A Word in Season: He Loved Me (Galatians 2:20)

The Meaning of the Pronouns in “He Loved Me”

Pronouns are important. Even in a brief phrase like he loved me, we need to understand to whom those pronouns refer. Who is the he who does the loving and who is the me who is being loved? And even to understand the he and the me there is going to put flesh on the bones of that word loved.

It's going to express and perhaps even to expand its full meaning. And so we need to understand to whom the Apostle Paul refers when he writes in Galatians in chapter 2 verse 20. I have been crucified with Christ.

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 for me. He loved me. He is the Son of God. He is the eternal Son, the second person of the Godhead.

He is truly Lord and truly God. He is full of glory and majesty. He is most just and most righteous, the King of kings and the Lord of lords, altogether lovely, altogether glorious. He is the one who rules on high.

He is the one who came into this world. And the me? The me is the Apostle Paul, a blasphemer, a rebel against God, one who thought he was doing God a favor by attacking the followers of Jesus of Nazareth, that Son of God in the flesh.

The Sinfulness of Paul and the Wonder of Grace

He was an insolent and violent man. There was a nastiness that characterized his whole being and arrogance that bubbled up at every turn, a conviction that he was right and had to be first. There was a brutality in the way that he went about his business, a fervent spirit burned out with an ugly flame.

Now, what would you expect to be the verb that connects such a he and such a me? You might have thought he judged me. He dealt with me according to my sins. He looked at me as I truly was and in his perfect justice and righteousness, he dealt with me.

He condemned me. He spoke to me as I deserve and he brought down judgment upon me because of the sins that I have committed against him. He damned me. He put me in the lowest pit of hell and cast me away forever because of my transgressions against him and my antagonism toward him.

All of that might make sense. It would make proper sense. If I put myself in the position, it still makes sense. For though Paul accounted himself the chief of sinners, my instinct as a fallen creature, my natural tendency as a sinner is still to put myself on the throne, still to insult and rebel against the God who made me and to whom I owe all that I am and all that I have.

Christ’s Love and Self-Giving for Sinners

All of those words then would make sense. But he, this son of God, he loved me. He loved me. Despite all that I am and all that I do and all that I deserve at his hand, he showed love toward me and it was no ordinary love.

He loved me and gave himself for me. There is the demonstration of that love. That's what helps to explain the wonder of the verb that joins the he and the me of that phrase. The son of God, the one who loved even me and showed it by pouring out his life's blood, by giving himself in my place, by taking the suffering my sins deserve, by suffering under the wrath and judgment of his father, the God of all the earth, on behalf of a sinner like me.

Worshipful Response to the Gospel

And that is the wonder of salvation and it is that in which we truly rejoice with humble praise every day we think of it and on the Lord's day we gather together to consider him who loved me, who loved each one of his people and who showed that love in giving himself for us.

Let us never cease to wonder, love and praise at the fact that he loved me, this son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.