Gospel. Thankfully, God provides more insight to expound on these truths. I know that I can use all the help I can get!

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live”

To many, this is a very strange saying. All who read this probably accept the fact that Christ was crucified over 2,000 years ago on a Roman cross outside the city of Jerusalem. As Christ-followers we believe that he willingly allowed himself to be placed in that position in order to pay the penalty for our sins so we could experience a life with him for eternity. This belief is referred to as “Substitutionary Atonement”. He who was without sin became our sin:

2 Corinthians 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

But Galatians 2:20 says “I have been crucified with Christ” not “My sins have been crucified with Christ”. You may ask “So, what’s the difference?” The difference is that if Christ only died to pay for the sins that we commit, he just put a band-aid on the problem. The real problem is that we want to sin. Whether we commit sins openly that people can see, or we hide them inside, in our hearts…we are all sinners(1). That is our nature. We are all born wanting to sin and we are totally unable to fix the problem. This belief is referred to as “Total Depravity of Man”. So a subsitutionary death that only forgives my outward actions but does not change my evil heart does not get to the root of the problem. Galatians 2:20 says “I have been crucified with Christ”. Paul is saying that somehow in some way that I cannot fully understand when Christ was nailed to the cross, I was there and you were there. Jesus took us to the cross with him. We were united with Christ that day and we hung there and died with him.

Romans 6:3
Or don't you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?

Romans 6:5
If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection.

In order to make God’s plan complete, Christ had to die for our sins and we had to die to sin. If my sins were paid for, but I had not died to sin then Jesus’ death was like treating cancer with aspirin. I may feel better on the outside, but inside I am still as diseased as ever…I just get to go to heaven when I finally succumb. This gives us hope for tomorrow, but what about hope for today? Are we just waiting for our life to end so we can then be changed? Because of the substitutionary death of Christ we have the assurance that we will spend eternity with him, but what about now? Why are we here on earth right now? How can we please God in this life if even when we do good things, in our hearts we still want to sin? We still have a problem with our will.

Philippians 2:13
For it is God who works in you to will and to act according to his good purpose.

The work of the cross was not limited to providing forgiveness for our actions. It also had to change our “will”. It had to set us free from the part of ourselves that wants to sin…that lives in slavery to sin.

Galatians 5:1
It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.

We are called to live in freedom. In the book Changed Into His Likeness, Watchman Nee writes:

“Some of us force ourselves to do things we don’t want to do and live a life we cannot live, and think that in making this effort we are being Christians”.

Although the way of life described above is familiar to most Christ-followers, it is not living in freedom.

John 10:10 (NIV)
I have come that they may have life, and have it too the full.

John 10:10 (NLT)
My purpose is to give them a rich and satisfying life.

A lifetime of trying to force ourselves to do the impossible is not “a rich and satisfying life”. That is not the life Jesus died to give us. That is why it is so important for us to understand that on the cross Jesus did not die alone. We were there. More specifically, the part of us that makes us want to sin was there. It was also put to death in the person of Christ. Paul calls the part of us that makes us want to sin “sin”(2). In this case it is a noun, not a verb. Sin is not an action, sin is a person. Sin is also sometimes called “the natural man”, “the old self” or “the sin nature”. Sin is who we are naturally. It is the birthright we inherited from Adam and Eve. It is us without Christ. Before we knew Christ, we lived in slavery to sin. That is all we knew. But now, if we take God at his word, we know that sin is dead and we are emancipated. Something that is dead cannot have power over you or control you:

Romans 6:6-7
For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been freed from sin.

Romans 7:1-4
Do you not know, brothers—for I am speaking to men who know the law—that the law has authority over a man only as long as he lives? For example, by law a married woman is bound to her husband as long as he is alive, but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of marriage. So then, if she marries another man while her husband is still alive, she is called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is released from that law and is not an adulteress, even though she marries another man.
So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.

Romans 6:6 says that our old man (sin) was crucified to free us. Romans 7:4 says the law also died. Paul uses the analogy of a widow. A widow is free to marry another because she is no longer bound to what is dead. The death of sin and the death of the law are synonymous because the law only exists to reveal sin in us. That was and is the sole purpose of the law(3). The law was never meant to be fulfilled as a way to please God. The function of the law has always been to reveal our insufficiencies. It is a mirror that shows us how we truly look apart from Christ. The law is by design impossible for man to keep. Where the Holy Spirit is at work, we see him using the law as a tool to break us.

What does it look like when we try to force the old man (sin) to serve God? It could look like the Watchman Nee description I quoted earlier. To the ones who have looked into the law and seen themselves as they really are, it can be incredibly frustrating. They know the depravity of their own heart. They may live in guilt and shame because they want to please God but know that in their hearts their will is to sin. Then there are those who are deceived into believing they can actually keep the law well enough to please God. This is what I call “The Rich Young Ruler Complex”(4); they are blind to who they really are. They believe that by doing good deeds they can please God, when their hearts are far from him. Jesus addressed this attitude in the Pharisees when he called them “white-washed tombs”5. In other words they looked good on the outside, but on the inside they were dead. Paul also addressed the worthlessness of our outer righteousness apart for the work of Christ in our lives:

Philippians 3:4-11
…If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: circumcised on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. 8What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

So what are we to do? We are asked by God to do the impossible(6). Even if we take God at his word that sin is dead and we are free…what then? Do we just sin away because we are no longer under the law? Do we say “I am free” so anything goes? Those who would say that have misinterpreted their freedom(7). We are never told we are free to sin. We are told we are free from sin. So if we are free from sin, where does this freedom take us? What are we to do with this freedom? Our freedom from sin frees us to serve righteousness(8). Christ death broke our bondage to the law and sin and calls us to live in freedom: a place where we can experience joy, peace, and love…a place where we can truly be righteous. How do we do it? We don’t. Christ does it…in fact, he has already done it(9).

Grace,

Tim

1. Matthew 15:19, Mark 7:21, Matthew 5:28, I John 3:15
2. Romans 7:17
3. Romans 7:7-11
4. Mark 10:17-23
5. Matthew 23:27
6. Luke 6:27-36, Ephesians 5:24-25
7. Romans 6:1-7
8. Romans 6:17-19
9. Ephesians 2:3-7