The life which I now live in the flesh
I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.
Galatians 2:20
If we
were able to ask Paul, “What is your part in living life, if you no longer live
but Christ lives in you?” he would answer, “The life which I now live in
the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself
for me.” His whole life, day by day and all day long, was one of unceasing
faith in the wonderful Love that had given itself for him. Faith was the power
that possessed and permeated Paul’s whole being and his every action.
Here we
have the simple but full statement of the secret of the true Christian life. It
is not faith that rests only in certain promises of God or in certain blessings
that we receive from Christ. It is a faith that sees how entirely Christ gives
Himself to the soul to be his entire life and all that that implies for every
moment of the day. Just as continuous breathing is essential to the support of
our physical life, so is the unceasing faith in which the soul trusts Christ
and depends on Him to maintain the life of the Spirit within us. Faith always
rests on the infinite love in which Christ gave Himself wholly for us to be
entirely ours and to live His life over again in us. By virtue of His divine
omnipresence, by which He “fills all in all” (Ephesians 1:23), He can
be to each what He is to all—a complete and perfect Savior, an abiding Guest,
taking charge and maintaining our life in us and for us—as if each of us were
the only one in whom He lives. Just as truly as the Father lived in Him and
worked in Him all that He was to work out, so will Christ live and work in each
one of us.
When our
faith is led and taught by God’s Holy Spirit, we obtain such a confidence in
the omnipotence and omnipresence of Christ that we carry all day in the depths
of our hearts this unbroken assurance: “He who loved me and gave Himself for
me, He lives in me; He is my life and my all.” “I can do all things
through Christ which strengthens me” (Philippians 4:13). May God reveal to
us the inseparable union between Christ and us, in which the consciousness of
Christ’s presence may become as natural to us as the consciousness of our
existence.
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