I am crucified with Christ (Gal 2:20)
Praise you, Father, for the grace of the Cross. I wrestle to live out the life of the Cross. It is hard. But it is real and powerful. As you have given me the grace of the Cross and Resurrection, give me also the grace to live out the Cross and the Resurrection in my life, resting in my Savior.
Living the Christian life does not begin with you. Christianity is not about you. It’s not about how good you are or how strong you can be or what wonderful deeds you could do if only you applied yourself or reached deep inside and seized your full potential. That’s Disney.
Christianity, however, claims quite the opposite. It says that on your own you are sinful and utterly incapable of living any kind of righteous life. It says not only that you sin but that you sin naturally. It’s not just that you violate God’s will; it’s that you can’t help but do so. Sin runs deep in your heart, and you can’t get it out.
The reason we do not live the Christian life is that we cannot live it. It is too high, and we are too corrupt. And yet people still think that normal human nature can be godly. They think this way because they want to, and they justify such thinking by lowering God’s standard of holiness and by flattering our corruption. I have seen hundreds of people who protest that they are not so bad, but I have never seen one of them actually live for God.
They say they are good and then explode in anger at their kids or reveal impatience or cut corners at work. They say they are good and then change Scripture so they can feel good about themselves. They don’t believe that their lust is adultery or that their greed is idolatry. They say they are good but then live for their own comfort or for a political end or for anything but God. No. They won’t live for God, and part of the reason why is that they think they are already good enough. They don’t need God, and when you don’t need God, you don’t go to Him or live for Him.
People who think they can live the Christian life on their own just by being good are not honest with themselves. They have sold themselves a pipedream, and unfortunately, if they persist, they will take their goodness with them all the way to hell. Heaven is for sinners who know they need God. Hell is for good people who rely on their goodness (Lk 18:9-14).
Christianity is simply not about you and what you can do. Christianity begins with Christ and what He has done. This different perspective is so fundamental to the Christian life that if you get it wrong, you get everything else wrong as well. Therefore, since the Christian life begins with Christ, let’s focus on Him and on what He has done to bring about in us the life He wants.
But before we see what Jesus has done, we must first see the real problem we face. Sin is the basic problem of the human race, the cancer in our souls. Thus, for Jesus to be of any real help to us, He must deal with our sin. He has done so through two works on one Cross.
The first work of the Cross addresses our sins – our thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds. The second work of the Cross addresses our sin – the nature inside us that produces those thoughts, attitudes, words, and deeds. Think of it this way. A criminal produces a crime. In dealing with the criminal, one must address issues of justice as well as the damage the criminal’s deeds have caused. But if you stop there, you still have the same criminal who produced those deeds. You have dealt with his crimes, but you haven’t changed him. Now the Cross and subsequent Resurrection are God’s response to our sins and to our sin nature. They deal with our deeds, but they also deal with us.
Concerning our sins, the Cross serves justice and repairs the damage that our sins do to our relationship with God. The blood of Christ appeases the wrath of God (Rm 3:25), administers the justice of God (Rm 3:26), declares us righteous (Rm 5:9), cleanses us from all sin (I Jn 1:7), redeems us from the pit (Eph 1:7), brings forgiveness (Eph 1:7), and makes peace with God (Col 1:20).
Because of the precious blood of Christ, the penalty for our sins is paid. We are criminals for whom justice has already been served. When God looks at us, He does not see our sins. He sees the blood. Thus, we are clean in God’s sight. We are righteous in His eyes. We have peace with Him. We are forgiven. When by faith we are in Christ, we cannot outsin the reach of the Cross. The Cross covers all our sins – past, present, and future.
The Christian must hold onto this fact. We still sin, and if we are to live the Christian life, we must begin by holding onto the fact that in Christ our sins do not defeat us. God still loves us. God is still for us. God forgives us. Our relationship with Him is still intact. In Christ, none of that will ever change. The forgiveness of God is not an excuse to continue in sin. It is a comfort that our sins can never separate us from God. Never. The Cross makes us right with God. Forever. By dealing with our sins, the Cross gives us spiritual security, and this security is foundational to living a godly life. Resting in the blood of Christ and the forgiveness it procures is foundational to living a Christian life because we cannot live the Christian life without Christ, and when we sin, Satan uses our sins to drive a wedge between us and Christ. He wants our sins to separate us from Christ because he knows that if we pull away from Christ, we will fail to live the Christian life. We are then no threat to Satan. We have to hold onto the Cross because it is the Cross that pulls us back to Christ when we sin.
But the Cross does more than wipe away our sins. It also crucifies us. Here is how Galatians puts it:
I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet it is not I but
Christ who lives in me (Gal 2:20)
May I never boast in anything except the Cross of Christ. Through
it the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. (Gal 6:14)
Here is how Romans puts it:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may
abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?
Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with
him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised
from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in
newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like
his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.
We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the
body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer
be enslaved to sin. For he who has died has been set free from sin.
Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live
with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will
never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the
death he died he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives he lives
to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive
to God in Christ Jesus. (Rm 6:1-11)
Here is how Colossians puts it:
If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the world . . . (Col 2:20)
If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above,
where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on
things that are above, not on things that are on earth. For you have
died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Col 3:1-3)
In Christ it is not just that our sins have been wiped away. In Christ, you and I are dead. We have been crucified with Christ. We have been buried with Christ. We have died and our lives are now hidden with Christ. Our old self has died. And all of this happened at the Cross.
In addition, we have been raised to a new life in Christ. We have been united with Him in His Resurrection. We are in Christ. When He died, we died; when He rose, we rose.
What all these Scriptures are saying is not just that we have forgiveness but that we have a new nature, a new life in Christ. In these texts, God is dealing not so much with our sins but with us. In Christ the old you is dead; the new you has come (II Cor 5:17). In Christ, you are no longer the same person. The Christian, thus, is capable of living in righteousness, not on his own but in Christ. I don’t mean that the Christian always does live in righteousness but that the Christian has in Christ the resources to do so. The unbeliever does not have these resources.
The Christian response to this second work of the Cross is to believe it and to set our minds on the things appropriate for the new nature. Consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rm 6:11). And the life I live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me. (Gal 2:20). Seek the things that are above . . . Set your minds on things that are above, not on earthly things (Col 3:1-2). If I could describe as simply as possible how to live the Christian life in steps, it would begin this way:
Step 1: The Cross and Resurrection. In Christ, you are clean and forgiven and nothing can come between you and God. In Christ, your old, sin nature is dead, and you are a new person. This step is what God has done in Christ. It has already been accomplished, it is grace, and without it you can do nothing to live the Christian life.
Step 2: Believe Step 1. Rest in Step 1. Live in Step 1. If you do not live in Step 1, there is no living the Christian life. Period. The Christian must know in the depths of the heart who Christ is, what Christ has done, and who He has made us to be in Him. This knowledge is not intellectual knowledge. It involves heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Step 3: Walk in Christ. You cannot walk in Christ unless you are first in Christ (Step 1) and know that you are in Him (Step 2). Walking in Christ then entails all sorts of specifics: hardship and suffering, speaking the truth, sexual purity, loving your difficult boss, freedom from greed, humility, joy, service, and more.
The biggest problem Christians have in living the Christian life is that they focus on the details of Step 3 instead of the foundations of Steps 1 and 2. They know that pornography is sin, so they grit their teeth and work on avoiding it. They then fail because they try to fight pornography in their own strength quite apart from the Cross and Resurrection. They are new creatures in Christ, but they rely on their old self to live a new life. They know what is good and simply try to do it.
But the Christian life does not begin with you. It begins with Christ who lives in you, who loves you and gave Himself for you (Gal 2:20). The Christian life is a life of “not I but Christ.” This is a much higher life to live than the life that says merely “go be good.” That life is cheap and shallow. That life wants to be good but can’t. That life cheapens godliness by lowering God’s heavenly standard to what we can do. That life eliminates Christ and the Cross. It rips all of the power and depth from life and then pretends to have substance. It has none.
The Christian life, however, requires Christ. It also requires a new nature. But because of the Cross and Resurrection, the Christian has Christ and a new nature. This is who we are. When we forget who we are, we have greater problems living how we ought. And quite often we forget because it is easy to take our eyes off of Christ.
The Christian life is hard. It involves struggle and work and hardship and persecution. But the Christian life is simple. It centers on Christ.
