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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