OUT OF THE Galatian controversy over whether “Christ and . . .” or just “Christ” is required for salvation came this spark of deathless testimony: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me; and the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Gal. 2:20). The old version said, “I live by the faith of the Son of God”—His faith in me! This kindles my faith in Him. He believes in me when I can’t believe in myself, so I have to live up to His faith. So the verse, “We love, because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19), could also read, “We believe, because He first believed in us.” He is on a faith-producing offensive as well as a love-producing offensive!
“I have been crucified with Christ.” The emphasis is on “with Christ,” for if you are not crucified voluntarily with Christ you are crucified involuntarily with yourself—crucified on the cross of your own inner conflicts. Many writhe on the cross of their own making where they hang alone, nothing redemptive in it. The chosen crucifixion with Christ, when we offer up the “I” in self-surrender, is redemptive: “nevertheless I live.” And how! To the degree that I fully surrender to the cross to be crucified with Him, to that degree do I live and live by the resurrected power of Him, for His cross and resurrection were one. So they become one with me; I am a Calvary and an Easter morning at one and the same time. The risen Christ lives in me. So I live by resurrection, not crucifixion—by life, not death. All this has its feet on the ground: “the life I now live in the flesh”—in the flesh—it is working out in actual practice in life, and life in the flesh.
The alternatives are these: be crucified with Christ, or be crucified with myself—one redemptive and issuing in life, the other non-redemptive and issuing in fruitless self-inflicted pain.
O crucified Redeemer, I consent to be crucified with Thee. I hear Thy reply: “And I consent for you to be risen with Me. You share My cross, now share My conquest over death.” Blessed exchange! I thank Thee. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am crucified with Christ or I am crucified on the cross of my own conflicts.
