I have
been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The
life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and
gave himself for me. 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 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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