Crucified with Christ; dead and yet alive to live for Him (Galatians 2.20-21)

The Gospel of Grace in Galatians

Well, it's a real privilege to be here this morning. I have always said I'd rather hear Jim preach, but for some reason God has asked me here this morning, and I just appreciate it. Thank you for allowing me to continue looking at the book of Galatians this morning, this wonderful book.

The more that I read and study this book myself, the more I realize just how much I need to hear this, because it is the gospel, and it is something... I was reading a book lately about how we are to preach the gospel every day to ourselves, and I think that's true.

We should. We should always be remembering and reflecting on it, and that song we just sang does it for us. Well, we're going to be looking this morning at Galatians chapter 2, the very last two verses in this chapter, Galatians chapter 2, verses 19 and 20, verses 19 and 20.

So let's go ahead and read this passage. Galatians 2, 19 and 20. It says, For through the law I died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly.

So that's the passage. Partially we'll be looking at this morning. Let's open here first with a word of prayer, before we get into it. Let's pray. Lord, again, we remember that this is your word that we're looking at.

It's the words that you have said, and we pray that you will make them come alive to us this morning. We also pray again, as Dave did for Jim, for his next week's message that he'll be preaching at the conference there in Atlanta.

Give him clearness of speech and confidence. And thank you, Lord, that your word is in our language. We know that there's many languages still out there that don't have your word written in them, and we just do pray that you will continue to send people to do that job, to translate your word.

But thank you that we have in your word this morning. We pray, too, we thank you for the Holy Spirit who guides us into these truths. So give us insight. And Lord, you'll be magnified, and not myself, as we look at this word.

Guide my mouth, keep me on track, and be clear. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. So Galatians chapter 2, the very last verses this morning. I was trying to think of some Manjuli words to put it in, but I'm sorry, we'll have to stick with English for you guys this morning.

So just glad that our Manjuli friends do have the book of Galatians in their language. It's a little more wordy than we have it in English, because that was the way we had to say it. Just a little different way to get these thoughts across.

Justification by Faith Alone and the Galatian Error

Before we look this morning at each phrase here in these two verses, I would like to back up just a tiny bit, give us a little more of the context, because it has been a while. It was back in May that we were looking at Galatians before, and maybe some of you weren't here when we were there teaching it anyway.

So we're just going to back up a tiny bit. We note that Paul wrote this letter to the Galatian Christians, because there was a problem in their understanding the gospel. This was a grave misunderstanding.

They had begun to believe that they needed to do something to gain or to maintain their salvation. They needed to do something. They needed to add to justification, if we want to use the big word. This was because there were some false teachers who'd come in after Paul had left and had begun to teach that in order to be good Christians, in order to be what God wanted them to be, in order to be righteous before God, they needed to add circumcision and a few other things as well.

So much of chapter two that we have looked at before, Paul has been clarifying what the gospel is and specifically what it means to be justified before God by faith alone. And why did he spend so much time on this subject?

Because he knew that legalism, or adding something to the doctrine of justification in this message of the gospel, it becomes perverted. And Paul said in Galatians 1 verses 6 and 7 that it was a different gospel.

It was not the gospel that Jesus Christ had laid out and that Paul had preached. So it was a distortion of the truth. And you know what? This is an error that we also see today in a lot of so-called Christian circles.

People feel they must do something to maintain their salvation, to keep being saved, so to speak, or to keep their right standing with God. They have to do things. They feel they'll lose it. They want to add something to their faith.

And in our modern world, it's not circumcision, is it? Like it was back with the Galatian people. But it's other things. It comes in so many other actions, so many other things to do, like attending church regularly so that you'll be accepted by God, or keeping the Ten Commandments, or tithing, or fasting, or praying, or being baptized even.

I hear this sometimes. In fact, I have a friend who thinks that baptism is part of this whole process that you have to do in order to be saved. But that's not what the scriptures are teaching. And some believers find themselves frustrated, I think, because they misunderstand what their right standing is before God.

Often they see God is angry with them because they can't perform rightly. So often they end up in a cycle of trying over and over to make God happy and accept them. But they fail because they can't seem to do enough.

And you know what? Guess what? I had that problem, too. I used to think, when I was in high school and college, that I had to keep doing good things so that God would be happy with me, so that God would accept me.

Trying to please God by my own actions until I finally began to understand that my right standing before God is already there, and all I need to do is rest in it. And if there's any of you that think like I used to think, you're frustrated or trying to make God happy by your performance, and you don't quite understand justification, pay attention because I'm going to review just a little bit about what Paul had to say, quickly review.

So back in verse 16, Paul stated that no flesh is justified by any works of the law. So he was implying that it was unreasonable and it was unnecessary to insist on any observance of the Mosaic laws, like circumcision, to obtain a right standing with God, that is, to be justified.

And as believers, we've already been justified. We're already there as believers because of faith in the finished work of Christ. God only sees us today as absolutely righteous because what's he seeing?

He's seeing Christ's righteousness and nothing that we can do. It's his righteousness, not ours. To repeat, it can be nothing about our own good works, of keeping the 10 commandments, of tithing, of trying to be good, of spending hours in prayer, of being baptized or whatever else.

It's nothing because it's his righteousness that we've been given. And I know you've heard this before from the pulpit probably many times, but we just have to remember that it's not about us, it's about Christ and his righteousness.

When God sees us, what's he see? Christ, not ours. So we can rest in this. This is actually called a position. It's a position that we can rest in, our positional sanctification, our righteousness in Christ.

Dying to the Law and Identifying with Christ

And then in verse 19, Paul was explaining to the same Christians that he had died to the law so that he could live for God. He died so that he could live. Kind of like a paradox, isn't it? Well, that's what he said.

He no longer had anything to do with the Mosaic laws and what they required. Now, before his conversion, Paul was a good man. He was a good Pharisee. He had tried to keep the laws and he thought to himself that he'd done pretty good.

However, he had never really attained a perfection, had he? Because that is impossible. He just looked good on the outside. And I think back on myself too, when I was in school, I really tried to look good by keeping the Ten Commandments and all these other regulations that I'd made for myself as standards.

So I was really a lot like Paul before his conversion. But then when Christ, when Paul came to Christ, or when Christ got a hold of Paul there on the road to Damascus, and he became a believer, Paul finally understood what the law's true purpose was.

It was a tutor, a schoolmaster, to lead him to Christ, as he says in chapter 3 later, which we'll get to later. So this is why Paul could say here in chapter 2, verse 19, so that I can live for God. So that brings us up to our passage this morning, here in the last two verses of chapter 2, verses 20 and 21.

And Paul begins to amplify now what, just how, not what, but how can we live for God? How does this become real in our lives? And I'd like to cover both verses this morning, we'll see how far we get, because both of them together deal with this gospel that Paul was trying to help these Galatian Christians understand, and how he's defining it.

Listen, while I read again, verse 20, Paul says, I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So we're talking about crucified, we're talking about dying, we're talking about living, and he says, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith.

So we're talking about faith as well in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. So what I see in these two verses, actually in verse 20 by itself, first of all, in every phrase, Paul has got something that he's implying, something he's implying.

So we're going to use that kind of as an outline this morning. The first one is a finality. The second one is a new identity. The third one is a new lifestyle. The fourth one is a new walk. And the fifth one in this verse is a new motivation.

So that's kind of like the outline. I don't know if I mentioned it again, but that's what we're going to look at. So first of all, Paul says, I have been crucified. I've been crucified. So in this one, we see an implication of a finality.

Crucified with Christ: Finality and New Identity

It's done. I've been crucified. He uses this of being put to death, this idea of being put to death, and most translations do use the phrase, I've been crucified. Some say I have been put to death. And the Greek word does mean impaled on a cross.

So what does Paul mean? Why does he say I've been crucified? Well, because we know from history, Paul wasn't crucified. He actually wasn't. But he says he is. So what's he mean by this? Well, he's actually using it figuratively, not in a literal sense.

But anytime anyone is talking about a crucifixion, we know that there is an ending. There's a finality to it. It ends. When you go to the cross, that's the end. And that's the final part of it. So he says, I've been crucified.

He's implying this, that something is final. So what is it? Before we do, let's look at, think for a moment about Christ's crucifixion. In a physical sense, when Christ was crucified, it was final, wasn't it?

It was finished. He was dead to all his surroundings, just as anyone else who died, he couldn't see, he couldn't hear. He couldn't feel and nothing around him could influence him any longer. So it was final in a physical sense.

And also Christ's crucifixion was final in a spiritual sense as well. Because when we talk about his work on earth, we say it was finished as well. And that's what we sang about this morning, one of the songs.

It's finished. It was finished when he went to the cross. And his final words were what? It is finished. So by his death, Jesus finished all that the father planned for him to do. He had lived a perfect life, hadn't he?

And keeping all the laws perfectly. And he was able to die because of that as a perfect substitute for us and pay for the price for our sins. So he finished just what God had required of him. He accomplished all God planned.

And he did it what? How many times? Once, didn't he? Once there was a finality to it. So back to Paul. What part of his life was he implying here that was finished, that was crucified? Because it has a similar note of finality to it.

And I believe he was using this analogy because he himself was showing how he had died to the Mosaic laws. He was finished with them. He was finished with his life as a Pharisee, finished with that. He was finished with hoping to gain a right standing with God, finished with that.

By keeping the laws, they had lost their power over him. It was final. So I believe this was one of the reasons why Paul was using this idea. It was final. But that's not all. There's another thought here.

He was also using the idea of being crucified for a second reason. He was implying that he had a new identity, a new identity. He states, I've been crucified with Christ. I've been crucified with Christ, which shows that he was identifying with his Savior, with his Lord and Master.

You see, Christ died not only to physical life, but he also died to the obligations of the law, Christ did, because he is the fulfillment of those laws. Thus he was done with it. And so just like Christ was done and dead to those obligations, so Paul was also dead to the obligations of the law.

He was finished in hope that they would, he could no longer hope they'd bring about any justification. So he died to the law with Christ. He was identifying with Jesus Christ in his death. And he also had another identity, had a new identity as well, that of being Christ-like.

By using these words with Christ, he was saying kind of like this, I am just like Christ. I am in union with him. I too have become dead with him, just like Jesus Christ died. My self-life has been extinguished because it was in a sense nailed to the cross with him.

So this is Paul's new identity, that of being with Christ. He was in union with him, but he doesn't leave it there either, does he? Because he goes on to the next phrase. He's implied his finality. He's implied a new identity, but he's now talking about a new lifestyle.

Christ Lives in Me: Sanctification and Walking in the Light

He says in these next two phrases, and it is no longer I who, okay, he's died, but is he dead? He says, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

And now we're looking at, I believe, one of Paul's descriptions of sanctification, which is the idea of Christ working in him and living through him with the goal of his becoming more like him. That's sanctification.

He was becoming more righteous. First of all, remember, it was his position, and now it's more his sanctification, his experience, his daily experience. He's perfectly righteous before God already. That was his position.

But now we're talking about being sanctified, Christ working in him, becoming righteous by experience. So we're going to see just a little bit more how Paul blends these two, I guess you'd call them doctrines, this position of being in Christ with his experience of being in Christ.

He goes on to say in this verse, it's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. No longer I who am alive, but Christ is alive through me. So in other words, he was saying, I'm no longer the ruler of my own life.

Jesus Christ is now the master. I'm done with my old self-righteous, self-centered, pharisaical ways because I've died. I'm no longer the boss. I'm off the throne. Now, further on in Galatians, Paul is going to amplify this just a little bit more.

I'm just going to read verse 24 of chapter 5, where he jumps way ahead. I'm going to jump ahead in this because it's dealing with much the same thing. Galatians 5, 24, Paul says this. He says, now those who belong to Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Just that verse. And interesting, he uses the word crucified again, doesn't he? But this time he's talking about not himself, but something else. Something has been put to death. And what is it that's been put to death?

Paul calls it here, our flesh. Our flesh, which is another name for what? Our old nature. It's our old nature that's been put to death. So we are to treat our flesh, our old selves, as though it has died, which means that our passions, our evil desires have no more power, no more control over us.

They shouldn't have. And then down the road, when we get more into chapter 5, we'll look more at that in detail. If I'm still teaching on it by that time, or maybe Jim will, we'll see. But the idea will be covered then much more in detail.

But now let's just summarize it just for a second. Remember, we're talking about a blending of our position, which is we are justified fully by faith. God sees us as fully righteous. That's the position.

And now we're talking about our sanctification, which means we're growing, we're maturing, we're becoming more Christ-like in our daily life. So even though we, like Paul, have initially put to death our flesh, sometimes we're blinded by certain things, aren't we?

Sometimes there's things in our life that we realize as we read God's Word and begin to apply it in our lives that, oh, I didn't recognize that before. That's something I never realized. That's a sin that I didn't know existed.

And we possibly have failed before to deal with it, or we come on anew. So what happens? Our flesh comes back to life again. And then the Holy Spirit has to show us through His Word what it is. And we again put to death, we reckon it dead again, what's still fleshy, those things in our lives that don't conform to Christ's image.

And this includes our old passions, our old desires, things that we used to want to do. And so this is what I believe where Paul is talking about. He says, it is no longer I who live, because those things have been put to death.

He's put to death His flesh. He no longer needs to consider Himself alive to them or controlled by them. So He's actively put them to death. As I was thinking of this verse and thinking about all the implications it even has in my own life, I remembered very distinctly something that I was taught earlier when I began to understand how to walk with the Lord.

And it's found in 1 John. John, the apostle John, wrote this. He said, and this is 1 John 1, 7 through 9, he said, if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us or purifies us from all sin.

If we say we have no sin, we're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. However, or if we confess our sins or when we confess our sins, He is faithful and just, faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So this passage is talking also about sanctification, though John calls it something else. What does he call it? Walking in the light. And he calls it that because it's how we believe, how we as believers live and walk in the light of His truth.

So as we walk in the light and how we put sin to death, we're no longer living to do just what we desire. We're humbly doing what Christ desires. So we can't just up and say, I don't have any sin anymore.

Doesn't work that way, does it? Because we are still residing in our human flesh, as Paul said of himself, we're not perfect and we won't be till we get to heaven. So when we do sin, what does John tell us to do here?

We have to humble ourselves. We have to admit that we sinned. Whenever we sin, we admit it. We confess it. That is, we humbly do it. And when we do this, it's like putting that sin to death. As Paul was saying, we say, I don't want to do the sin again, Lord.

I hate it. I want to be dead to it. I need you to be in control because I can't do it. So please give me the strength to not do this sin again. I no longer want to be living as I used to desire. And so it's similar to what Paul says here in Galatians 2 .20.

He said, it is no longer I who live. He was no longer alive in the sense that it was no longer his own sinful self that was in control. He had to put to death those former passions, especially that one of pride, probably.

I can imagine Paul. And when I was a kid, I used to think that Paul was a pretty proud guy. Well, he probably had been, but he was dealing with it all the time. And he had depended on the Mosaic laws for his righteousness.

Now he wasn't, but he still probably was tempted at times. And for sure, just like we are tempted, Paul probably was. He was tempted to become prideful or angry or independent. He had to deal with that.

So he had to admit, humbly admit those attitudes, those sins and grow. But he could reckon himself no longer as a slave to his former life, no longer as a slave to those sins. I'm going to read Romans 6, Romans 6, verses 6 and 7, where Paul's also teaching this.

He says, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with him. Again, he uses that same idea, that same word. Our old self was crucified in order that our body of sin may be done away with so that we no longer will be slaves of sin, for he who has died is freed from sin.

So what's he saying here? Paraphrase it here just a little bit. He was saying, because our old nature as believers has been put to death, because we have died with him so that our sins can be done away with, we are no longer a slave to those sins.

We're free. Sin's no longer our master. And so that's why Paul could say, it's no longer I who live. And then he goes on. Look at the next phrase in the same verse. He says, but Christ lives in me. Now his source of life was Christ, rather than his old good works.

He was depending on Christ. I think too possibly when Paul was was pending these words to the Galatians, he may have been thinking of Jesus's words, where John records for us in John 15, verses 4 and 5 say, abide in me, this is Christ talking, abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in me.

I am the vine, you're the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for without me, for apart from me, you can do nothing. And so we can apply this as well. Christ is living in us.

He's our life. He's our control. Just like Jesus is the trunk and we're the branches, we must remain connected to him, reading and listening to his word. We can't do it by ourselves. No more than a branch of a tree can can live on its own without being connected.

So this is Paul's new lifestyle. It's no longer I who live, it's Christ living in me. And then we have another point here. How is this possible? How can this happen? Paul says, and the life which I now live, that I live in my human body, I live by faith.

And here we come to the faith part. This is our new walk by faith. This is living, walking, and depending on Christ by faith. And this does actually overlap from what we were just talking about, because when we're depending on Christ, we are walking.

But he adds a new focus now, doesn't he? A new focus focused on faith. Remember he died to the law and he was no longer conforming himself to the law's demands, but he was still alive, wasn't he? He was alive, just like we do when we're saved.

We don't die physically, we're still alive. But his dependency now was no longer on himself or on his own standards. He was based on someone else, wasn't he? He was based on Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And it says, I now live in my body by faith in the Son of God. So he's living by faith. Like Paul, the same should be true of us as well, shouldn't it? We should be living by faith. We should be walking as Christians by faith.

And what's that mean? It means that we're to continue to believe that all of God's words that are written down are true and applicable for our daily lives. We're to believe that we've been completely justified.

That is, we believe that God has accepted us perfectly because of Christ's righteousness that has been imputed to us. So we're to believe that justification is not about trying to do anything good to keep that salvation, is it?

And we're to believe that Christ is living and working through us, through the power of the Holy Spirit. And all this means is that we are to live and walk by faith in continual dependence on Christ. So this living and this walking is what we are to work at all the time.

Now, did I say work? I thought faith wasn't a work. Well, it is in a sense, because we're to live and walk by faith. That means we're to continually believe and we're to completely deal with our bad attitudes, our sins.

We're to acknowledge that Christ has done it all for us. We're not to do it ourselves. We can't do anything about it. It's yielding and it's acknowledging, yielding and acknowledging. So these things are actions.

They are work. We have to work at it. And it's often difficult, isn't it? Because I don't always want to admit when I'm wrong. I don't like that idea. So again, what do we do? We take 1 John 1, 9 and we apply it to our lives.

Every time I sin, I humbly confess it. I humbly admit that I can't fix it myself. I'm sorry. And when I do, I'm walking by faith. Every time I'm tempted, I'm depending on the Lord to give me the strength not to sin.

And this is the faith part. So we walk by faith. We mature and we grow and we must be doing it actively all the time, living, working, dealing with sin, avoiding it, putting to death those sins that are so easy to slip into.

We're to live by faith in the Son of God, as Paul says. This also reminds me of another passage that has been mentioned before many times, Philippians 2, 12 and 13. Paul says, So then my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works at you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.

And this salvation word here that he's using is talking about our sanctification. Sometimes Paul flips them back and forth, but we're to work at it. And as we work at it, God works at it because the two work together.

We work at it all the time and God works in us all the time. And he does work on us exactly what he takes pleasure in, to glorify himself because of our growth. Then we read this morning at the beginning of the service, this verse in Romans.

I'm going to read it again. So just listen. It says for the death that he died. And this actually is the net version. So you can still follow along in your version of it. Paul says for the death he died, meaning Christ, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God.

So you, and that means us, consider yourselves dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal bodies as you, so that you would obey its desires. Do not present your members to sin as instruments to be used for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead and your members to God as instruments to be used for righteousness, for sin will no longer have mastery over you because you are not under sin, but under grace.

So what was Paul telling us here? We are to consider, to reckon that we're already dead to sin, which means we're to put our, tell ourselves that we no longer have to sin. I don't need to sin. Sin is not mandatory in my life as a believer.

I am no longer a slave to that sin. I am alive to God because of what Jesus Christ has done for me on the cross. So we don't have to let it rule in our lives. We can continually say, Lord, here are my hands.

Here's my mouth. Here's my feet. Here's my body to just do righteousness for you. I choose to do what you want, and I will no longer be a slave to sin. And again, 1 John 1, 9, if I am tempted or if I do sin, what am I to do with it?

Admit it humbly before Lord. Lord, I've sinned. I'm sorry. And as Paul says in Philippians 1, 4, he says, I'm confident of this very thing that he who has begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ, because it's him doing it through us.

As I work, he works. Then we come to the last, the fifth and the last phrase here in verse 20. And I think this is as far as we're going to get this morning. We won't go into verse 21, but listen to this verse.

He says, he who loves me and gave himself up for me. So what I see here is Paul is giving us the motivation to live that way. We can be motivated to live a life of faith, depending on God. How? Because of his love for us.

It was Christ's sacrificial love for him. He was living and basking in God's love, and this was motivating him to walk by faith. And I can see, as I think of Paul's life, I don't know anybody that did some of the things that Paul could do and still say it's by grace, but he did.

He might've had in mind some of the previous things that he'd done before. He was a blasphemer. He was a murderer. He had murdered Christians. He was a persecutor. He might've been thinking how proud he was before, how he could merit some good standing because he kept those laws so well.

But despite this, Paul could stand on the fact that because God loved him so much, he had sent his son to die on the cross and paid for this price of sin. And Paul could rejoice in that. And so he was motivated and we can be motivated by the same love to live and walk by faith in Jesus Christ.

And it isn't us living, is it? It's Christ living and walking and living it through us. And we're motivated by God's love for us, aren't we? Specifically shown by his sacrifice on the cross. So we live by faith, constantly remembering Christ's love for us.

Just as Paul said here, I live by faith in the son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. All right, we're going to have to do verse 21 another time, but that's, it's part of the gospel. But the part that I want you to remember this morning is how we live and walk.

It's by faith and how we deal with our sin. We are dead to sin. We're no longer slaves to sin. So we're to walk by faith. Let's pray. Lord, thank you so much this morning for your word. Pray that we will live by these principles that are established in your word and that we won't forget.

And we know, Lord, that sometimes as we hear these big words, it's hard to understand what each one of them means. But we do know, Lord, we can stand by faith in what you've done for us on the cross. Thank you so much and help us to live, dying to self and living for you alone.

In Jesus' name, amen.