I have been crucified with Christ… —Galatians 2:20
The inescapable spiritual need each of us has
is the need to sign the death certificate of our sin nature. I must take my
emotional opinions and intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a
moral verdict against the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to
my right to myself. Paul said, “I have been crucified with Christ….” He did not
say, “I have made a determination to imitate Jesus Christ,” or, “I will really
make an effort to follow Him” —but— “I have been identified with Him in His death.” Once I reach
this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the Cross is accomplished in me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God
gives the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus
Christ.
“…it is no longer I who live….” My
individuality remains, but my primary motivation for living and the nature that
rules me are radically changed. I have the same human body, but the old satanic
right to myself has been destroyed.
“…and the life which I now live in the flesh,”
not the life which I long to live or even pray that I live, but the life I now
live in my mortal flesh— the life which others can see, “I live by faith in the
Son of God….” This faith was not Paul’s own faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith
the Son of God had given to him (see Ephesians 2:8). It is no
longer a faith in faith, but a faith that transcends all imaginable limits— a
faith that comes only from the Son of God.
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