Christ lives in Me

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Sermon: “Christ lives in me”                                                                                       Jan.13, 2008

Galatians 2:20  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.

Nine things that Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian:

Galatians 3:2-5

Galatians 3:14  

Galatians 4:6

Galatians 4:29

Galatians 5:5

Galatians 5:16-18

Galatians 5:22

Galatians 5:25

Galatians 6:8

Sermón: “Vive Cristo en mi”

Gálatas 2:20 (RVR) Con Cristo estoy juntamente crucificado, y ya no vivo yo, mas vive Cristo en mí; y lo que ahora vivo en la carne, lo vivo en la fe del Hijo de Dios, el cual me amó y se entregó a sí mismo por mí. (Version Popular) y ya no soy yo quien vive, sino que es Cristo quien vive en mí. Y la vida que ahora vivo en el cuerpo, la vivo por mi fe en el Hijo de Dios, que me amó y se entregó a la muerte por mí.

Nueve cosas que el Espíritu Santo hace para que yo sea un Cristiano con mucho fruto:

Gálatas 3:2-5

Gálatas 3:14  

Gálatas 4:6

Gálatas 4:29

Gálatas 5:5

Gálatas 5:16-18

Gálatas 5:22

Gálatas 5:25

Galatians 6:8

Sermon: “Christ lives in me”                                                                                       Jan.13, 2008

Gal 2:20  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.

(NLT) My old self has been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

(RVR) Con Cristo estoy juntamente crucificado, y ya no vivo yo, mas vive Cristo en mí; y lo que ahora vivo en la carne, lo vivo en la fe del Hijo de Dios, el cual me amó y se entregó a sí mismo por mí.  (VP) y ya no soy yo quien vive, sino que es Cristo quien vive en mí. Y la vida que ahora vivo en el cuerpo, la vivo por mi fe en el Hijo de Dios, que me amó y se entregó a la muerte por mí

NINE THINGS THAT SPIRIT DOES TO MAKE YOU A FRUITFUL CHRISTIAN (#1)

How did you get the Holy Spirit?   by faith....so you can fruit only by faith

Gal 3:2-5 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard [by hearing by faith]? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? 4 Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? 5 Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard [or by hearing by faith]?

(VP) Solo quiero que me contesten a esta pregunta: ¿Recibieron ustedes el Espíritu de Dios por el cumplimiento de la ley o por aceptar el mensaje de la fe? 3 ¿Son tan duros para entender, que habiendo comenzado con el Espíritu quieren ahora terminar con algo puramente humano? 4 ¿Tantas buenas experiencias para nada? ... ¡Imposible que hayan sido para nada! 5 Cuando Dios les da su Espíritu y hace milagros entre ustedes, ¿por qué lo hace? No en virtud del cumplimiento de la ley, sino por aceptar el mensaje de la fe

(RVR) Esto solo quiero saber de vosotros: ¿Recibisteis el Espíritu por las obras de la ley, o por el oír con fe? 3 ¿Tan necios sois? ¿Habiendo comenzado por el Espíritu, ahora vais a acabar por la carne? 4 ¿Tantas cosas habéis padecido en vano? si es que realmente fue en vano. 5 Aquel, pues, que os suministra el Espíritu, y hace maravillas entre vosotros, ¿lo hace por las obras de la ley, o por el oír con fe?

What does it mean to bear fruit “by faith”?

EXAMPLE: Reading chart vs. Putting into Practice what you read in the chart

Although Bible study, prayer, worship, witnessing, and certain behavior standards are commanded of believers and are essential to faithful Christian living, spirituality cannot be measured by how often or how intensely we are involved in such things. To use them as measures of spirituality is to become entrapped in legalism,

Nine things that Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian (#2)

What promises are you waiting for God to fulfill in your life?

Galatians 3:14  He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit.

(RVR) para que en Cristo Jesús la bendición de Abraham alcanzase a los gentiles, a fin de que por la fe recibiésemos la promesa del Espíritu.

(VP) Esto sucedió para que la bendición que Dios prometió a Abraham alcance también, por medio de Cristo Jesús, a los no judíos; y para que por medio de la fe recibamos todos el Espíritu que Dios ha prometido.

 

God keeps his promises

Sometimes you have to wait hundreds of years

Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (NBLH) “Pondré dentro de ustedes Mi espíritu y haré que anden en Mis estatutos, y que cumplan cuidadosamente Mis ordenanzas.

Ezekiel 37:14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’  (NBLH) “Pondré Mi Espíritu en ustedes, y vivirán, y los estableceré en su tierra. Entonces sabrán que Yo, el Señor, he hablado y lo he hecho,” declara el Señor.’ ”

Sometimes you have to wait a few days (10)

Acts 1:4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.” (NBLH) Y reuniéndolos, les mandó que no salieran de Jerusalén (Ciudad de Paz), sino que esperaran la promesa del Padre: “La cual,” les dijo, “oyeron de Mí; 5 porque Juan bautizó con agua, pero ustedes serán bautizados con el Espíritu Santo dentro de pocos días.”

Nine things that the Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian (#3)

Start all your prayers this week by sayig “Abba, Father”

Galatians 4:6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father.” (RVR) Y por cuanto sois hijos, Dios envió a vuestros corazones el Espíritu de su Hijo, el cual clama: ¡Abba, Padre!  (VP) Y porque ya somos sus hijos, Dios mandó el Espíritu de su Hijo a nuestros corazones; y el Espíritu clama: “¡Abbá! ¡Padre!”

Romans 8:15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Mark 14:36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Nine things that the Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian (#4)

If your life (phy & spiritual) started as a miracle from God,

continue to expect “miracles” during your life! (A miracle is something only God can do

Gal 4:29 At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. (NLT) But you are now being persecuted by those who want you to keep the law, just as Ishmael, the child born by human effort, persecuted Isaac, the child [Isaac] born by the power of the Spirit.

(RVR) Pero como entonces el que había nacido según la carne perseguía al que había nacido según el Espíritu, así también ahora.

(VP) Pero así como en aquel tiempo el hijo que nació de modo puramente humano perseguía al hijo que nació por obra del Espíritu, así sucede también ahora.

Nine things that the Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian (#5)

How are you waiting? …..thru the Spirit or thru the flesh (your own strength)

            If you have peace…..it’s by the Spirit

            If your worrying……it in the flesh

Gal 5:5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. (RVR) Pues nosotros por el Espíritu aguardamos por fe la esperanza de la justicia

(VP) Pero nosotros, por medio del Espíritu tenemos la esperanza de alcanzar la justicia basados en la fe.

await used s7xs in the NT of the return of Christ

Rom 8:19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.

Rom 8:23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Rom 8:25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

1 Cor 1:7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed

Phil 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ

Heb 9:28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

Nine things that the Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian (#6)

Have you been getting into lots of fights lately?

Gal 5:16-18  So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law.

 (NLT) So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. 17 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentionsd…………….(NASB95)  But I say, walk by the Spirit,

(RVR)  Digo, pues: Andad en el Espíritu, y no satisfagáis los deseos de la carne. 17 Porque el deseo de la carne es contra el Espíritu, y el del Espíritu es contra la carne; y éstos se oponen entre sí, para que no hagáis lo que quisiereis. 18 Pero si sois guiados por el Espíritu, no estáis bajo la ley

(VP) Por lo tanto, digo: Vivan según el Espíritu, y no busquen satisfacer sus propios malos deseos. 17 Porque los malos deseos están en contra del Espíritu, y el Espíritu está en contra de los malos deseos. El uno está en contra de los otros, y por eso ustedes no pueden hacer lo que quisieran. 18 Pero si el Espíritu los guía, entonces ya no estarán sometidos a la ley.

*The Spirit-led life is a life of conflict

*Live (walk) present tense & imperative

Nine things that the Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian (#7)

When you see the fruit you know the Spirit is present (even if you can’t see Him)

Gal 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

((RVR)  Mas el fruto del Espíritu es amor, gozo, paz, paciencia, benignidad, bondad, fe, 23 mansedumbre, templanza; contra tales cosas no hay ley.

(VP)  En cambio, lo que el Espíritu produce es amor, alegría, paz, paciencia, amabilidad, bondad, fidelidad, 23 humildad y dominio propio. Contra tales cosas no hay ley.

            When you these these things you know the Spirit is absent! (5:19-21)

The acts of the sinful nature are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity and debauchery; 20 idolatry and witchcraft; hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition, dissensions, factions 21 and envy; drunkenness, orgies, and the like. I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God

(VP) Es fácil ver lo que hacen quienes siguen los malos deseos: cometen inmoralidades sexuales, hacen cosas impuras y viciosas, 20 adoran ídolos y practican la brujería. Mantienen odios, discordias y celos. Se enojan fácilmente, causan rivalidades, divisiones y partidismos. 21 Son envidiosos, borrachos, glotones y otras cosas parecidas. Les advierto a ustedes, como ya antes lo he hecho, que los que así se portan no tendrán parte en el reino de Dios.

(NVI) Las obras de la naturaleza pecaminosa se conocen bien: inmoralidad sexual, impureza y libertinaje; 20 idolatría y brujería; odio, discordia, celos, arrebatos de ira, rivalidades, disensiones, sectarismos 21 y envidia; borracheras, orgías, y otras cosas parecidas. Les advierto ahora, como antes lo hice, que los que practican tales cosas no heredarán el reino de Dios.

Nine things that the Spirit does to make you a fruitful Christian (#8)

EXAMPLE: Like a chicken with its head cut off, the flesh has been dealt a death blow, although it continues to flop around the barnyard of earth until the last nerve is stilled.

Gal.5:24-25 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit.  

(RVR) Pero los que son de Cristo han crucificado la carne con sus pasiones y deseos. 25 Si vivimos por el Espíritu, andemos también por el Espíritu. (VP) Y los que son de Cristo Jesús, ya han crucificado la naturaleza del hombre pecador junto con sus pasiones y malos deseos. 25 Si ahora vivimos por el Espíritu, dejemos también que el Espíritu nos guíe.

have crucified an allusion to the cross of Jesus Christ

Rom 6:6 For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.

(RVR) sabiendo esto, que nuestro viejo hombre fue crucificado juntamente con él, para que el cuerpo del pecado sea destruido, a fin de que no sirvamos más al pecado.

#9 Galatians 6:8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life.

(NLT) Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit.

(RVR) Porque el que siembra para su carne, de la carne segará corrupción; mas el que siembra para el Espíritu, del Espíritu segará vida eterna. 

(VP) El que siembra en los malos deseos, de sus malos deseos recogerá una cosecha de muerte. El que siembra en el Espíritu, del Espíritu recogerá una cosecha de vida eterna.

The Christian has only two “fields” in which he can sow

Every thot

every act

every word

every attitude

every decision, …is a seed you sow in one of those fields

#1 Galatians 3:2-5 I would like to learn just one thing from you: Did you receive the Spirit by observing the law, or by believing what you heard [by hearing by faith]? 3 Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort? 4 Have you suffered so much for nothing—if it really was for nothing? 5 Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believe what you heard? (NASB95) This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? 4 Did you suffer so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5 So then, does He who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (NKJV) This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?— 3 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh? 4 Have you suffered so many things in vain—if indeed it was in vain? 5 Therefore He who supplies the Spirit to you and works miracles among you, does He do it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? (NLT) Let me ask you this one question: Did you receive the Holy Spirit by obeying the law of Moses? Of course not! You received the Spirit because you believed the message you heard about Christ. 3 How foolish can you be? After starting your Christian lives in the Spirit, why are you now trying to become perfect by your own human effort? 4 Have you experienced so much for nothing? Surely it was not in vain, was it? 5 I ask you again, does God give you the Holy Spirit and work miracles among you because you obey the law? Of course not! It is because you believe the message you heard about Christ. (RVR) Con Cristo estoy juntamente crucificado, y ya no vivo yo, mas vive Cristo en mí; y lo que ahora vivo en la carne, lo vivo en la fe del Hijo de Dios, el cual me amó y se entregó a sí mismo por mí.  (VP) Solo quiero que me contesten a esta pregunta: ¿Recibieron ustedes el Espíritu de Dios por el cumplimiento de la ley o por aceptar el mensaje de la fe? 3 ¿Son tan duros para entender, que habiendo comenzado con el Espíritu quieren ahora terminar con algo puramente humano? 4 ¿Tantas buenas experiencias para nada? ... ¡Imposible que hayan sido para nada! 5 Cuando Dios les da su Espíritu y hace milagros entre ustedes, ¿por qué lo hace? No en virtud del cumplimiento de la ley, sino por aceptar el mensaje de la fe

#2 Galatians 3:14  He redeemed us in order that the blessing given to Abraham might come to the Gentiles through Christ Jesus, so that by faith we might receive the promise of the Spirit. (NASB95) in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we would receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.  (NKJV) that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (NLT) Through Christ Jesus, God has blessed the Gentiles with the same blessing he promised to Abraham, so that we who are believers might receive the promised Holy Spirit through faith. (RVR) para que en Cristo Jesús la bendición de Abraham alcanzase a los gentiles, a fin de que por la fe recibiésemos la promesa del Espíritu. (VP) Esto sucedió para que la bendición que Dios prometió a Abraham alcance también, por medio de Cristo Jesús, a los no judíos; y para que por medio de la fe recibamos todos el Espíritu que Dios ha prometido.

Ezekiel 36:27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.

Ezekiel 37:14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’

Isaiah 44:3 For I will pour water on the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring, and my blessing on your descendants.

Acts 1:4 On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father promised, which you have heard me speak about. 5 For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.”

God keeps his promises….sometimes you have to wait hundreds of years and sometimes you have to wait 10 days. What promises are you holding on to?

#3 Galatians 4:6 Because you are sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, Abba, Father.” (NASB95) Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (NKJV) And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying out, “Abba, Father!” (NLT) And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.”  (RVR) Y por cuanto sois hijos, Dios envió a vuestros corazones el Espíritu de su Hijo, el cual clama: ¡Abba, Padre!  (VP) Y porque ya somos sus hijos, Dios mandó el Espíritu de su Hijo a nuestros corazones; y el Espíritu clama: “¡Abbá! ¡Padre!”

Romans 8:15 For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”

Mark 14:36 “Abba, Father,” he said, “everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.”

Start your prayers this week by sayig “Abba, Father”

ABBA (Ἀββᾶ , (5)) is an Aramaic word, found in Mark 14:36; Rom. 8:15 and Gal. 4:6. In the Gemara (a Rabbinical commentary on the Mishna, the traditional teaching of the Jews) it is stated that slaves were forbidden to address the head of the family by this title. It approximates to a personal name, in contrast to “Father,” with which it is always joined in the N.T. This is probably due to the fact that, “Abba” having practically become a proper name, Greek–speaking Jews added the Greek word patēr, father, from the language they used. “Abba” is the word framed by the lips of infants, and betokens unreasoning trust; “father” expresses an intelligent apprehension of the relationship. The two together express the love and intelligent confidence of the child.

#4 Galatians 4:29  [Miraculous birth] At that time the son born in the ordinary way persecuted the son born by the power of the Spirit. It is the same now. (NLT) But you are now being persecuted by those who want you to keep the law, just as Ishmael, the child born by human effort, persecuted Isaac, the child born by the power of the Spirit. (RVR) Pero como entonces el que había nacido según la carne perseguía al que había nacido según el Espíritu, así también ahora. (VP) Pero así como en aquel tiempo el hijo que nació de modo puramente humano perseguía al hijo que nació por obra del Espíritu, así sucede también ahora.

If your life started as a miracle, expect “miracles” during your life! [A miracle is something only God can do!]

#5 Gal 5:5 But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. (NASB) For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness. (NLT) But we who live by the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to us. (NKJV) For we through the Spirit eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness by faith. (RVR) Pues nosotros por el Espíritu aguardamos por fe la esperanza de la justicia;  (VP) Pero nosotros, por medio del Espíritu tenemos la esperanza de alcanzar la justicia basados en la fe.

            How are you waiting? Thru the Spirit or thru the flesh (your own strength)

await (apekdechometha; used s7xs in the NT of the return of Christ: Rom. 8:19, 23, 25; 1 Cor. 1:7; Gal. 5:5; Phil. 3:20; Heb. 9:28) the consummation of their salvation

Rom 8:19 The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed.

Rom 8:23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

Rom 8:25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

1 Cor 1:7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed

Phil 3:20 But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ

Heb 9:28 so Christ was sacrificed once to take away the sins of many people; and he will appear a second time, not to bear sin, but to bring salvation to those who are waiting for him.

#6 Galatians 5:16-18  So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17 For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other, so that you do not do what you want. 18 But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law. (NASB95)  But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. 17 For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. (NLT) So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. 17 The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. (RVR)  Digo, pues: Andad en el Espíritu, y no satisfagáis los deseos de la carne. 17 Porque el deseo de la carne es contra el Espíritu, y el del Espíritu es contra la carne; y éstos se oponen entre sí, para que no hagáis lo que quisiereis. 18 Pero si sois guiados por el Espíritu, no estáis bajo la ley.  (VP) Por lo tanto, digo: Vivan según el Espíritu, y no busquen satisfacer sus propios malos deseos. 17 Porque los malos deseos están en contra del Espíritu, y el Espíritu está en contra de los malos deseos. El uno está en contra de los otros, y por eso ustedes no pueden hacer lo que quisieran. 18 Pero si el Espíritu los guía, entonces ya no estarán sometidos a la ley.

#7 Galatians 5:22-23 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. (NLT) But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (RVR)  Mas el fruto del Espíritu es amor, gozo, paz, paciencia, benignidad, bondad, fe, 23 mansedumbre, templanza; contra tales cosas no hay ley. (VP)  En cambio, lo que el Espíritu produce es amor, alegría, paz, paciencia, amabilidad, bondad, fidelidad, 23 humildad y dominio propio. Contra tales cosas no hay ley.

#8 Galatians 5:25 Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit. (NLT) Since we are living by the Spirit, let us follow the Spirit’s leading in every part of our lives. (NASB95) If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (NKJV) If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit. (RVR) Si vivimos por el Espíritu, andemos también por el Espíritu. (RVR) Si vivimos por el Espíritu, andemos también por el Espíritu. (VP) Si ahora vivimos por el Espíritu, dejemos también que el Espíritu nos guíe.

#9 Galatians 6:8 The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. (NLT) Those who live only to satisfy their own sinful nature will harvest decay and death from that sinful nature. But those who live to please the Spirit will harvest everlasting life from the Spirit. (RVR) Porque el que siembra para su carne, de la carne segará corrupción; mas el que siembra para el Espíritu, del Espíritu segará vida eterna.  (VP) El que siembra en los malos deseos, de sus malos deseos recogerá una cosecha de muerte. El que siembra en el Espíritu, del Espíritu recogerá una cosecha de vida eterna.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How did you get the Holy Spirit?   by faith....so you will bear fruit by faith

#1 This is the only thing I want to find out from you: did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? Did you suffer so many things in vain-if indeed it was in vain? Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (3:2-5)

Paul’s next appeal was to the Galatian believers’ experience with the Holy Spirit. “Don’t you remember what the Spirit accomplished in your lives when you trusted in Christ for salvation?” he asks. He narrows his focus right to the issue when he pleads, “This is the only thing I want to find out from you: when you received Christ, did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Did you have to fulfill some further requirements. go through some special ceremony, or perform some additional rites? Or did you receive the Spirit by God’s grace at the same time you received Christ as Lord and Savior?” The question rhetorical and the answer obvious: They received the righteousness of Christ and His Holy Spirit at the same time. The gift of the Holy Spirit is the believer’s most unmistakable evidence of God’s favor, his greatest proof of salvation and the guarantee of eternal glory “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:16), Paul assured the Roman Christians. Conversely, “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (v. 9). John writes, “By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit” (1 John 4:13; cf. 3:24). It is therefore ludicrous to maintain, as some Christians do, that the full gift of the Holy Spirit comes through an additional work or experience A person who does not have the fullness of the Holy Spirit does not need a second blessing; he needs salvation. The indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit is inseparable from the new birth. At no time before salvation can a person have the indwelling Spirit, and at no time after salvation can he not have Him. “Having also believed” in Christ, Paul explained to the Ephesians, “you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance” (Eph. 1:13–14). “Pledge” is from arrabōn, which originally referred to a down payment or earnest money given by a person intending to make a purchase, as a guarantee that the full amount would be paid. In modern Greek a form of the word is used for engagement ring. The Holy Spirit is the believer’s divine guarantee that, as part of Christ’s church, His bride, he will one day participate in the marriage feast of the Lamb. When Paul met some disciples of John the Baptist at Ephesus, he sought to determine the completeness of their faith by asking, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” When they replied no, he presented the gospel of Jesus Christ to them and they then received the Spirit (Acts 19:1–6). In his speech before the Jerusalem Council, Peter said, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us” (Acts 15:7–8). Peter had first witnessed Gentiles’ receiving the Holy Spirit when he preached to Cornelius and his relatives and friends at Joppa. “While Peter was still speaking these words, the Holy Spirit fell upon all those who were listening to the message. And all the circumcised believers who had come with Peter were amazed, because the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out upon the Gentiles also” (10:44–45). Though probably not in so dramatic a way, every true believer in Galatia had received the Holy Spirit the moment he received Jesus Christ as Savior. “Don’t you remember,” Paul asked, “that you received the Spirit … by hearing with faith? How then, can you be duped by the Judaizers into thinking that He came to you, or will eventually come to you, by works of the Law?” Like the Judaizers, many groups and movements today want to introduce special conditions or requirements that supposedly add blessings to the finished and perfect work of Christ-such as a greater fullness of the Spirit, speaking in tongues, or a more complete salvation. But all such things are forms of works righteousness, adding things that men can do to what Christ has already done and that only He could have done. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” Paul declared. “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death. For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:1–4). The Holy Spirit is not the goal of the Christian life but is its source. He is not the product of faithful living but is the power behind it. A higher level of living does not bring the Holy Spirit; rather submission to the Holy Spirit, who already indwell-s the believer, includes a higher level of living. “Having begun by the Spirit,” Paul continues, “are you now being perfected by the flesh? How could you think that your weak, imperfect, still sinful flesh could improve on what the divine Spirit of God began in you when you first believed?” Drifting from the provisions of grace into the efforts of law is ludicrous. For the sake of balance it should be noted that James warns that a faith that does not produce good works is not saving faith at all. “What use is it, my brethren,” he asks, “if a man says he has faith, but he has no works? Can that faith save him?” (James 2:14). That is, can that kind of faith bring salvation? No “Faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself” (v. 17). When he later says that “a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone” (v.24), he is speaking of works verifying, not producing, salvation. Works that are pleasing to God—such as visiting “orphans and widows in their distress” and keeping “oneself unstained by the world” (1:27)—give evidence that one’s profession of faith in Christ is genuine. The validity of good works in God’s sight depends on whose power they are done in and for whose glory. When they are done in the power of His Spirit and for His glory, they are beautiful and acceptable to Him. When they are done in the power of the flesh and for the sake of personal recognition or merit, they are rejected by Him. Legalism is separated from true obedience by attitude. The one is a rotten smell in God’s nostrils, whereas the other is a sweet savor. The prayer offered in humble faith, seeking God’s will and glory, is pleasing to the Father, whereas a prayer uttered by rote or to impress God or other people is anathema to Him (Luke 18:10–14). Going to church to worship God sincerely with fellow believers is pleasing to Him, whereas going to the same church service and being with the same fellow believers is not acceptable to Him if done in a self-righteous, self-serving, legalistic spirit. Even the best and most acceptable works do not increase our standing before God or elevate us to a higher spiritual status. How would it be possible to be more than a child of God and fellow heir with Jesus Christ, who is the Heir of all things (Rom. 8:17; Heb. 1:2; cf. Gal. 4:7; 1 Pet. 3:7)? Did you suffer so many things in vain? Paul asks next. Suffer is from paschō, a word that carries the basic idea of experience and sometimes that of pain or hardship. Since the context suggests nothing of suffering or hardship, it seems best to take the word here to refer to experience, the believers’ personal experience with Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father. Paul is asking, “Did you experience so many things in vain? Did you learn nothing at all from them? Can’t you think things through and see that the claims of the Judaizers cannot possibly square with the gospel you have been taught and have experienced yourselves?” Paul softens the blow by adding, If indeed it was in vain, leaving open the possibility and hope that it was not. In other words, “I hope what I have heard about you is not true or that you have come back to your senses.” The apostle uses the same approach several other times in the letter, hitting hard at an error or failure and then softening his tone (see, e.g., 4:9–14, 20; 5:2–10).  Does He then, who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you, do it by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? (3:5) The third appeal to experience is with God the Father, He … who provides you with the Spirit and works miracles among you. Just before His ascension Jesus commanded the disciples “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for what the Father had promised, ‘Which,’ He said, ‘you heard of from Me’” (Acts 1:4). Through the Son, the Father had promised to give “the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him” (Luke 11:13). And “when He, the Spirit of truth, comes,” Jesus explained on another occasion, “He will guide you into all the truth; for He will not speak on His own initiative, but whatever He hears, He will speak” (John 16:13). Provides is from epichorēgeō, which means to supply abundantly and with great generosity. It was used of patrons of the arts who underwrote productions of Greek plays and of patriotic citizens who gave of their wealth to help support their country’s army or government. It was also used of a groom’s vow to love and care for his bride.  In His superabundant generosity to His children, God provides them with the Spirit and works miracles among them. Miracles translates dunamis, which refers basically to inherent power or ability. Paul may have been referring to miraculous events God had worked among the Galatian believers, or he may have been referring to the spiritual power over Satan, sin, the world, the flesh, and human weakness that the Father bestows on His children through His Spirit. Paul’s preaching in Corinth was “in demonstration of the Spirit and of power” (1 Cor. 2:4). He even boasted in his own weaknesses in order that the power of Christ might dwell in him (2 Cor. 12:9). God, he says, “is able to do exceeding abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us” (Eph. 3:20). In each of those passages dunamis is rendered “power” and refers to the Father’s divine gift to His children. Paul’s argument is itself powerful: If a person has received eternal salvation through trust in the crucified Christ, received the fullness of the Holy Spirit the same moment he believed, and has the Father’s Spirit-endowed power working within him, how could he hope to enhance that out of his own insignificant human resources by some meritorious effort?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God keeps his promises: Which ones are you holding on to?

#2 Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us-for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”-in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. (3:13–14)

Turning again to the positive, Paul reminds the Jewish believers in Galatia of the fact that Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having been a curse for us. Redeemed is from exagorazō, a word commonly used of buying a slave’s freedom. Christ justifies those who believe in Him by buying them back from their slavery to sin. The price He paid was the only one high enough to redeem all of mankind, the “precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:19). The curse of the Law was the punishment demanded because no man could keep from violating its demands, but Christ took that curse upon Himself as a substitute for sinners and became a curse for us in His crucifixion, for it is written (Deut. 21:23), “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree.” In ancient Judaism a criminal who was executed, usually by stoning, was then tied to a post, a type of tree, where his body would hang until sunset as a visible representation of rejection by God. It was not that a person became cursed by being hanged on a tree but that he was hanged on a tree because he was cursed. Jesus did not become a curse because He was crucified but was crucified because he was cursed in taking the full sin of the world upon Himself. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed” (1 Pet. 2:24; cf. Acts 5:30).That truth was extremely hard for most Jews to accept, because they could not imagine the Messiah’s being cursed by God and having to hang on a tree. First Corinthians 12:23 suggests that “Jesus is accursed” was a common, demon-inspired saying among unbelieving Jews of that day. To them, Jesus’ crucifixion was final and absolute proof that He was not the promised Messiah.  But for those who trust in Him, the two words for us become the two most beautiful words in all of Scripture. Because God sent His Son to bear the penalty for man’s sin, every person who puts his trust in the crucified Savior has had the curse borne for him. Jesus’ sacrifice was total and for all men, in order that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith. On man’s part, the curse is lifted by faith, which God, on His part and by grace, counts as righteousness on the believer’s behalf, and the river of blessing begins to flow as the rushing water of God’s grace engulfs the believer. Jesus Christ bore the curse, Paul affirms, to bring the blessing of Abraham … to the Gentiles. Salvation was for the purpose of God’s blessing the world. All that God desired for and promised to Abraham of salvation and its benefits would spread to the nations. A coordinate purpose clause is added-so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith (Acts 1:4–5; Eph. 1:13), who comes as the resident, indwelling Person to bless us with power. All of this blessing is through faith. Justifying faith involves self-renunciation, putting away all confidence in one’s own merit and works. Like the Israelites who had Pharaoh’s pursuing army behind them and the impassable Red Sea in front of them, the sinner must acknowledge his sinfulness and his total inability to save himself When he sees God’s justice pursuing him and God’s judgment ahead of him, he realizes his helplessness in himself and realizes he has nowhere to turn but to God’s mercy and grace.Justifying faith also involves reliance on and submission to the Lord. When a sinner sees that he has no way to escape and no power in his own resources, he knows he must rely on God’s provision and power. Finally, justifying faith involves appropriation, as the sinner gratefully receives the free gift of pardon Christ offers and submits to His authority.Justifying faith does not have to be strong faith; it only has to be true faith. And true faith not only brings salvation to the believer but glory to the One who saves.When a person receives Christ as Lord and Savior, he receives the promised blessing (salvation by grace, righteousness of God) and the promised Spirit, which Paul describes in Ephesians as being “blessed … with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” (1:3). This blessing gives a testimony of praise to “the glory of His grace” (1:6). God receives glory when His attributes are on display, and nowhere is His grace more evident than in the sending of His only Son to be crucified on man’s behalf, the Sinless paying the debt of the sinful. Believers are “raised … up with Him, and seated with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward [them] in Christ Jesus” (2:6–7). Men are redeemed in order to exhibit God’s majestic being before all creation. His supreme purpose is to demonstrate His glorious grace against the backdrop of man’s sinfulness, lostness, and hopelessness. The very purpose of the church is to “stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” and to praise “the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, … [for His] glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever” (Jude 24–25).

 

Start your prayers this week by saying “Abba, Father”……the goal is intimacy!!!!

#3 And because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (4:6)

God confirms believers as His adopted sons through the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of His Son. They not only have the knowledge of sonship through the truth of God’s Word in their minds but the very essence of sonship through His indwelling Spirit in their hearts. A human father cannot give his own nature to an adopted child, but God can and does by sending His Holy Spirit to dwell within the hearts of believers.The Lord tells His children that He “has blessed [them] with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,” that “He chose [them] before the foundation of the world, that [they] should be holy and blameless before Him,” that “He predestined [them] to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself,” and that “in Him [they] have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of [their] trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon [them]” (Eph. 1:3–5, 7–8). But when believers experience trying circumstances or fail to live in obedience to God, it is easy for them to doubt their exalted position as His children. One of the ministries of the Spirit to the sons of God is to enable them with full confidence to cry out to Him, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit offers subjective ministry that confirms the objective truth of Scripture. Declaring that same message to believers at Rome, Paul wrote, “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God” (Rom. 8:14–16). As mentioned in the previous chapter, Abba is a diminutive of the Aramaic word for father. It was a term of endearment used by young children of their fathers and could be translated “daddy” or “papa.” The Holy Spirit brings us into a personal, intimate relationship with our heavenly Father, whom we may approach at any time and under any circumstance, knowing that He always hears us and lovingly cares for us, because we are truly His own. “In Him, you also,” Paul wrote to the Ephesians, “after listening to the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation-having also believed, you were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God’s own possession, to the praise of His glory” (Eph. 1:13–14). The fact that a believer has an intimate relationship with God, and can confidently cry out to Him as Father, is beautiful and magnificent proof of sonship. Those who have the status of divine sonship through the Son also have the essence and the assurance of it through the Spirit, who draws them into intimate communion with their heavenly Father.

Expect Miracles from God: Your life started as a miracle from God, expect more (Miracle: something only God can do!)

#4 And you brethren, like Isaac, are children of promise. But as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman.” So then, brethren, we are not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman. It was for freedom that Christ set us free; therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery. (4:28–5:1)Again addressing the Galatian believers as brethren (1:11; 4:12), Paul tells them that, like Isaac, they are children of promise. Every believer, like Isaac, is supernaturally conceived, miraculously born, and the offspring of God’s promise to Abraham fulfilled in Christ. Those who have begun to sink back into the trap of legalistic Judaism must remember that they are children of promise, who owe their life not to their own effort but to the miraculous power of God, just as Isaac did in the physical realm. God’s sovereign power of grace gave them life, and to fall back under law was to deny that divine work and to dishonor God. In 4:29–5:1 Paul mentions three results of being a spiritual Isaac, a redeemed child of promise through Sarah. First of all, just as in that time, when there was resentment of Isaac by Ishmael, the spiritual descendants of Isaac, who was born according to the Spirit, can still expect persecution by the spiritual descendants of Ishmael, who was born according to the flesh. When Abraham held a feast to celebrate Isaac’s weaning, Ishmael mocked the occasion (Gen. 21:9). He hated Isaac just as his mother hated Sarah (16:4–5). So it is now also, Paul told the Galatians. Throughout history, and still today, the physical and spiritual descendants of Hagar and Ishmael have, respectively, opposed and persecuted the physical and spiritual descendants of Sarah and Isaac. Those who hold to salvation by works, trusting in their own performance of the law hate those who proclaim salvation by grace without works. In their own minds, the Judaizers thought of themselves as the legitimate, God-honored descendants of Abraham through Isaac. But Paul was saying something that would infuriate them more than anything else, namely, that they, and all other unbelievers, are as much the spiritual descendants of lshmael as the Arabs are his physical descendants. “If you are Abraham’s children,” Jesus told the protesting Jews in Jerusalem, “do the deeds of Abraham. But as it is, you are seeking to kill Me, a man who has told you the truth, which I heard from God; this Abraham did not do” (John 8:39–40). Paul wrote the Romans, “He is not a Jew who is one outwardly; neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly; and circumcision is that which is of the heart, by the Spirit, not by the letter; and his praise is not from men, but from God” (Rom. 2:28–29).Whether within Judaism or Christianity, legalists have always been persecutors. Those who trust in God have always been persecuted by those who trust in themselves. True believers have always been more mistreated and oppressed by religionists than by atheists. It is the false religious system of Revelation 17:6 that is “drunk with the blood of the saints.”Second, the spiritual children of Sarah and Isaac will receive an inheritance that the spiritual children of Hagar and Ishmael will not. Just as the Scripture says, “Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman.” Third, although believers are brethren in Jesus Christ and therefore not children of a bondwoman, but of the free woman, they are nevertheless under obligation to live faithfully for their Lord. It was for freedom that Christ set us free, Paul says. Therefore keep standing firm and do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery to the law and its impotence.

How are you waiting? Thru the Spirit by faith   OR   in the flesh by law (your own strnength)

Look beyond your problems (the present) to the coming Answer (His return)

#5 For we through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love. (5:5–6)

A fourth consequence of trusting in works is to be excluded from the righteousness for which the believer has hope, to forsake the true life of blessing God desires for His children. The Judaizers’ hope of righteousness was based on adding imperfect and worthless works of law in a vain attempt to complete the perfect and priceless work of Christ, which they assumed to be incomplete and imperfect. We, that is, true believers, Paul says, through the Spirit, by faith, are waiting for the hope of righteousness that is based on God’s grace. Believers already possess the imputed righteousness of justification, but the yet-incomplete righteousness of total sanctification and glorification still awaits them. “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us … The creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:18, 21). In this life, believers are still waiting for the completed and perfected righteousness that is yet to come. Paul here mentions three characteristics of the godly life, the life that continues to live by the grace through which salvation was received. First of all, it is a life lived through the Spirit rather than the flesh. Second, it is a life lived by faith rather than works. And third, it is a life lived in patient waiting and hope rather than in the anxious uncertainty of bondage to the law.

Nothing that is either done or not done in the flesh, not even religious ceremony, makes any difference in one’s relationship to God. In Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything. The outward is totally unimportant and worthless, except as it genuinely reflects inner righteousness. Life in the Spirit is not static and inactive, but it is faith working through love, not the flesh working through self-effort. Believers are “created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Eph. 2:10). But their working is the product of their faith, not a substitute for it. They do not work for righteousness but out of righteousness, through the motivating power of love. In so doing they “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all power, according to His glorious might” (Col. 1:10–11). Love needs neither the prescriptions nor the proscriptions of the law, because its very nature is to fulfill the law’s demands. As Paul declares a few verses later, “the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:14: cf. Rom. 13:8). A person does not, for instance, steal from or lie to someone he truly loves. He certainly does not kill someone he loves. The person who lives by faith works under the internal compulsion of love and does not need the outward compulsion of law. The story is told of an aspiring artist who was commissioned to do a large sculpture for a famous museum. At last he had the opportunity to create the masterpiece he had long dreamed of. After laboring over the work for many years, he saw it grow not only in shape but in beauty. But when it was finished he discovered to his horror that it was much too large to be taken out a window or door and that the cost for tearing down part of the building in order to remove it was prohibitive. His masterpiece was forever a captive to the room in which it was created. That is the fate of all human religion. Nothing a person does to earn God’s favor can leave the room of this earth where his self-made works are created.

#6 But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. (5:16–18)

Just as Jesus Christ is the primary Person behind justification, the Holy Spirit is the primary Person behind sanctification. A believer can no more sanctify himself than he could have saved himself in the first place. He cannot live the Christian life by his own resources any more than he could have saved himself by his own resources. In its most profound yet simple definition, the faithful Christian life is a life lived under the direction and by the power of the Spirit. That is the theme of Galatians 5:16–26, in which Paul tells believers to “walk by the Spirit” (vv. 16, 25) and to be “led by the Spirit” (v. 18). The opening paragraph (vv. 16–18) of this section introduces the passage by setting forth the command and the conflict of the Spirit-led life.The Command

But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh. (5:16) The contrasting themes of the book of Galatians are law and grace, which Paul repeatedly shows are incompatible, either as means of salvation or of sanctification. A person cannot come to God by means of law-keeping nor can he sustain living for God by keeping the law, not even the God-given law of Moses in which the Old Covenant centered. Because no man can perfectly obey it, the law has never been, and was never intended to be, a means of salvation. It was given by God to reveal God’s holy standards and to make men despair of their own failing human efforts at pleasing Him, thus driving them to Jesus Christ, who alone by grace can make them acceptable to the Father. Through the law, “the Scripture has shut up all men under sin, that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe” (Gal. 3:22). The law was never meant to be a savior, but only a tutor to lead men to the Savior (v. 24). The believer has no use for the law as a means of salvation, because through Christ he has already been saved and adopted into God’s heavenly household as a son (Gal. 3:26). Nor does he need the governmental system of law to guide him in his new life, because he has Christ’s own Spirit as his permanent, indwelling Guide. In fact, the more a believer attempts to force himself to live by rules and regulations, no matter how lofty they may be, the more he stifles the work of the Holy Spirit. Although Bible study, prayer, worship, witnessing, and certain behavior standards are commanded of believers and are essential to faithful Christian living, spirituality cannot be measured by how often or how intensely we are involved in such things. To use them as measures of spirituality is to become entrapped in legalism, whose only significance is in the outward, the visible, the humanly measurable. To live solely by a set of laws is to live by the flesh in self-righteousness and hypocrisy and to suppress the Spirit, who alone is able inwardly to produce works of true righteousness. Holiness comes only from the Holy Spirit. Holy living does not come from our performance for God but from His performance through us by His own Spirit. Holy living is “to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man” as we are “filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 3:16; 5:18). All a believer absolutely needs to live a holy life according to the will of God is the Holy Spirit, who is given to him the moment he believes (Rom. 8:9). Even the newest, most untaught Christian is indwelt by God’s own resident Teacher and Strengthener. Although the Spirit uses Scripture to assist believers to grow in truth and holiness, He Himself is the supreme source of those virtues (cf. Col. 3:16). Only pride or ignorance could lead a believer to live by an outward list of rules and commands in his own limited and sinful power when he can live by the perfect and fully sufficient inner power of the Holy Spirit. Yet that is what many believers in the Galatian churches were trying to do, and what many believers since that time have also endeavored to do. The fact that peripateō (walk) is used here in the present tense indicates that Paul is speaking of continuous, regular action, in other words, a habitual way of life. And the fact that the verb is also in the imperative mood indicates he is not giving believers an option but a command. Among other things, walking implies progress, going from where one is to where he ought to be. As a believer submits to the Spirit’s control, he moves forward in his spiritual life. Step by step the Spirit moves him from where he is toward where God wants him to be. So while it is the Spirit who is the source of all holy living, it is the believer who is commanded to walk. This is the apparent paradox of the divine and human that is seen in salvation (John 6:35–40), in Scripture inspiration (cf.1 John 1:1–3 with 2 Pet. 1:19–21), in eternal security (cf. Rom. 8:31–39 with Col. 1:21–23), and even in ministry (Col. 1:28–29). In emphasizing the central work of the Holy Spirit in the believer’s life, some Christians have lost the tension between the human and the divine and have taught the idea suggested in such popular expressions as “Let go and let God” and “the surrendered life.” Rightly used, such expressions can be helpful. If they are understood to mean letting go of one’s own resources and self-will and surrendering to God’s truth and power, the idea is scriptural. But if, as is often the case, they are used to teach the idea that Christian living is little more than passive submission and yieldedness to God, they are contrary to all the militant terms and commands for great effort and commitment that pervade the New Testament (1 Cor. 9:24–27; Heb. 12:1–3). If human will and actions did not play a direct and aggressive part in the Christian life, the New Testament would contain only this one instruction for believers: walk by the Spirit. Every other command would be superfluous. That is essentially the theology of what is often called quietism, of which the old Quakers were the best-known advocates. The Keswick tradition, the preaching of the famous evangelist Charles Finney, and Hannah Whitall Smith’s The Christian’s Secret of a Happy Life also reflect a strong quietistic orientation. Passive surrender to God is taught to the almost total exclusion of human volition and action. Many advocates of a moderate quietistic approach have been godly saints and greatly used by the Lord. But the unbalanced emphasis of their teaching tends to inhibit rather than enhance the work of the Spirit. It runs the danger of underplaying, if not actually contradicting, the many other New Testament commands to believers besides that of submitting to the Holy Spirit. The power for Christian living is entirely from the Holy Spirit, just as the power of salvation is entirely in Jesus Christ. But both in the justifying work of Christ and in the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit, man’s will is active and commitment is called for.The Christian is not to sit on the sidelines, as it were, and simply watch the Holy Spirit do battle for him. He is called to consider himself “to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus,” to refuse to let “sin reign in [his] mortal body,” to resist presenting “the members of [his] body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness,” and rather to present them “as instruments of righteousness to God” (Rom. 6:11–13). “Let us not lose heart in doing good,” Paul says later in this letter, “for in due time we shall reap if we do not grow weary. So then, while we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Gal. 6:9–10). The believer who is led by the Holy Spirit must be willing to go where the Spirit guides him and do what the Spirit leads him to do. To claim surrender to the Holy Spirit but not be personally involved in God’s work is to call Jesus, “Lord, Lord,” and not do what He says (Luke 6:46).Though most often referring to an evil lust, the word epithurnia can refer to a strong, compelling desire of any sort, good or evil. Jesus used the word to express His intent to eat the Passover meal with His disciples (Luke 22:15), and Paul used it to express his longing “to depart and be with Christ, for that is much better” (Phil. 1:23). In this verse it is employed in relation to the evil will of the flesh bent on damnation. In verse 17 the term is used both in relation to the evil will of the flesh and in relation to the holy will of the Spirit. To walk by the Spirit and thereby not carry out the desire of the flesh articulates the same principle as to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Rom. 13:14). To walk by the Spirit is to “behave properly as in the day,” whereas to carry out the desire of the flesh involves such things as “carousing, … drunkenness, … sexual promiscuity and sensuality, … strife and jealousy” (v. 13). The two behaviors are mutually exclusive, so that at all times in our Christian lives we are either walking by the Spirit or are functioning in fleshly desire, but never both at the same time. The life walked by the Spirit is the Christlike life, the saturation of a believer’s thoughts with the truth, love, and glory of His Lord and the desire to be like Him in every way. It is to live in continual consciousness of His presence and will, letting “the word of Christ richly dwell within you” (Col. 3:16). Life walked by the Spirit is life patterned after the teaching and example of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a life whose constant, overriding desire is to “be found in Him, not having a righteousness of [its] own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith” and the desire to “know Him, and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings” (Phil. 3:9–10). Surely, it is no different from being “filled with the Spirit” (Eph. 5:18), a phrase referring to the controlling power exerted by the Spirit on a willing Christian. The Conflict

For the flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; for these are in opposition to one another, so that you may not do the things that you please. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. (5:17–18) Along with many others in the New Testament, these two verses make it obvious that walking by the Spirit is not simply a matter of passive surrender. The Spirit-led life is a life of conflict, because it is in constant combat with the old ways of the flesh that continue to tempt and seduce the believer. The flesh sets its desire against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. It should be noted that the flesh is the term Paul often uses to describe what remains of the “old man” after a person is saved. It refers to unredeemed humanness, the part of a believer that awaits future redemption at the time of his glorification (Rom. 8:23). Until then he has a redeemed self (cf. Gal. 2:20) living in an unredeemed humanness, and that creates great conflict. Paul himself, like every other believer, faced that constant struggle with the flesh, as he confesses in his letter to the Romans. For I know that nothing good dwell-s in me, that is, in my flesh; for the wishing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I wish, I do not do; but I practice the very evil that I do not wish. … I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wishes to do good. For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind, and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members. (Rom. 7:18–19, 21–23) This specific usage of sarx (flesh) is set among several other usages in the New Testament. The term occasionally refers to the physical body, in particular to the muscle, skin, and other tissues that cover the skeleton, as well as to general humanness. It was in that sense that Jesus used the word when He told His disciples after His resurrection, “See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have” (Luke 24:39) and when He said, “The flesh is weak” (Matt. 26:41). Sarx is also used to comprehensively describe the state of the unsaved, those who are “in the flesh” and thus totally under the control of sinful passions (Rom. 7:5). As such, “flesh” is generally used in a figurative, theological sense, referring to man’s fallen nature, his unredeemed self. When speaking of “Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh” (Rom. 4:1), Paul was not referring to the racial lineage of Jews. In this context he was contrasting those people, whether Jew or Gentile, who are spiritually descended from Abraham-either “according to the flesh” (that is, before Abraham trusted in God) or according to his faith, by which he became “the father of all who believe” (v.11). In the present text and others, flesh also relates to the moral and spiritual weakness and helplessness of human nature still clinging to redeemed souls, such as that mentioned by Paul in Romans 7 and quoted above (cf. Rom. 6:19). The flesh of Christians is their propensity to sin, their fallen humanness that awaits redemption, in which the new and holy creation dwell-s (cf. Gal. 2:20; 2 Cor. 5:17). The flesh is that part of a believer that functions apart from and against the Spirit. It stands against the work of the Spirit in the believer’s new heart. The unsaved person often regrets the sinful things he does because of guilt and/or painful consequences, but he has no spiritual warfare going on within him, because he has only a fleshly nature and is devoid of the Spirit. The sinful things he does, though often disappointing and disgusting to him, are nevertheless consistent with his basic nature as an enemy of God (Rom. 5:10) and a child of His wrath (Eph. 2:3). He therefore has no real internal conflict beyond whatever conscience may remain in his sinful state. It is only in the lives of believers that the Spirit can fight against the flesh, because it is only in believers that the Spirit dwells. Only a believer can truthfully say, “I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind” (Rom. 7:22–23). Only in believers are the unredeemed flesh and the Spirit living in the redeemed self in opposition to one another, so that believers may not do the things that they please. Believers do not always do what they wish to do. There are those moments in every Christian’s experience when the wishing is present but the doing is not. The Spirit often halts what our flesh desires, and the flesh often overrides the will that comes from the Spirit. It is no surprise that this frustrating conflict led Paul to exclaim, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” (Rom. 7:24). Although the Christian life is warfare, it is warfare in which victory is always possible. In His high priestly prayer Jesus spoke of the authority His Father had given Him “over all mankind” (lit., “all flesh,” from sarx; John 17:2). Every believer has the indwelling power of God’s own Spirit to do battle with his own weak and sinful flesh, in order that he may not do the things that please his flesh. In Romans 8:2, the apostle wrote: “the law of the Spirit … has set you free from the law of sin and of death.” In other words, a third party is key to the conflict: between the new creation and the flesh-the Holy Spirit. He energizes the new inner man for victory over his flesh. As sons of God and servants of Jesus Christ, believers “are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh-for if [they] are living according to the flesh, [they] must die; but if by the Spirit [they] are putting to death the deeds of the body, [they] will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God” (Rom. 8:12–14). “The Spirit also helps our weakness” when praying, Paul assures us; “for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (v. 26). As already mentioned, the most effective way for a Christian to oppose the desires and deeds of the flesh is to starve them to death, to “make no provision for the flesh in regard to its lusts” (Rom. 13:14). The surest way to fall into a sin is to allow oneself to be in situations where there is temptation to it. On the other hand, the safest way to avoid a sin is to avoid situations that are likely to pose temptations to it. A believer should “consider the members of [his] earthly body as dead to immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed, which amount to idolatry” (Col. 3:5). When our Lord told us to pray, “Do not lead us into temptation” (Matt. 6:13), He revealed that there is a part to sinful temptation that we must avoid. A believer who is not actively involved in resisting evil and obviously seeking to do good is not being led by the Spirit, no matter how much he may think he is “surrendered.” The faithful believer is not an observer but “a good soldier of Christ Jesus” who is engaged in the “active service” of his Lord (2 Tim. 2:23–4).The faithful believer is also compared to an athlete. Paul commands Christians to “run in such a way that [they] may win” and to exercise serf-control. He speaks of himself as running “in such a way, as not without aim,” of boxing “in such a way, as not beating the air,” and of buffeting his body to make it his slave (1 Cor. 9:24–27). A believer can accomplish nothing for the Lord in his own power, but, on the other hand, the Spirit can accomplish little through a believer apart from the believer’s submission and commitment. The opposite extreme of quietism is traditionally labelled “pietism,” in which a believer legalistically strives in his own power to do everything the Lord commands of him. There the emphasis is overbalanced on the side of discipline, self-effort, and personal diligence. In his second epistle, Peter beautifully explains the true balance of the Christian life. According to “His divine power [God] has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, in order that by them you might become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust” (2 Pet. 1:3–4). That is God’s commitment, in the power of which the believer’s commitment should be to apply all diligence and in faith to supply moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, and godliness (vv. 5–6). It is not a matter of “All of Him and none of us,” as the popular saying has it; and it is certainly not a matter of all of us and none of Him. It is the balance of our yieldedness and commitment with the Spirit’s guidance and power. “Work out your salvation with fear and trembling,” Paul says; “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12). The mystery of this perfect and paradoxical balance cannot be fully understood or explained, but it can be fully experienced. As a repeated warning to believers who were being influenced by the Judaizers, Paul added, But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the Law. To live under the Law is to live by the flesh, even when one is not actually committing sin, because that is the only avenue available to the legalist. The flesh is powerless to fulfill the Law, and the Law is powerless to conquer the flesh. Rather, “sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin is dead. And I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive, and I died; and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me; for sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, deceived me, and through it killed me” (Rom. 7:8–11). In his Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan describes Interpreter’s house, which Pilgrim entered during the course of his journey to the Celestial City. The parlor of the house was completely covered with dust, and when a man took a broom and started to sweep, he and the others in the room began to choke from the great clouds of dust that were stirred up. The more vigorously he swept, the more suffocating the dust became. Then Interpreter ordered a maid to sprinkle the room with water, with which the dust was quickly washed away. Interpreter explained to Pilgrim that the parlor represented the heart of an unsaved man, that the dust was original sin, the man with the broom was the law, and the maid with the water was the gospel. His point was that all the law can do with sin is to stir it up. Only the gospel of Jesus Christ can wash it away. “The power of sin is the law,” Paul declares; “but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 15:56). To be led by the Spirit is the same as walking by Him (vv. 16, 25) but carries additional emphasis on His leadership. We do not walk along with Him as an equal, but follow His leading as our sovereign, divine Guide. “For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God,” Paul says (Rom. 8:14). The converse is also true: Those who are sons of God are led by the Spirit of God. Believers do not need to pray for the Spirit’s leading, because He is already doing that. They need to seek for willingness and obedience to follow His leading. When Christ enters a person’s life, the Holy Spirit enters simultaneously (cf.Rom. 8:9). And the moment He enters He begins to lead God’s newborn child in the way of freedom (Gal. 5:1), holiness (5:16), truth (John 16:13–15), fruitfulness (Gal. 5:22–23), access to God in prayer (Eph. 2:18), assurance (Rom. 8:16), witnessing (Acts 1:8), and submissive joy (Eph. 5:18–21). No wonder Paul rejoiced that “what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the requirement of the Law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit” (Rom. 8:3–4).

#7 Galatians 5:22-23

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. (5:22–23)

What does a Spirit filled life look like? When you see the fruit you know the Spirit is present, even if you can’t see Him

Contrasted with the deeds of the flesh is the fruit of the Spirit. Deeds of the flesh are done by a person’s own efforts, whether he is saved or unsaved. The fruit of the Spirit, on the other hand, is produced by God’s own Spirit and only in the lives of those who belong to Him through faith in Jesus Christ. The spiritual behavior of walking by the Spirit (v. 16) has the negative effect of causing the believer to put away the habitual, ongoing evil deeds of the flesh and positively causes him to bear the good fruit produced by the Spirit. The first contrast between the deeds of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit is that the products of the flesh are plural, whereas the product of the Spirit is singular. Although Paul does not mention the truth here, there is also a contrast between the degrees to which the deeds and the fruit are produced. A given person may habitually practice only one or two, or perhaps a half dozen, of the sins Paul mentions here. But it would be practically impossible for one person to be habitually active in all of them. The fruit of the Spirit, on the other hand, is always produced completely in every believer, no matter how faintly evidenced its various manifestations may be. The Bible has much to say about fruit, which is mentioned some 106 times in the Old Testament and 70 times in the New. Even under the covenant of law, a believer produced good fruit only by God’s power, not his own. “From Me comes your fruit,” the Lord declared to ancient Israel (Hos. 14:8). In the New Testament such things as praise of the Lord (Heb. 13:15), winning converts to Christ (1 Cor. 16:15), and godly work in general (Col. 1:10) are spoken of as spiritual fruit produced through believers. But such action fruit must come from attitude fruit, and that is the kind of fruit Paul focuses on in Galatians 5:22–23. If those attitudes are characteristic of a believer’s life, the fruit of active good works will inevitably follow. The Spirit never fails to produce some fruit in a believer’s life, but the Lord desires “much fruit” (John 15:8). As an unredeemed person, possessing only a fallen, sinful nature will inevitably manifest that nature in “the deeds of the flesh” (v.19), so a believer, possessing a redeemed new nature will inevitably manifest that new nature in the fruit of the Spirit. But it is always possible for the believer to bear and manifest more fruit if he is receptive to the Spirit. The Spirit’s provision of fruit might be compared to a man standing on a ladder in an orchard, picking the fruit and dropping it into a basket held by a helper below. No matter how much fruit is picked and dropped, the helper will not receive any unless he is standing under the ladder with his basket ready. The fruit of the Spirit is the outward indicator of salvation. A believer’s sonship to God and citizenship in His kingdom (cf. v. 21) are manifested by the fruit the Spirit produces in his life. “You will know [men] by their fruits,” Jesus said. “Grapes are not gathered from thorn bushes, nor figs from thistles, are they? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit; but the bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot produce bad fruit, nor can a bad tree produce good fruit” (Matt. 7:16–18). In verses 22–23 Paul lists nine representative characteristics of the godly fruit produced by the Holy Spirit in a believer’s life. Although many attempts have been made to categorize these nine virtues in various groupings, most such schemes seem artificial and irrelevant. Whether or not satisfactory classifications of them can be made, it is important to remember that these are multiple characteristics of but one fruit and are therefore inextricably related to one another. They are not produced nor can they be manifested in isolation from each other. Rather paradoxically, all of the nine manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit are also commanded of believers in the New Testament. Also in every case, Jesus can be seen to be the supreme example and the Holy Spirit to be the source. Love. The first characteristic of spiritual fruit is love, the supreme virtue of Christian living (1 Cor. 13:13). Some commentators insist that in this context love is a synonym for fruit and therefore encompasses the other characteristics in the list. In any case, love is clearly dominant. As Paul has just declared, “the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’” (Gal. 5:14; cf.Rom. 13:10). Agapē love is the form of love that most reflects personal choice, referring not simply to pleasant emotions or good feelings but to willing, self-giving service. “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8). In the same way, the most extreme sacrificial choice a loving person can make is to “lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). The apostle John expresses those two truths together in his first letter: “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren” (1 John 3:16). But love is tested long before it is called on to offer that supreme sacrifice. As John goes on to say, “Whoever has the world’s goods, and beholds his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?” (v.17). A person who thing his love is great enough to sacrifice his life for fellow believers but who fails to help them when they have less extreme needs is simply fooling himself. True agapē love is a sure mark of salvation. “We know that we have passed out of death into life,” John says, “because we love the brethren … Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God” (1 John 3:14; 4:7). By the same token, as John repeatedly makes clear throughout the same letter, having a habitually unloving spirit toward fellow Christians is reason for a person to question his salvation (see e.g., 2:9, 11; 3:15; 4:8, 20).Jesus Christ is the supreme example of this supreme virtue. It was not only the Father’s love but also His own love that led Jesus to lay down His life for us, demonstrating with His own self-sacrifice the love that gives its life for its friends. And before He made the ultimate sacrifice, He demonstrated the same self-giving love in many lesser ways. As Jesus saw Mary and the others weeping because of Lazarus’s death, He, too, wept (John 11:33–35). He did not grieve for the fact that Lazarus had died, because He purposely delayed coming to Bethany until His dear friend was dead, in order to demonstrate His power to raise him from the grave. Jesus wept because of the great evil, destruction, and human misery caused by sin, whose final wages is always death (Rom. 6:23).For believers, love is not an option but a command. “Walk in love,” Paul declared, “just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Eph. 5:2). Yet the command cannot be fulfilled apart from the Holy Spirit, the source of this and all the other manifestations of spiritual fruit. “The love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us,” Paul explained to Roman believers (Rom. 5:5), and it was for such “love in the Spirit” that he gave thanks for the believers in Colossae (Col. 1:8). Joy. The second manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit is joy. Chara (joy) is used some 70 times in the New Testament, always to signify a feeling of happiness that is based on spiritual realities. Joy is the deep-down sense of well-being that abides in the heart of the person who knows all is well between himself and the Lord. It is not an experience that comes from favorable circumstances or even a human emotion that is divinely stimulated. It is God’s gift to believers. As Nehemiah declared, “The joy of the Lord is your strength” (Neh. 8:10). Joy is a part of God’s own nature and Spirit that He manifests in His children.Speaking of how we feel about the Lord Jesus Christ, Peter wrote, “Though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory” (1 Pet. 1:8). Joy is the inevitable overflow of receiving Jesus Christ as Savior and of the believer’s knowing His continuing presence.Joy not only does not come from favorable human circumstances but is sometimes greatest when those circumstances are the most painful and severe. Shortly before His arrest and crucifixion, Jesus told His disciples, “Truly, truly, I say to you, that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned to joy” (John 16:20). To illustrate that truth Jesus compared divine joy to a woman in childbirth. “She has sorrow, because her hour has come; but when she gives birth to the child, she remembers the anguish no more, for joy that a child has been born into the world. Therefore you too now have sorrow; but I will see you again, and your heart will rejoice, and no one takes your joy away from you” (vv. 21–22).God’s joy is full, complete in every way. Nothing human or circumstantial can add to it or detract from it. But it is not fulfilled in a believer’s life except through reliance on and obedience to the Lord. “Ask, and you will receive,” Jesus went on to explain, “that your joy may be made full” (John 16:24). One of John’s motivations in writing his first epistle was that his joy might “be made complete” (1 John 1:4). Jesus Himself is again our supreme example. He was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief” (Isa. 53:3; cf. Luke 18:31–33), but, just as He had promised for His disciples, His sorrow was turned into joy. “For the joy set before Him [He] endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb. 12:2). Despite the misunderstanding, the rejection, the hatred, and the pain He endured from men while incarnate among them, the Lord never lost His joy in the relationship He had with His Father. And that joy He gives to each of His followers. Although joy is a gift of God through His Spirit to those who belong to Christ, it is also commanded of them “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!” Paul commands (Phil. 4:4; cf.3:1). Because joy comes as a gift from Him, the command obviously is not for believers to manufacture or try to imitate it. The command is to gratefully accept and revel in this great blessing they already possess. “For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 14:17). Peace. If joy speaks of the exhilaration of heart that comes from being right with God, then peace (eirēnē) refers to the tranquility of mind that comes from that saving relationship. The verb form has to do with binding together and is reflected in the modern expression “having it all together.” Everything is in place and as it ought to be. Like joy, peace has no relationship to circumstances. Christians know “that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (Rom. 8:28). Because God is in control of all aspects of a believer’s life, how his circumstances may appear from a human perspective makes no ultimate difference. That is why Jesus could say without qualification to those who trust in Him, “Let not your heart be troubled” (John 14:1). There is absolutely no reason for a believer to be anxious or afraid. Jesus was the Prince of Peace, both in the sense that He was supremely peaceful Himself and in the sense that He dispenses His peace to those who are His. Even when He confronted Satan face-to-face in the wilderness, Jesus had perfect peace, knowing His heavenly Father was continually with Him and would supply His every need (Matt. 4:1–11). It is His own peace that He bequeaths to His disciples: “Peace I leave with you; My peace I give to you; not as the world gives, do I give to you” (John 14:27). “The things you have learned and received and heard and seen in me, practice these things,” Paul said; “and the God of peace shall be with you” (Phil. 4:9). Because they have the God of peace in their hearts, believers need “be anxious for nothing,” having “the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, [to] guard [their] hearts and [their] minds in Christ Jesus” (v. 6–7). Patience. Makrothumia (patience) has to do with tolerance and long-suffering that endure injuries inflicted by others, the calm willingness to accept situations that are irritating or painful. God Himself is “slow to anger” (Ps. 86:15) and expects His children to be the same. Just as believers should never “think lightly of the riches of [God’s own] kindness and forbearance and patience” (Rom. 2:4), they should themselves manifest those attributes of their heavenly Father. In the last days, arrogant unbelievers will taunt Christians by asking, “Where is the promise of [Christ’s] coming? For ever since the fathers fell asleep, all continues just as it was from the beginning of creation” (2 Pet. 3:4). In their sin-darkened minds unbelievers will fail to see that, just as in the days of Noah, when God patiently delayed the Flood in order to give men more time to repent (1 Pet. 3:20), it is also because of His merciful patience that He forestalls Christ’s second coming and the accompanying judgment on unbelievers, “not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Paul confessed that, as the foremost of sinners, he found mercy in God’s sight “in order that in [him] as the foremost, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience, as an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life” (1 Tim. 1:15–16). Believers are commanded to emulate their Lord’s patience. “As those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved,” they are to “put on a heart of … patience” (Col. 3:12), especially with fellow believers, “showing forbearance to one another in love” (Eph. 4:2). Like Timothy, all Christian teachers and leaders are to minister “with great patience” (2 Tim. 4:2). Kindness. Chrēstotēs (kindness) relates to tender concern for others. It has nothing to do with weakness or lack of conviction but is the genuine desire of a believer to treat others gently, just as the Lord treats him. Paul reminded the Thessalonians that, even though he was an apostle, he “proved to be gentle among [them], as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children” (1 Thess. 2:6–7). Jesus’ kindness is the believer’s example. When “some children were brought to Him so that He might lay His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them … Jesus said, ‘Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these’” (Matt. 19:13–14). On another occasion He said, “Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble in heart; and you shall find rest for your souls” (Matt. 11:28–29). Just as their Lord is kind, His servants are commanded not to “be quarrelsome, but [to] be kind to all” (2 Tim. 2:24). And just as He does with all the other manifestations of His divine fruit, the Holy Spirit gives God’s children kindness (2 Cor. 6:6). Goodness. Agathos (goodness) has to do with moral and spiritual excellence that is known by its sweetness and active kindness. Paul helped define this virtue when he observed that “one will hardly die for a righteous man; though perhaps for the good man someone would dare even to die” (Rom. 5:7). A Christian can be morally upright but still not manifest the grace of goodness. He may be admired and respected for his high moral standards and might even have a friend who would risk his life for him. But the upright person who also has goodness is much more likely to have serf-sacrificing friends.Joseph was such a righteous and good man. When he learned that Mary was pregnant but did not yet know it was by the Holy Spirit, “being a righteous man” he could not bring himself to marry her, assuming she had been unfaithful. But being also a good man, he could not bear the thought of disgracing his beloved Mary and therefore “desired to put her away secretly” (Matt. 1:19).David had a deep understanding of God’s goodness, as he repeatedly reveals in his psalms. “Surely goodness and loving-kindness will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever,” he rejoiced (Ps. 23:6). He confessed that he would, in fact, “have despaired unless [he] had believed that [he] would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Ps. 27:13).As with every grace the Spirit provides, believers are, commanded to exemplify goodness. Later in the letter Paul exhorts, “While we have opportunity, let us do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Gal. 6:10). “To this end also we pray for you always,” he wrote to the Thessalonians, “that our God may count you worthy of your calling, and fulfill every desire for goodness and the word of faith with power” (2 Thess. 1:11).Faithfulness. Pistis (faithfulness) is the manifestation of the fruit of the Spirit that pertains to loyalty and trustworthiness. Jeremiah declared that “the Lord’s loving-kindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Thy faithfulness” (Lam. 3:22).Because Jesus was faithful, He “emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” And because of the Son’s faithfulness, the Father “highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name” (Phil. 2:7–9).And as He was faithful when He came to earth the first time, He will be faithful to come again “in just the same way as you have watched Him go into heaven” (Acts 1:11). “Faithful is He who calls you,” Paul said, “and He also will bring it to pass” (1 Thess. 5:24). In his great vision on Patmos, John saw Christ seated on “a white horse, and He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True” (Rev. 19:11).The “servants of Christ, and stewards of the mysteries of God” are to be like their Lord in being “found trustworthy” (1 Cor. 4:1–2). “Be faithful unto death,” the Lord assures His followers, “and I will give you the crown of life” (Rev. 2:10).Gentleness. Prautēs includes the idea of gentleness, but is usually better translated meekness. In his helpful volume Synonyms of the New Testament, R. C. Trench writes that prautēs does not consist in a person’s “outward behavior only; nor yet in his relations to his fellow-men; as little in his mere natural disposition. Rather it is an inwrought grace of the soul; and the exercises of it are first and chiefly towards God. It is that temper of spirit in which we accept His dealings with us as good, and therefore without disputing or resisting” (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1953). It is that humble and gentle attitude that is patiently submissive in every offense, while being free of any desire for revenge or retribution.Of the nine characteristics of the fruit of the Spirit, this one and the one following do not apply to God as God. The Old Testament never refers to God as being meek, and in the New Testament only the Son is spoken of as meek, and that only in His incarnation.In the New Testament prautēs is used to describe three attitudes: submissiveness to the will of God (Col. 3:12), teachableness (James 1:21), and consideration of others (Eph. 4:2).Although He was God, while He lived on earth as the Son of Man, Jesus was “gentle [prautēs] and humble in heart” (Matt. 11:29; cf. 21:5; 2 Cor. 10:1). Like their Lord, believers are to actively pursue meekness and gentleness (1 Tim. 6:11) and to wear them like a garment (Col. 3:12).Self-control. Enkrateia (serf-control) has reference to restraining passions and appetites. As with meekness, however, this grace does not apply to God, who obviously does not need to restrain Himself. “For I, the Lord, do not change,” He informs us (Mal. 3:6). In His eternal being, the Lord “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever” (Heb. 13:8). Perfect holiness possesses perfect control.But in His incarnation Christ was the epitome of self-control. He was never tempted or tricked into doing or saying anything that was not consistent with His Father’s will and His own divine nature. Again like Jesus, believers should “exercise self-control in all things” (1 Cor. 9:25; cf. 7:9), “applying all diligence, in [their] faith [to] supply … self-control” (2 Pet. 1:5–6). Against such things there is no law, Paul says. Even unbelievers do not make laws against such things as those which the fruit of the Spirit produces. The world does not make laws against such behavior, but generally prizes it. Even if some consider such things to be signs of weakness, they cannot escape recognizing that they are never harmful. There is certainly no law of God against such things, because those are the very virtues He wants all men to have and that He gives to them when they put their trust in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. “For if these qualities are yours and are increasing,” Peter explains in regard to a similar list of virtues, “they render you neither useless nor unfruitful in the true knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 1:8).The believer who walks in the Spirit and manifests His fruit does not need a system of law to produce the right attitudes and behavior-hey rise from within him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

#8 Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. (5:24–25)

All persons who belong to Christ Jesus by faith in Him and His perfect saving work have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Have crucified the flesh is a strategic statement to grasp, because crucifixion was a means of execution. All but four uses of the term in the New Testament refer to the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. Three of the exceptions help in understanding the fourth, which is in the present text. The first of the three is in the book of Romans, where Paul affirms that at the time of our justification, “our old self was crucified with [Christ]” (Rom 6:6). The other two are in Galatians, one before and one after the present text. The apostle says, “I have been crucified with Christ” (2:20), and, near the end of the epistle, asserts that “the world has been crucified to me” (6:14). In each of those three passages, “crucified” is simply a vivid and dramatic way to say “killed,” or “executed.” In the first two passages Paul is teaching that at salvation his old, sinful, unregenerate self was executed and he was born a new man in Christ Jesus. In the third passage he is saying that the world has been executed and is now dead to him, so that it is no longer his master, holding him in bondage. He is therefore now free to serve the Lord. Obviously, in none of those passages does Paul mean to imply that the crucifixion analogy carries the idea of total death, in which all influence ceases. Sin was still a reality in his life, and so was the temptation of the world. But there was a sense in which the power of the old self and of the world was broken. Those influences no longer dominated him. In the text of Galatians 5:24, Paul is saying that the flesh has been executed. But how could that be in light of what he has just said in this chapter about believers having a constant war with the ever-present flesh? In what sense is the flesh killed at conversion? It cannot be in the actual, complete, present sense or it would contradict the reality of the continual spiritual conflict with the flesh indicated here and in Romans 7:14–25. And it cannot be that Paul has some future sense in mind or he would have used a future verb form, saying, “shall crucify the flesh,” referring to the time of glorification. The best understanding is to see have crucified as an allusion to the cross of Jesus Christ, which, as a past event, fits the aorist tense used here by Paul. It looks back to the cross, the time at which the death of the flesh was actually accomplished. Yet, because we are still alive on the earth and still possess our humanness, we have not yet entered into the future fullness of that past event. Meanwhile, the flesh with its passions (or affections) and desires is dead in the sense of no longer reigning over us or of holding us in inescapable bondage. Like a chicken with its head cut off, the flesh has been dealt a death blow, although it continues to flop around the barnyard of earth until the last nerve is stilled. Because the flesh is defeated forever, and we now live in the realm where Christ reigns over us by His Spirit, we should live according to the Spirit and not the flesh. Because believers have new life in Jesus Christ, they should also have a new way of life. If we live by the Spirit, and we do, Paul says, let us also walk by the Spirit, as we must. He earnestly prayed that the Colossian Christians would “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to please Him in all respects, bearing fruit in every good work. … As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in Him, having been firmly rooted and now being built up in Him and established in your faith” (Col. 1:10; 2:6–7; cf. Eph. 4:1; 1 Thess. 2:12).

#9 For the one who sows to his own flesh shall from the flesh reap corruption, but the one who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. (6:8)

The Christian has only two “fields” in which he can sow, that of his own flesh and that of the Spirit. As has been stated, the flesh refers to the believer’s uncleansed humanness, which awaits the day of glorification (Rom. 8:23). But in the meanwhile it can produce all manner of selfish, fleshly desires that are contrary to God’s will and standards and are expressed in everything from blatant immorality to cold indifference to the things of the Lord. The flesh is the residence of sin that still remains in a believer’s life (Rom. 7:18). The person who sows to his own flesh panders to its evil desires instead of letting the Spirit subdue it. He submits to its passions instead of overcoming it. The particular sin that Paul addresses so strongly throughout this letter is the sin of legalism, particularly that of the heretical Judaizers, who undermined the gospel of grace by placing human works between Christ’s sacrifice and man’s salvation. Because that sin was so centered in the flesh, it led to countless other sins. It turned believers back to their own resources and power, in which they could do nothing but stumble from one trespass to another, producing only the deeds of the flesh (see 5:19–21; 6:1). Corruption is from phthora, which refers to degeneration, going from better to worse. It was sometimes used of decaying food, which turns from that which is beneficial to that which is harmful. The deeds of the flesh are always corruptive and can only make a person progressively worse. The ultimate corruption is eternal death, the wages of sin (Rom. 6:23). Although his trust in Christ saves him from spiritual death, a sinning believer can nevertheless reap corruption, suffering physical death and many other tragic earthly consequences, as did some of the unrepentant Corinthians (1 Cor. 11:30). The British evangelical leader John R. W. Stott has written, “Every time we allow our mind to harbor a grudge, nurse a grievance, entertain an impure fancy, wallow in self-pity, we are sowing to the flesh. Every time we linger in bad company whose insidious influence we know we cannot resist, every time we lie in bed when we ought to be up and praying, every time we read pornographic literature, every time we take a risk that strains our self-control we are sowing, sowing, sowing, to the flesh”. On the other hand, the believer who sows to the Spirit shall from the Spirit reap eternal life. The Christian who is preoccupied with the things of God rather than the fleshly things of the world will produce the fruit of the Spirit (5:22–23). To sow to the Spirit is the same as to walk by the Spirit (5:16), to be led by the Spirit (5:18), and to be filled with the Spirit (Eph. 5:18). It is the same as abiding in Christ and in His Word and having His words abide in us (John 8:31; 15:7). It is the same as walking in Christ (Col. 2:6) and setting one’s “mind on the things above, not on the things that are on earth” (3:2). It is the same as giving one’s body as “a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God,” and not being “conformed to this world, but [being] transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:1–2). The product of sowing to the Spirit is eternal life. It is not that only Spirit-filled believers go to heaven. Every believer goes to heaven because every believer is forever a child of God and a citizen of God’s kingdom.

Throughout Scripture, eternal life refers primarily to quality, not duration. The believer begins participating in eternal life the moment he trusts in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. But just as his life does not always perfectly reflect the righteousness he has before God in Christ, neither does it always perfectly reflect the eternal quality of life he has in Him.Because it is external, no sin in a believer’s life can separate him from eternal life, but any sin in his life corrupts his reflection and enjoyment of that eternal life. That is why some Christians are among the most miserable, unhappy, and wretched of people. A persistently sinning believer can sometimes be more miserable than an unbeliever, simply because his sin is in constant conflict with and warring against his new nature in Christ. The sinning Christian has a battle raging within him that an unbeliever never experiences. The believer who sows to his own flesh does not lose the Spirit, but he loses the fruit of the Spirit, among which are love, joy, peace, and patience (5:22). David did not pray, “Restore my salvation to me,” but, “Restore to me the joy of Thy salvation” (Ps. 51:12). That fruit represents all the blessings of a life sown to the Spirit, life that, in faithfulness and obedience, fully enjoys “every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ” and “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints” (Eph. 1:3, 18).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Crucified

Greek Strongs in G4957 New American Standard Bible: 1995 Update 5 occurrences

Matt 27:44 The robbers who had been   crucified  with Him were also insulting Him with …
Mark 15:32 …may see and believe!” Those who were   crucified  with Him were also insulting Him.
John 19:32 …man and of the other who was   crucified  with Him;
Rom 6:6 …that our old self was   crucified  with Him, in order that our …
Gal 2:20 “I have been   crucified  with Christ; and it is no longer …

G4957: συσταυρόω / systauroō

 Enhanced Strong's Lexicon  WSNTDICT  Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words  Léxico griego-español del Nuevo Testamento  TDNT  DBL Greek  NASB Dictionaries

 Enhanced Strong's Lexicon: 4957 συσταυρόω [sustauroo /soos·tow·ro·o/] v. From 4862 and 4717; TDNT 7:786; TDNTA 1102; GK 5365; Five occurrences; AV translates as “crucify with” five times. 1 to crucify alone with. Additional Information: The death of Christ on the cross has wrought the extinction of our former corruption, by the death of Christ upon the cross I have become utterly estranged from (dead to) my former habit of feeling and action.

 WSNTDICT: 4957. συσταυρόω sustauróō; contracted sustauró̄, fut. sustauró̄, from sún (4862), together with, and stauróō (4717), to crucify. To crucify together with, with the dat., whether bodily (Matt. 27:44; Mark 15:32; John 19:32) or spiritually by mortifying our worldly and fleshly lusts by the cross of Christ (Rom. 6:6; Gal. 2:20). In Rom. 6:6 the verb is in the pass. sunestauró̄thē, indicating that the old man was crucified together with Christ so that sin cannot have preeminence in a believer’s life.

 Vine's Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words:

(συσταυρόω , (4957)), to crucify with (su-, for, sun, with), is used (a) of actual crucifixion in company with another, Matt. 27:44; Mark 15:32; John 19:32; (b) metaphorically, of spiritual identification with Christ in His death, Rom. 6:6, and Gal. 2:20.¶

3.     ANASTAUROŌ (ἀνασταυρόω , (388)) (ana, again) is used in Heb. 6:6 of Hebrew apostates, who as merely nominal Christians, in turning back to Judaism, were thereby virtually guilty of crucifying Christ again.¶

4.     PROSPĒGNUMI (προσπήγνυμι , (4362)), to fix or fasten to anything (pros, to, pēgnumi, to fix), is used of the crucifixion of Christ, Acts 2:23.¶

 Léxico griego-español del Nuevo Testamento: 4957

συσταυρόω. (fut. συσταυρώσω; 1 aor. pas. συνεσταυρώθην; perf. pas. συνεσταύρωμαι). Crucificar juntamente. A) lit.: Mt. 27:44; Mr. 15:32; Jn. 19:32.

B) fig.: Ro. 6:6; Gá. 2:19.

 DBL Greek: 5365 συσταυρόω (systauroō): vb.; ≡ Str 4957; TDNT 7.786—LN 20.78 crucify with; (pass.) be crucified with (Mt 27:44; Mk 15:32; Jn 19:32; Ro 6:6; Gal 2:19+)

 NASB Dictionaries: 4957.     συσταυρόω sustauroō; from 4862 and 4717; to crucify together with:— crucified(5).

BKC - 2:19-20. Paul then distinguished himself from Peter, contrasting what he did with the Law with what Peter did with the Law. Paul described the transformation in a person who has come to God by faith in Christ in terms of a death and a resurrection. The concept is repeated in both verses and the reference in both cases is to a believer’s union with Christ in His death and resurrection. First, Paul stated that through the Law he died to the Law. The Law demanded death for those who broke it, but Christ paid that death penalty for all sinners. Thus the Law killed Him and those joined to Him by faith, freeing them to be joined to another, to live for God (Rom. 7:4). In Galatians 2:20 Paul enlarged on the meaning of verse 19. He “died to the Law” because he was crucified with Christ; he was able “to live for God” because Christ lived in him. Basic to an understanding of this verse is the meaning of union with Christ. This doctrine is based on such passages as Romans 6:1-6 and 1 Corinthians 12:13, which explain that believers have been baptized by the Holy Spirit into Christ and into the church, the body of all true believers. Having been thus united to Christ, believers share in His death, burial, and resurrection. Paul could therefore write, I have been “crucified with Christ” (lit., “I have been and am now crucified with Christ”). This brought death to the Law. It also brought a change in regard to one’s self: and I no longer live. The self-righteous, self-centered Saul died. Further, death with Christ ended Paul’s enthronement of self; he yielded the throne of his life to Another, to Christ. But it was not in his own strength that Paul was able to live the Christian life; the living Christ Himself took up His abode in Paul’s heart: Christ lives in me. Yet Christ does not operate automatically in a believer’s life; it is a matter of living the new life by faith in the Son of God. It is then faith and not works or legal obedience that releases divine power to live a Christian life. This faith, stated Paul, builds on the sacrifice of Christ who loved us and gave Himself for us. In essence Paul affirmed, “If He loved me enough to give Himself for me, then He loves me enough to live out His life in me.” 2:21. Summing up his case against Peter, Paul declared, I do not set aside the grace of God. The clear implication is that Peter and the others who followed him were setting aside God’s grace. The essence of grace is for God to give people what they have not worked for (cf. Rom. 4:4). To insist on justification or sanctification by works is to nullify the grace of God. Further, such insistence on legal obedience also means Christ died for nothing. If righteousness comes by keeping the Law, the Cross was a futile gesture, the biggest mistake in the universe.

JM - 2:19 died to the law. When a person is convicted of a capital crime and executed, the law has no further claim on him. So it is with the Christian who has died in Christ (who paid the penalty for his sins in full) and rises to new life in Him—justice has been satisfied and he is forever free from any further penalty. See Rom. 7:1–6. 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ. See Rom. 6:2–6. When a person trusts in Christ for salvation, he spiritually participates with the Lord in His crucifixion and His victory over sin and death. no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The believer’s old self is dead (Eph. 4:22), having been crucified with Christ (Rom. 6:3, 5). The believer’s new man has the privilege of the indwelling Christ empowering him and living through him (Rom. 8:9, 10). gave Himself for me. The manifestation of Christ’s love for the believer through His sacrificial death on the cross (John 10:17, 18; Rom. 5:6–8; Eph. 5:25–30). 2:21 Paul concluded that Peter, by taking his stand with the Judaizers and thus against Christ, was in effect denying the need for God’s grace and thereby nullifying the benefit of Christ’s death. righteousness. See Rom. 1:17. Christ died in vain. This can be better translated, “Christ died needlessly.” Those who insist they can earn salvation by their own efforts undermine the foundation of Christianity and render unnecessary the death of Christ.

Nelson - 2:17–19 Paul strongly rejects the erroneous conclusion that being justified by faith in Christ actually made Jews sinners, thus painting Christ as a promoter of sin. Those who attempt to be justified through “the works of the law” are “cursed” (3:10). If anyone attempts to reassert the “works of the law” as having any part in justification before God, the law itself convicts that person of being a transgressor (3:19–25). The law itself is not sinful; its purpose is to convince individuals of their personal spiritual deadness in sin outside of faith in Christ (Rom. 7:7–13). 2:20 Paul and every believer were crucified with Christ in order to die to sin, the law, and “this present evil age” (1:4). While believers live on physically, Christ also lives within them spiritually. Christ’s resurrection power through the Spirit is worked out through the Christian (Rom. 6:4–11) who chooses to live by faith in the Son of God. 2:21 If righteousness is attainable through keeping the law of Moses, then God’s gracious act of sending Christ to die on the Cross to pay for sin was unnecessary and useless (Rom. 3:4–26)

Baker - 19. Continued: For I through law died to law. If ever a man could have been saved by strict obedience to law, that man was Paul. He had tried O so hard! Elsewhere he reviews his life before his conversion in these words: “If anyone else imagines that he has reason for confidence in flesh, I (have) more: … as to legal righteousness having become blameless” (Phil. 3:4b–6). So strict had Paul been in his outward observance of the Old Testament law, as interpreted by the Jewish religious leaders, that in the pursuit of this legal rectitude he had become blameless, that is, in human judgment. His outward conduct, even during the days before he was converted to Christ, had been irreproachable. So it had seemed in the eyes of men, but not in the eyes of God! God’s law, after all, demanded much more than the kind of behavior of which Paul’s superiors approved. It demanded nothing less than inward (as well as outward) perfection: loving God with all the heart, soul, mind, and strength, and loving the neighbor as oneself. That standard Paul had been unable to meet. In fact, he had missed the target by far. In the meantime, moreover, the law had not relaxed its demands, nor its threats of punishment, nor its actual flagellations. It had not given Paul the peace with God which he so ardently desired. It had scourged him until, by the marvelous grace of God, he had found Christ (because Christ had first sought and found him!) and peace in him. Thus, through the law he had died to the law. Through the law he had discovered what a great sinner he was, and how utterly incapable in himself of extricating himself from his position of despair and ruin (Rom. 3:20; 7:7). Thus the law had been his custodian to conduct him to Christ (Gal. 3:24). And when by Christ he had been made alive, the law, viewed as being in and by itself a means unto salvation and as a cruel taskmaster who assigns tasks impossible of fulfillment and who lays down rules and regulations endless in their ramifications, had left him cold, dead like a corpse, without any response whatever. The response had been given by Christ! The satisfaction has been rendered by him! Now in all this, God’s wise purpose was being realized. What purpose? Answers Paul: that I might live to God (Rom. 6:11; 14:7; II Cor. 5:15). And what is meant by living to or for God? Negatively, it means: no longer living for self. Positively it indicates: living as God wants me to live; hence, to his glory (I Cor. 10:31), according to his revealed will, his law. It must never be overlooked that in the writings of the apostle the word law—as is true with respect to so many other great words—has more than one meaning. It is not my purpose at this point to present a detailed study of all the various meanings which this word has in Paul’s epistles. That task would be more appropriate in a commentary on Romans. For the present the following must suffice. On the one hand Paul rejoices in the fact that he is not under law (Rom. 6:14, 15; cf. 7:6). He speaks of being delivered from the curse of the law (Gal. 3:13). He describes the law as “the hand-written document that was against us, which by means of its requirements testified against us” (Col. 2:14; Eph. 2:15). And in the chapter now under study—see below—he even states, “If justification (were) through law, then Christ died in vain” (Gal. 2:21). Yet, on the other hand, he also tells us that he is “under law to Christ” (I Cor. 9:2), that he “delights in the law of God according to the inner man” (Rom. 7:22), that “the law is holy, and the commandment holy and righteous and good” (Rom. 7:12), and that love—the very love which is “the greatest of the three greatest” (I Cor. 13:13) —is the fulfilment of the law (Rom. 13:10; Gal. 5:14; 6:2). There is no warrant, therefore, to go to any extreme in denouncing the law. Whenever anything is said in disparagement of law, the concept law must be carefully described. The hue and cry of the present day, to the effect that as Christians “we have nothing whatever to do with the law” has no Scriptural justification at all. It is, in fact, a dangerous slogan, especially in an era of lawlessness!nEven in the passage now under consideration (Gal. 2:19) Paul does not think of law in an altogether negative sense or as something wholly useless. It was through a legal demand (“law”) —the requirement that Paul be perfect—that Paul had died to the demand (“law”), and had been driven to Christ (cf. 3:24). That much good law, at least, had performed. Nevertheless, broadly speaking, it remains true that when Paul in Galatians places salvation by law-works over against salvation by grace (or “justification by faith”), he is using the term law in its definitely unfavorable sense. He is referring to the fact that man endeavors to save himself through his own efforts by means of strict adherence to the law of Moses, buried under a load of human regulations, many of them in direct conflict with the will of God (Matt. 5:43; Mark 7:9–13).

20, 21. Paul has shown that if he were to rebuild the very things—namely, salvation by law-works and everything connected with it—which he had torn down, he would prove himself a transgressor, because he would be doing something that would clash with his deepest convictions based on past experience (verses 18, 19). To this he now (in verses 20, 21) adds that such action would also destroy the meaning of Christ’s death on the cross. In his own experience faith in Christ Crucified has thoroughly replaced confidence in whatever he might have been able to accomplish by means of law-works. That is the connection between verses 20, 21 and the immediately preceding context. Since the closing passage of the chapter has rightly endeared itself to believers of every age, I shall treat it in the manner in which similar most precious texts have been presented in this series of Commentaries, namely, in the form of a theme and a brief outline or summary:

The Riddle of Having Been Crucified with Christ (1). The Riddle Propounded

Paul starts out by saying: I have been crucified with Christ. What a startling assertion! Here is the great apostle to the Gentiles at this love-feast of the Antiochian church. He is addressing an audience the bulk of which consisted of believers both of Gentile and Jewish origin. Peter and Barnabas are in this audience. Undoubtedly some of the men who had come from Jerusalem and who, though nominally confessing Jesus as their Savior, were always making trouble by stressing salvation by obedience to law far more than salvation by grace through faith, had also tarried in Antioch long enough to cause their presence at this particular meeting to be felt. Now in this meeting-place that day there was a situation which at many a get-together would be considered improper, but which without any doubt is highly objectionable in a church, and most emphatically at a love-feast, a religious-social meeting characterized by all or most of the following elements: prayers, sacred songs, the reading and brief exposition of Scripture, eating and drinking together, and partaking of the Lord’s Supper. That deplorable condition was this, that the church-members were cliquing. Segregation was being practiced, yes, right here in the church meeting: Jews eating exclusively with Jews, leaving the Gentile believers no other choice than to eat with other Gentiles. This violation of the principle of the oneness of all believers “in Christ” occurred because undue respect was being accorded to the Judaizers. Peter, who previously had been freely eating with the Gentile believers, had allowed himself to be scared into withdrawing himself from them. He was now seen sitting or reclining in the company of Jews; Barnabas, ditto; and the same was true with respect to the rest of the Jews, as if the cross of Christ had been of no avail in taking down the barrier that had divided Jews and Gentiles!

It is under such circumstances that Paul arises and points to the significance which Christ Crucified had come to assume in his own life. Having first shown that “a man is not justified by law-works”—for example, by rigidly adhering to traditional regulations regarding eating and drinking—, but only through faith in Jesus Christ, the apostle closes his stirring address with the passage which starts out with these ringing words: “I have been crucified with Christ.”Something marvelous had happened to Paul in the past, with abiding significance for the present and for all future time. But what can he mean by this? Must this saying be taken literally? Cases of survival after crucifixion have occurred, but certainly the present context, marked by use of words in an other-than-literal sense (for example, Paul also affirms that he is no longer alive!), cannot be interpreted literally. Are the words to be understood emotionally, perhaps (after the manner in which some explain Phil. 3:10)? Is it Paul’s intention to convey the thought that with mind and heart he had been contemplating the story of Christ’s great love for sinners, shown in his entire sojourn on earth but especially at Calvary, until he (Paul) had at last tearfully arrived at the point of identifying himself with the Great Sufferer, that is, of feeling, in some small degree, what he had felt and undergoing what he had experienced? But though such sharing in Christ’s sufferings, when applied to the heart by the Holy Spirit, so that its boundaries are not overstepped, and its implications as to the sinner’s guilt and his pardon are sanctified to the heart, can be very beneficial, this explanation would fail to do justice to the concrete situation that occasioned this famous testimony. Is it then to be explained forensically, that is, in terms of the law-court? Does Paul mean that he, too, along with all of God’s children, had been declared “Guilty and exposed to the sentence of eternal death,” but that at Calvary, due to Christ’s redemptive suffering as our Substitute and Representative, this sentence had been changed into its very opposite, namely, “Righteous and an heir of eternal life”? Certainly, in such a case the apostle would have had the perfect right to say that he had been crucified along with Christ and also that with Christ he had arisen from the dead. Moreover, this forensic explanation would bring the passage into line with many others (for example, Isa. 53:4–6, 8, 12; Matt. 20:28; Mark 10:45; John 1:29; Gal. 1:4; 3:13; Eph. 2:1, 3, 5, 6; Col. 2:12–14, 20; 3:1; I Tim. 3:6). But even though this meaning may well have been included, does it exhaust the contents of Paul’s remarkable affirmation? Does it solve the riddle, and does it do justice to the present historical, as well as literary, context? No doubt the best procedure is to let Paul be his own interpreter. Accordingly, we proceed to: (2). The Riddle Partly Clarified but Also Partly Intensified

Paul continues: and it is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me. This at least shows that when the apostle said, “I have been crucified with Christ” (literally, according to word order: “With Christ I have been crucified”), he meant that the process of crucifixion had been carried to its conclusion: he had been crucified, abidingly experiences the effects of this crucifixion, and, therefore, he is now no longer alive! But in what sense has he been crucified and is he no longer alive? The answer that suits the present context is this, that Paul is saying: “As a self-righteous Pharisee, who based his hope for eternity on strict obedience to law, I, as a direct result of Christ’s crucifixion, have been crucified and am no longer alive.” That, after all, was exactly the issue here at Antioch! “In order to be saved, is it necessary that, in addition to believing in Christ, we observe the old traditions; particularly, that we adhere to the laws concerning eating and drinking, and that we accordingly separate ourselves from the Gentiles?” That was the question. It is as if the apostle were saying, “I used to be of that persuasion myself. I was ‘as to law a Pharisee, as to legal righteousness blameless’ (Phil. 3:5, 6). But when, by God’s marvelous grace, I was rescued from my sinful folly, then, ‘such things as once were gains to me, these I counted loss for Christ.’ And now I rejoice in no longer having ‘a righteousness of my own, legal righteousness, but that which is through faith in Christ’ (Phil. 3:9). Therefore ‘it is Christ who now lives in me’: it is from him that I receive all my strength. In him I trust completely. On his righteousness, imputed to me, I base my hope for eternity. ‘On Christ, the solid Rock, I stand; All other ground is sinking sand.’ ”For those in the audience who were used to interpreting everything literally (and there are such people, now as well as then!), the riddle may not as yet have been cleared up, however. They may have said to themselves, “But how can Paul say that he is no longer alive? If he were no longer alive, how could he be addressing us?” For them, accordingly, the riddle propounded by the man who was addressing them may have been intensified instead of solved. The apostle does not ignore them. He clears up this point also, for in the next line we see: (3). The Riddle Fully Explained Paul had not been trying to say that in no sense whatever was he still alive. He had not fallen into the error of those mystics who, on the basis of the present passage and of other passages, proclaim the doctrine of the merging of the believers’ personality with that of Christ, in such a way that in reality only one personality can be said to exist, namely, that of Christ. The apostle fully clears up this point by stating: and that (life) which I now live in flesh I live in faith, (the faith) which is in the Son of God. Paul has not been deprived of his life “in flesh,” that is, earthly existence. It is still Paul, the individual, who thinks, exhorts, bears witness, rejoices. Nevertheless, the bond between himself and his Lord is a very close one, for it is the bond of faith. Humble trust in Christ is the channel through which Paul receives the strength he needs to meet every challenge (Phil. 4:13). By means of this unshakable confidence in his Redeemer he surrenders all to him and expects all from him. This faith, moreover, is very personal, and this both as to subject and object. First, as to subject. Note the constant use of the pronoun I. In verses 19–21 it is twice spelled out fully as a separate pronoun (first at the beginning of verse 19: “For I—ego—through law died to law,” and then in verse 20, at the end of the clause which A.V. renders literally, “nevertheless I live; yet not I—ego—”). In addition “I” occurs no less than seven times as part of a verbal form. Finally, there are the three occurrences of this same pronoun in a case other than nominative, translated me in each instance (verse 20). That makes no less than twelve “I’s” in all in just three verses! It shows that salvation is, indeed, a very personal affair: each individual must make his own decision, and each believer experiences his own fellowship with Christ, relying upon him with all the confidence of his own heart. Then also this faith is personal as to its object: Christ, not something pertaining to Christ but Christ himself. When Paul, who had been a bitter persecutor, reflects on the manner in which his Lord and Savior had taken pity on him, unworthy one, he, perhaps in order to emphasize the greatness of Christ’s condescending love, reminds us of the fact that the One who so loved him was no less than “the Son of God,” hence, himself God! (“the faith which is in the Son of God”). He adds: who loved me and gave himself up for me. Note: not just gave, but gave up. In that act of giving himself up to shame, condemnation, scourging, the crown of thorns, mockery, crucifixion and abandonment by his Father, death, and burial, the love of the Son of God for his people—“for me”—had become most gloriously manifest. How, then, would it ever be possible for Paul to minimize in any way the significance of the cross? This leads to the conclusion:m(4). The Riddle Applied to the Present Concrete Situation

Paul writes: I do not set aside the grace of God. Of this simple line, too, there are several explanations, some of them without any reference to the present context. The simplest interpretation is surely this one: “I do not set aside—declare invalid, nullify—the grace of God, which I surely would be doing if I were attempting by means of law-works—for example, strict obedience to regulations concerning eating and drinking—to secure my acceptance with God, my state of righteousness before him.” In complete harmony with this thought the apostle adds: for if justification (were) through law, then Christ died in vain. Paul is saying, therefore, to Peter, to Barnabas, to all those present that day at this love-feast in Antioch, to the Galatians, who have allowed themselves to be influenced by the Judaizers, and certainly also to the modern man who imagines that by doing good and giving everyone his due he can be saved, that a definite choice must be made, namely, between salvation by grace and salvation by law-works, by Christ or by self. We are firmly convinced that Peter knew in his heart—and was glad—that his “beloved brother Paul” (II Peter 3:15) had rendered an incalculably valuable service to the cause of the unity of all believers in Christ, to the demands of Christian love, and to the doctrine of the all-sufficiency of Christ unto salvation. Barnabas and many of the others must have been similarly persuaded.

Summary of Chapter 2 This chapter consists of two paragraphs: verses 1–10; 11–21. The first describes what took place in Jerusalem fourteen years after the visit indicated in 1:18, 19. The apostle gives his version of The Jerusalem Conference (Acts 15:1–29). The second paragraph concerns the Paul-versus-Peter affair in Syrian Antioch shortly afterward. In the first paragraph the foes are the Judaizers, Christians only in name, men who advocated faith plus law-obedience as the way to glory. One of their slogans was, “Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved.” Not being real Christians, they had no business at this synod. They were present as spies, bent on depriving true believers of their freedom in Christ. Now to this Conference the Antiochian church had delegated Paul and Barnabas, champions of Christian liberty. With them was Titus, a Christian of unmixed Gentile extraction, and thus uncircumcised, a test case therefore. Would the Judaizers succeed in persuading the assembly that Titus must be circumcised? If they do, then everywhere the position of Gentile Christians would be in jeopardy, Christianity would never become a worldwide religion, and the gospel of Christ’s all-sufficiency for salvation would vanish from the earth. But by God’s decree that cannot happen! In a private consultation the truly Christian leaders—Paul and Barnabas, on the one hand; James, Cephas, and John, on the other—plan their strategy. Concerning God’s work among the Gentiles Paul and Barnabas bear witness with such conviction, both before the Jerusalem leaders and before the full convention, that the opponents fail completely. The paragraph closes by picturing James, Cephas, and John in the act of extending the hand of friendship and brotherhood to Paul and Barnabas. The work-load is divided and help for the poor is provided. Hardly was this battle won when a second had to be fought, as shown in verses 11–21. And in this struggle the foe was no one less than Cephas, the leader of The Twelve. Not that Peter was at heart an enemy of the gospel of grace, but here at Antioch he suffered a temporary lapse (Matt. 16:23). When, at a public church-gathering he withdraws himself from the Gentiles, refusing any longer to eat with them, he is saying, in effect, “To be saved, more is needed than trust in Christ. Adherence to the ceremonial law is also necessary.” He knows better, having been taught by Jesus and by the vision of the sheet. He is playing the hypocrite, having become alarmed by the arrival of a party of Judaizers. For a while things looked bad, for Peter’s example was followed by others, including even Barnabas. Paul, however, rises to meet the challenge. We see him at the height of his fortitude. By inserting the substance of his remarks in this letter to the Galatians, he shows that his words are now also meant for these similarly erring brothers. In substance he says, “If you, Cephas, though a Jew, can live like a Gentile, as you proved when you ate with Gentiles, how can you now, by withdrawing from them, force them to live like Jews, so that they may be able to eat and have fellowship with us?” Then, turning to the entire audience, he stresses that not by law-works is anyone justified, but only by faith in Christ, and that if the Judaizers were right, Christ would be a promoter of sin. The real sinner, however, is the man who rebuilds the very structure—salvation by law-works—which he had previously pulled down. As to law Paul states, “For I through law died to law, that I might live to God.” For a thematic treatment of verses 20, 21 see the explanation. In the room silence prevails. The gospel of grace has triumphed once more. And may we not assume that not only Cephas but all true but momentarily erring believers who had followed his example were grateful to the Lord that they had been corrected by “our beloved brother Paul”?

Law and Grace
The Function The Effect
Of Law Of Grace Of Law Of Grace
Based on works 3:10) Based on faith (3:11, 12) Works put us under a curse (3:10) Justifies us by faith (3:3, 24)
Our guardian (3:23; 4:2) Centered in Christ (3:24) Keeps us for faith (3:23) Christ lives in us (2:20)
Our tutor (3:24) Our certificate of freedom (4:30, 31) Brings us to Christ (3:24) Adopts us as sons and heirs (4:7)
The law functions to (1) declare our guilt, (2) drive us to Christ, and (3)direct us in a life of obedience. However, the law is a powerless to save.

2:20 Paul has now been crucified with Christ and is thus positionally dead to the Mosaic Law ( Rom. 7:6ff.). His life is no longer self-effort as law-keeping, but is a life empowered by the indwelling Spirit of Christ.

Wiersbe - Paul’s Rebuke (Gal. 2:14–21) Bible students are not sure just where Paul’s conversation with Peter ends and where his letter to the Galatians continues in the passage. It does not really matter since the entire section deals with the same topic: our liberty in Jesus Christ. We will assume that the entire section represents Paul’s rebuke of Peter. It is interesting to note that Paul builds the entire rebuke on doctrine. There are five basic Christian doctrines that were being denied by Peter because of his separation from the Gentiles. The unity of the church (v. 14). Peter was a Jew, but through his faith in Christ he had become a Christian. Because he was a Christian, he was part of the church, and in the church there are no racial distinctions (Gal. 3:28). We have seen how the Lord taught Peter this important lesson, first in the house of Cornelius and then at the Jerusalem Conference. Paul’s words must have stung Peter: “You are a Jew, yet you have been living like a Gentile. Now you want the Gentiles to live like Jews. What kind of inconsistency is that?” Peter himself had stated at the Jerusalem Conference that God had “put no difference between us and them” (Acts 15:9). But now Peter was putting a difference. God’s people are one people, even though they may be divided into various groups. Any practice on our part that violates the Scripture and separates brother from brother is a denial of the unity of the body of Christ. Justification by faith (vv. 15–16). This is the first appearance of the important word justification in this letter, and probably in Paul’s writings (if, as we believe, Galatians was the first letter he wrote). “Justification by faith” was the watchword of the Reformation, and it is important that we understand this doctrine. “How should [a] man be just with God?” (Job 9:2) was a vital question, because the answer determined eternal consequences. “The just shall live by his faith” (Hab. 2:4) is God’s answer; and it was this truth that liberated Martin Luther from religious bondage and fear. So important is this concept that three New Testament books explain it to us: Romans (see 1:17), Galatians (see 3:11), and Hebrews (see 10:38). Romans explains the meaning of “the just”; Galatians explains “shall live”; and Hebrews explains “by faith.”  But what is justification? Justification is the act of God whereby He declares the believing sinner righteous in Jesus Christ. Every word of this definition is important. Justification is an act and not a process. No Christian is “more justified” than another Christian. “Having therefore been once-and-for-all justified by faith, we have peace with God” (Rom. 5:1, literal translation). Since we are justified by faith, it is an instant and immediate transaction between the believing sinner and God. If we were justified by works, then it would have to be a gradual process. Furthermore, justification is an act of God; it is not the result of man’s character or works. “It is God that justifieth” (Rom. 8:33). It is not by doing the “works of the Law” that the sinner gets a right standing before God, but by putting his faith in Jesus Christ. As Paul will explain later in this letter, the Law was given to reveal sin and not to redeem from sin (see Rom. 3:20). God in His grace has put our sins on Christ—and Christ’s righteousness has been put to our account (see 2 Cor. 5:21). In justification, God declares the believing sinner righteous; He does not make him righteous. (Of course, real justification leads to a changed life, which is what James 2 is all about.) Before the sinner trusts Christ, he stands GUILTY before God; but the moment he trusts Christ, he is declared NOT GUILTY and he can never be called GUILTY again! Justification is not simply “forgiveness,” because a person could be forgiven and then go out and sin and become guilty. Once you have been “justified by faith” you can never be held guilty before God. Justification is also different from “pardon,” because a pardoned criminal still has a record. When the sinner is justified by faith, his past sins are remembered against him no more, and God no longer puts his sins on record (see Ps. 32:1–2; Rom. 4:1–8). Finally, God justifies sinners, not “good people.” Paul declares that God justifies “the ungodly” (Rom. 4:5). The reason most sinners are not justified is because they will not admit they are sinners! And sinners are the only kind of people Jesus Christ can save (Matt. 9:9–13; Luke 18:9–14). When Peter separated himself from the Gentiles, he was denying the truth of justification by faith, because he was saying, “We Jews are different from—and better than—the Gentiles.” Yet both Jews and Gentiles are sinners (Rom. 3:22–23) and can be saved only by faith in Christ.  Freedom from the Law (vv. 17–18). At the Jerusalem Conference, Peter had compared the Mosaic Law to a burdensome yoke (Acts 15:10; see Gal. 5:1). Now he had put himself under that impossible yoke. Paul’s argument goes like this: “Peter, you and I did not find salvation through the Law; we found it through faith in Christ. But now, after being saved, you go back into the Law! This means that Christ alone did not save you; otherwise you would not have needed the Law. So, Christ actually made you a sinner! “Furthermore, you have preached the Gospel of God’s grace to Jews and Gentiles, and have told them they are saved by faith and not by keeping the Law. By going back into legalism, you are building up what you tore down! This means that you sinned by tearing it down to begin with!” In other words, Paul is arguing from Peter’s own experience of the grace of God. To go back to Moses is to deny everything that God had done for him and through him. The very Gospel itself (vv. 19–20). If a man is justified by the works of the Law, then why did Jesus Christ die? His death, burial, and resurrection are the key truths of the Gospel (1 Cor. 15:1–8). We are saved by faith in Christ (He died for us), and we live by faith in Christ (He lives in us). Furthermore, we are so identified with Christ by the Spirit that we died with Him (see Rom. 6). This means that we are dead to the Law. To go back to Moses is to return to the graveyard! We have been “raised to walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4); and since we live by His resurrection power, we do not need the “help” of the Law. The grace of God (v. 21). The Judaizers wanted to mix Law and grace, but Paul tells us that this is impossible. To go back to the Law means to “set aside” the grace of God.  Peter had experienced God’s grace in his own salvation, and he had proclaimed God’s grace in his own ministry. But when he withdrew from the Gentile Christian fellowship, he openly denied the grace of God. Grace says, “There is no difference! All are sinners, and all can be saved through faith in Christ!” But Peter’s actions had said, “There is a difference! The grace of God is not sufficient; we also need the Law.” Returning to the Law nullifies the Cross: “If righteousness came by the Law, then Christ is dead in vain” (Gal. 2:21). Law says DO! Grace says DONE! “It is finished!” was Christ’s victory cry (John 19:30). “For by grace are ye saved through faith” (Eph. 2:8).  We have no record of Peter’s reply to Paul’s rebuke, but Scripture would indicate that he admitted his sin and was restored to the fellowship once again. Certainly when you read his two letters (1 and 2 Peter) you detect no deviation from the Gospel of the grace of God. In fact, the theme of 1 Peter is “the true grace of God” (1 Peter 5:12); and the word grace is used in every chapter of the letter. Peter is careful to point out that he and Paul were in complete agreement, lest anyone try to “rob Peter to pay Paul” (2 Peter 3:15–16). So end the two acts of this exciting drama. But the curtain has not come down yet, for there is a third act which involves you and me.

Calvin - 20. I am crucified with Christ. This explains the manner in which we, who are dead to the law, live to God. Ingrafted into the death of Christ, we derive from it a secret energy, as the twig does from the root. Again, the handwriting of the law,“which was contrary to us, Christ has nailed to his cross.” (Colossians 2:14.) Being then crucified with him, we are freed from all the curse and guilt of the law. He who endeavors to set aside that deliverance makes void the cross of Christ. But let us remember, that we are delivered from the yoke of the law, only by becoming one with Christ, as the twig draws its sap from the root, only by growing into one nature. Nevertheless I live. To the feelings of man, the word Death is always unpleasant. Having said that we are “crucified with Christ,” he therefore adds, “that this makes us alive.” Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. This explains what he meant by “living to God.” He does not live by his own life, but is animated by the secret power of Christ; so that Christ may be said to live and grow in him; for, as the soul enlivens the body, so Christ imparts life to his members. It is a remarkable sentiment, that believers live out of themselves, that is, they live in Christ; which can only be accomplished by holding real and actual communication with him. Christ lives in us in two ways. The one life consists in governing us by his Spirit, and directing all our actions; the other, in making us partakers of his righteousness; so that, while we can do nothing of ourselves, we are accepted in the sight of God. The first relates to regeneration, the second to justification by free grace. This passage may be understood in the latter sense; but if it is thought better to apply it to both, I will cheerfully adopt that view. And the life which I now live in the flesh. There is hardly a sentence here which has not been torn by a variety of interpretations. Some understand by the word flesh, the depravity of sinful nature; but Paul means by it simply the bodily life, and it is to this that the objection applies. “You live a bodily life; but while this corruptible body performs its functions, — while it is supported by eating and drinking, this is not the heavenly life of Christ. It is therefore an unreasonable paradox to assert, that, while you are openly living after the ordinary manner of men, your life is not your own.” Paul replies, that it consists in faith; which intimates that it is a secret hidden from the senses of man. The life, therefore, which we attain by faith is not visible to the bodily eye, but is inwardly perceived in the conscience by the power of the Spirit; so that the bodily life does not prevent us from enjoying, by faith, a heavenly life.“He hath made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” (Ephesians 2:6.) And again, “Our conversation is in heaven.” (Philippians 3:20.) Paul’s writings are full of similar assertions, that, while we live in the world, we at the same time live in heaven; not only because our Head is there, but because, in virtue of union, we enjoy a life in common with him. (John 14:23.) Who loved me. This is added to express the power of faith; for it would immediately occur to any one, — whence does faith derive such power as to convey into our souls the life of Christ? He accordingly informs us, that the love of Christ, and his death, are the objects on which faith rests; for it is in this manner that the effect of faith must be judged. How comes it that we live by the faith of Christ? Because “he loved us, and gave himself for us.” The love of Christ led him to unite himself to us, and he completed the union by his death. By giving himself for us, he suffered in our own person; as, on the other hand, faith makes us partakers of every thing which it finds in Christ. The mention of love is in accordance with the saying of the apostle John, “Not that we loved God, but he anticipated us by his love.” (1 John 4:10) For if any merit of ours had moved him to redeem us, this reason would have been stated; but now Paul ascribes the whole to love: it is therefore of free grace. Let us observe the order: “He loved us, and gave himself for us.” As if he had said, “He had no other reason for dying, but because he loved us,” and that “when we were enemies,” (Romans 5:10,) as he argues in another Epistle. He gave himself. No words can properly express what this means; for who can find language to declare the excellency of the Son of God? Yet he it is who gave himself as a price for our redemption. Atonement, cleansing, satisfaction, and all the benefits which we derive from the death of Christ, are here represented.  The words for me, are very emphatic. It will not be enough for any man to contemplate Christ as having died for the salvation of the world, unless he has experienced the consequences of this death, and is enabled to claim it as his own. 

College - 2:19 For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. Rebuilding the law (v. 18) is something Paul must not do, for the law has already done its work. This is the sense of the introductory “For” in v. 19. The purpose of the law was to condemn men to death (3:19–22), and it had done its work in Paul. The holy demands of the law had exposed Paul’s sinfulness. He deserved to die—and in Christ he did! Then having been crushed under the demands of the law and convinced of his inability to save himself, Paul found life in Christ. Christ met the demands of the law, and paid the penalty incurred by Paul. Now Paul is free to live for God. 2:20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. Using the same word which described the criminals “crucified with” Jesus (Matt 27:44), Paul says we are also put to death. When Jesus died, we died. The law carried out on Jesus its just demands against us, and having killed him could do nothing more to him or to us! Paul “no longer lives” in the sense that he controls his life. He has taken up his cross; he has denied himself; and he now lives only by the permission of his King, Jesus Christ. His new Lord not only permits him to live, but has taken up residence in him to help direct his life firsthand. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, Having died, Paul does yet live. As he will later say to the Philippians, “To live is Christ” (1:21). It is to live by means of Christ, with Christ, and for Christ. The dynamic which makes life in the believer is Christ who “dwells in our hearts by faith” (Eph 3:17). who loved me and gave himself for me. The sacrifice of Christ is the foundation of the gospel and of Christian faith. It is pivotal in Paul’s letter to the Galatian churches, for it is that atoning sacrifice they are losing sight of. Either they must honor that sacrifice and trust it for their salvation, or they must abandon it and try to earn their own way through legalism.2:21 I do not set aside the grace of God, How would one “set aside” the grace of God? One might reject it as worthless and untrue, or more dangerously, one might accept it and then go on to live as if it made no difference. The Galatians were in grave danger of nullifying grace by returning to law. We can learn from the Galatians that to nullify the grace of God does not require a formal statement that it is worthless—just an underlying fear that it is not quite enough. for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” This “if” should be understood as a condition contrary to fact: If A were true, then B would be true; but in fact A is not true and neither is B. Christ certainly did not die for nothing, and a man simply cannot gain right standing with God through keeping the law.

Commentary on Gal -  Paul speaks here not of crucifying by imitation or example (for to follow the example of Christ is also to be crucified with Him) which crucifying belongs to the flesh. Whereof Peter speaks in his first epistle, chapter 2: “Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps.” But Paul speaks of that high crucifying, whereby sin, the devil, and death are crucified in Christ and not in me. Here Christ Jesus does all Himself alone. But I believing in Christ, am by faith crucified also with Christ, so that all these things are crucified and dead unto me.“Nevertheless I live” —I speak not so, says Paul, of my death and crucifying, as though I did not live. Indeed, I live, for I am quickened by this death and crucifying, through the which I die: that is, forasmuch asI am delivered from the law, sin, and death, I now live indeed. Wherefore that crucifying, and that death, whereby I am crucified and dead to the law, sin, death, and all evils, is to me resurrection and life. For Christ crucified the devil, He killed death, condemned sin, and bound the law; and I believing this, am delivered from the law, sin, death, and the devil. Here (as I have said before) we must observe Paul’s manner of speaking. He says that we are dead and crucified to the law, whereas in very deed the law itself is dead and crucified unto us. But this manner of speech he uses here intentionally, that it may be more sweet and comfortable for us. For the law is crucified and dead only to those who believe in Christ; and to them alone belongs this glory, that they are dead to sin, hell, death, and the devil.“Yet not I” —that is to say, not in my own person, nor in my own substance. Here he plainly shows by what means he lives; and he teaches what true Christian righteousness is, namely, that righteousness whereby Christ lives in us, and not that which is in our own person. And here Christ and my conscience must become one body, so that nothing remains in my sight but Christ crucified, and raised from the dead. If I behold myself only and set Christ aside, I am gone. For Christ being lost, there is no counsel nor succor, but certain desperation and destruction must follow. Where Paul says, “I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me,” he speaks, as it were, in his own person. Therefore he corrects himself in the second part of the sentence, saying: “Yet not I.” That is, I live not now in my own person, but Christ lives in me. Indeed, the person lives, but not in himself, nor for anything that is in him. But who is that I, of whom he says, “yet not I”? This I is he who has the law and is bound to do the works thereof, who also is a person separate from Christ. This person Paul rejects. For he is separate from Christ, he belongs to death and hell. Therefore he says: “Not I, but Christ liveth in me.” He is my form, my furniture and perfection, adorning and beautifying my faith, as the color, the clear light or the whiteness garnish and beautify the wall. Thus are we constrained grossly to set forth this matter. For we cannot spiritually conceive that Christ is so nearly joined and united to us as the color or whiteness are to the wall. Christ therefore, says he, thus joined and unitedto me, and abiding in me, lives this life in me which now I live: yes, Christ Himself is this life, which now I live. Wherefore Christ and I in this behalf are both one. This union or conjunction, then, is the cause that I am delivered from the terror of the law and sin, am separate from myself, and translated unto Christ and His Kingdom, which is a kingdom of grace, righteousness, peace, joy, life, salvation, and eternal glory. While I dwell in Him, what evil is there that can hurt me? Meanwhile the old man abides without and is subject to the law; but as concerning justification, Christ and I must be entirely conjoined and united together, so that He may live in me, and I in Him. And this is a wonderful manner of speech. Because Christ lives in me, look now what grace, righteousness, life, peace, and salvation is in me; it is His, and yet it is mine also, by that inseparable union and conjunction which is through faith, by which Christ and I are made as it were one body in spirit. Paul has his peculiar kind of speech, which is not after the manner of men, but divine and heavenly, nor used by the other Apostles, except John. If Paul had not first used this phrase and set forth the same in plain words, the saints themselves would not have dared to use it. For it seems a very strange manner of speaking to say: I live, I live not; I am dead, I am not dead; I am a sinner, I am not a sinner; I have the law, I have not the law. This phrase is sweet and comfortable to all those who believe in Christ. As they behold themselves, they have both the law and sin; but as they look unto Christ, they are dead to the law and have no sin. If therefore in the matter of justification you separate the person of Christ from your person, then you are in the law, you live in the law, and not in Christ, and so you are condemned of the law and dead before God. For you have only that faith which is furnished with charity. This I speak for example’s sake. There was never anyone found that was saved by this faith. But let us grant that some have this faith. Yet they are not justified. For they have but a historical faith concerning Christ which the devil also has. Faith therefore must be purely taught: namely, that you are so entirely joined to Christ, that He and you are made as it were one person; so that you may boldly say, I am now one with Christ, that is to say, Christ’s righteousness, victory, and life are mine. Again, Christ may say, I amthat sinner, that is, his sins and his death are Mine, because he is united and joined to Me, and I to him. For by faith we are so joined together that we are become “members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones” (Ephesians 5:30). We have declared the first argument of Paul, that Christ must either be the minister of sin, or else the law does not justify. He then sets forth himself for an example, saying: “I am dead unto the law.” Now he answers two objections which might have been made against him. His first answer is against the cavillings of the proud, and the offense of the weak. For when remission of sins is freely preached, then do the malicious slander this preaching: “Let us do evil, that good may come” (Romans 3:8). For these, as soon as they hear that we are not justified by the law, do maliciously conclude and say, let us then reject the law. Again, if grace abounds where sin abounds, let us then abound in sin that we may become righteous, and that grace may the more abound. These malicious spirits do slander the Scriptures and sayings of the Holy Ghost, even as they slandered Paul while the Apostle lived, to their own confusion and condemnation. As Peter said, they wrest the words of Paul to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16). Moreover, the weak, who are not malicious, are offended when they hear that the law and good works are not to be done as necessary to justification. These must be helped; they must be instructed how good works do not justify, how they ought to be done and how not to be done. These ought to be done not as the cause, but as the fruits of righteousness. When we are made righteous, we ought to do them, but not contrariwise, to the end that when we are unrighteous, we may, by these, be made righteous. The tree makes the apple, but not the apple the tree. Paul said before: “I am dead to the law.” Here some might question: What are you saying? Are you dead? Then how do you speak or write? The weak might be offended and say to him: Do we not see that you are living, and do such things as are of this life? To these he answers: “I live indeed, and yet now not I, but Christ liveth in me.” There is then a double life. The first is mine, which is natural; the second is the life of another, that is, the life of Christ in me. As touching my natural life I am dead, and now I live another life, I live not now as Paul, for Paul is dead. Who is it then who lives? The Christian. Paul is wholly dead through the law, and now lives, but as Christ lives in him, he lives by another’s life, even Christ. If I lived by my own life, the law would have dominion over me and hold me in captivity. To the end therefore that it should not hold me captive, I am dead to it, and this death purchases for me the life of another, even the life of Christ. This life is not mine by nature but is given to me by Christ through faith in Him. Secondly, this objection might have been made: How can this be? We see your flesh, but we see not Christ. Would you be fooling us? He answers: “The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God.” As Christ says: “Thou hearest the sound of the wind, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth” (John 3:8); even so you see me speaking, eating, laboring, sleeping, and yet you do not see my life. I live indeed in the flesh, but not through the flesh, or according to the flesh, but through faith, and according to faith. This new life “I live by the faith of the Son of God.” For the word which I now speak corporally, and in human nature, is the word not of flesh, but of the Holy Ghost, and of Christ. A Christian speaks none other but chaste, sober and holy words, which pertain to Christ, to the glory of God, and the profit of his neighbor. These things come not of the flesh, nor are they done according to the flesh, and yet they are done in the flesh. For I cannot teach, write, pray, or give thanks, but with these instruments of the flesh, yet these works proceed not of the flesh, but are given by God from above. In like manner I behold a woman but with a chaste eye, not lusting after her. This comes not of the flesh, although it is in the flesh, because the eyes are the carnal instruments of this sight: but the chasteness of this sight comes from heaven. Thus a Christian uses the world and all creatures so that there is no difference between him and the infidel. For in their apparel, feeding, hearing, speaking, gestures, countenances, and such other things, they are alike, and seem to be all one (as Paul speaks of Christ: “He being found in fashion of a man” —Philippians 2:8), yet indeed there is a great difference. Paul before his conversion spoke with the same voice andtongue wherewith he spoke afterwards; but his voice and tongue were then blasphemous and spoke against Christ and His Church. After he was converted, he had the same flesh, voice and tongue, nothing outward was changed; but his voice and his tongue now uttered spiritual and heavenly words, thanksgiving and the praise of God—these came of faith and the Holy Ghost. So then I live in the flesh, but not of or after the flesh, but by the faith of the Son of God. In this way we see whence this spiritual life comes. For this life is in the heart by faith, where the flesh is killed, and Christ reigns with His Holy Spirit, who now sees, hears, speaks, works, suffers, and does all other things in him, although the flesh resists. To conclude, this is not the life of the flesh, although it is in the flesh; but it is the life of Christ the Son of God, whom the Christian possesses by faith. Happy is he who can say with Paul: “I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Here we have the true manner of justification, and a perfect example of the Assurance’,’of faith. We must diligently consider these words, “Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” It was not I that first loved the Son of God and delivered myself for Him. Some teach that a man of his own pure natural strength, is able to do meritorious works before grace, and love God and Christ above all things. These fellows pervert the love of God and Christ, for they say they do not only fulfill the commandments, but also they observe the counsels, they do the works of supererogation, and sell their superfluous works to laymen, and so they dream that they give themselves for Christ, and thereby save both themselves and others, contrary to the words of Paul: “Who loved me, and gave Himself for me.” These schoolmen teach that if a man does what he can, God will give him His grace. God will no more require of man, Than of himself perform he can. This is a good saying, if it be rightly applied: that is, in the government of nations or families. If I am a magistrate, and in the kingdom of reason execute the office of a magistrate, as far as I can, with justice and equity, I am excused. This kingdom has its bounds and limits, to which this saying pertains, to do as much as we are able. But it is wrong to apply this saying to the spiritual kingdom, because a man can do nothing else but sin; for he is “sold under sin” (Romans 7:14). So they have done wickedly in applying this saying to the Church. For the kingdom of man’s reason and the spiritual kingdom must be kept separate and far asunder. In addition, they say that nature is corrupt, but the qualities of nature are still sound and uncorrupt. Upon this ground they reason like this: if the natural qualities be sound and uncorrupt, then is a man’s understanding and will sound and uncorrupt, and so consequently all other qualities of nature are pure and perfect in him. I grant that the qualities of nature are uncorrupt. But what qualities are they? That a man drowned in sin and iniquity, and a bondslave of Satan, has will, reason and power to execute the office of a magistrate, govern a family, guide a ship, build a house, and do such things as are subject to man: for these qualities are not taken from him. In the corporal realm therefore we do not deny this sentence; but if they are wrested to apply to the spiritual kingdom, I utterly deny them, for there we are clean overwhelmed and drowned in sin. Whatever is in our will is evil; whatever is in our understanding is error. How then shall a man work well, fulfill the law, and love God? Wherefore Paul says here that Christ first began and not we: “He loved me, and gave Himself for me.” As if he said, although He found in me no good will, or right understanding, this good Lord had mercy on me. He saw me to be nothing else but wicked, going astray, condemning God, and flying from Him more and more, carried away and led captive of the devil. Thus of His mere mercy, preventing my reason, my will, and my understanding, He loved me, and so loved me that He gave Himself for me, to the end that I might be freed from the law, sin, the devil and death. Again, these words, “the Son of God loved me, and gave Himself for me,” are mighty thunderings and lightnings from heaven against therighteousness of the law and all the works thereof. So great and horrible wickedness, error, and darkness was in my will and understanding that it was impossible for me to be ransomed by any other means than by such an inestimable price. Let us consider well this price, and let us behold the captive, delivered, as Paul says, for me: the Son of God, I mean, and we shall see Him, without all comparison, to exceed and excel all creatures. What will you do when you hear the Apostle say that such an inestimable price was given for you? What shall the law of Moses avail? What shall the works of all men, and all the sufferings of the martyrs profit you? What is the obedience of all the holy angels in comparison to the Son of God delivered, and that most shamefully, even to the death of the Cross, so that there was no drop of His most precious blood, but it washed, and that for your sins. If you could rightly consider this incomparable price, you should hold as accursed all those ceremonies, vows, works, and merits before grace and after, and throw them all down to hell. For it is a horrible blasphemy to imagine that there is any work by which you should presume to pacify God, since you see that there is nothing which is able to pacify Him but this inestimable price, even the death and the blood of the Son of God, one drop of which is more precious than the whole world. “Who gave Himself for me” —who is this me? Even I, wretched and damnable sinner, but loved so dearly by the Son of God that He gave Himself for me. If I through any works, efforts, or merits could have come to Him, what need was there that He should give Himself for me? Therefore I say again, as I have often said, that there is no remedy against sects, or power to resist them, but only this article of Christian righteousness. For because there was no other price either in heaven or upon earth, but Christ the Son of God, it was therefore most necessary that He should be delivered for me. Moreover, this He did of inestimable love; for Paul says: “Who loved me.” Wherefore these words, “Who loved me,” are full of faith. And he that can utter this little word “me,” and apply it to himself with a true and a constant faith as Paul did, shall be a good disputer with Paul against the law. These words Paul sets against the righteousness of the law. The law loved me not nor gave itself for me; yea, it accused me, terrified me, and drove me to desperation. But I have now another who has delivered me from the terrors of the law, sin, and death, and has brought me into liberty, the righteousness of God, and eternal life. He is called the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me; to whom be praise and glory forever. Faith therefore embraces and wraps in itself Christ Jesus the Son of God, delivered to death for us, as Paul here teaches, who being apprehended by faith, gives to us righteousness and life. Let us learn therefore to give a true definition of Christ; let us define Him as Paul does: namely, that He is the Son of God, who not for any righteousness of ours, but of His own free mercy and love, offered up Himself as a sacrifice for us sinners? that He might sanctify us forever. Christ then is no Moses, no exactor, no giver of laws, but a giver of grace, a Savior, and one that is full of mercy: briefly, He is nothing else but infinite mercy and goodness, freely given and bountifully giving to us. And thus shall you paint Christ in His right colors. If you suffer Him to be painted otherwise, when temptation and trouble come you shall soon be overthrown. Now, as it is the greatest knowledge that Christians can have, thus to define Christ, so it is the hardest. For I myself have difficulty in holding this definition of Christ which Paul here gives: so deeply has the doctrine that Christ is a lawgiver entered like oil into my bones. Young men are in this case much more happy than we that are old. For you are not infected with these pernicious errors, wherein I have been so drenched even from my youth, that at the very hearing of the name of Christ my heart trembled and quaked for fear; for I was persuaded that He was a severe judge. Wherefore it is to me double trouble to correct and reform this evil: first to forget, and to resist this old grounded error, that Christ is a lawgiver and a judge; for it always returns and plucks me back; then to plant in my heart a new and a true persuasion of Christ, that He is a justifier and a Savior. You that are young may learn with much less difficulty to know Christ purely and sincerely. Wherefore if any man feel himself oppressed with heaviness and anguish of heart, he must notimpute it unto Christ, but unto the devil, who often comes under the color of Christ, and transforms himself into an angel of light. Let us learn therefore to put a difference between Christ and a lawgiver, not only in word but also in deed and in practice; that when the devil comes under the shadow of Christ, and goes about to trouble us under His name, we may know him not to be Christ, but a very fiend indeed. For Christ when He comes is nothing else but joy and sweetness to a trembling and broken heart, as here Paul witnesses. Christ therefore in very deed is a lover of those which are in trouble or anguish, in sin and death, and such a lover as gave Himself for us: who is also our High Priest, that is to say, a mediator between God and us miserable and wretched sinners. What could be said, I pray you, more sweet and comfortable than this? Now, if these things be true (as they are indeed most true, or else the gospel must be nothing but a fable), then we are not justified by the righteousness of the law; but much less by our own righteousness. Read therefore with great vehemence these words “ME“ and “FOR ME,” and so inwardly practice with yourself that you with a sure faith may conceive and print this “ME“ in your heart, and apply it to yourself, not doubting that you are of the number of those to whom this “ME“ belongs; also that Christ has not only loved Peter and Paul and given Himself for them, but that the same grace also which is comprehended in this “ME“ pertains as well to us as to them. For as we cannot deny that we are all sinners, and are constrained to say that through the sin of Adam we are all lost, were made the enemies of God, subject to the wrath and judgment of God, and guilty of eternal death; so can we not deny that Christ died for our sins, that He might make us righteous. For He died not to justify the righteous, but the unrighteous, and to make them the friends and children of God, and inheritors of all heavenly gifts. Therefore, when I feel and confess myself to be a sinner through Adam’s transgression, why should I not say that I am made righteous through the righteousness of Christ, especially when I hear that He loved me, and gave Himself for me?

Faucett - 20. I am crucified—literally, “I have been crucified with Christ.” This more particularizes the foregoing. “I am dead” (Ga 2:19; Php 3:10).nevertheless I live; yet not IGreek, “nevertheless I live, no longer (indeed) I.” Though crucified I live; (and this) no longer that old man such as I once was (compare Ro 7:17). No longer Saul the Jew (Ga 5:24; Col 3:11, but “another man”; compare 1Sa 10:6). “And it is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me.” But the plain antithesis between “crucified” and “live,” requires the translation, “nevertheless.” the life which I now live—as contrasted with my life before conversion. in the flesh—My life seems to be a mere animal life “in the flesh,” but this is not my true life; “it is but the mask of life under which lives another, namely, Christ, who is my true life” [Luther]. I live by the faith, &c.—Greek, “in faith (namely), that of (that is, which rests on) the Son of God.” “In faith,” answers by contrast to “in the flesh.” Faith, not the flesh, is the real element in which I live. The phrase, “the Son of God,” reminds us that His Divine Sonship is the source of His life-giving power.loved me—His eternal gratuitous love is the link that unites me to the Son of God, and His “giving Himself for me,” is the strongest proof of that love.

MacArthur - (2:17–21) By their behavior, Peter and the other Jewish Christians at Antioch had given approval to the Judaizers’ idea that it was necessary for a Gentile to keep the Jewish rituals before he could become a Christian. Paul’s defense of justification by faith in verses 17–21 continues his contradiction of this Judaistic legalism to which Peter and the others had succumbed. It is crucial to understand that, as in the previous two verses, we refers to Jewish Christians. But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves, as Jewish Christians, have also been found sinners, Paul asks rhetorically, is Christ then a minister of sin? His first point was to show that, if the Judaizers were correct in their doctrine that believers are saved in part by keeping the ceremonial law of Moses and continue to be bound by that law to maintain their salvation, then, even before the Judaizers arrived in Antioch, Peter, Barnabas, and all the other Jewish believers, including Paul, had fallen back into the category of sinners by having freely eaten and fellowshipped with Gentile Christians. Paul’s second point was even more devastating. “If you became sinners because of felowshiping with your Gentile brothers,” he implies, “then Christ Himself became a minister of sin, did he not?” How? Jesus had clearly taught that no food can spiritually contaminate a person, because food cannot affect the heart (Mark 7:19). Through the vision of the unclean animals and the dramatic conversion and anointing of Cornelius, the Lord had given Peter direct evidence that Gentile believers are in every way equal to Jewish believers (Acts 10). On many other occasions and in many other ways Jesus had taught that all those who belong to Him are one with Him and therefore one with each other. Shortly before His arrest, trial, and crucifixion, Jesus earnestly and repeatedly prayed to His Father that those who believed in Him “may all be one; even as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us … that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and Thou in Me, that they may be perfected in unity” (John 17:21–23). But if the Judaizers were right, Paul pointed out, Jesus was wrong; if they taught the truth, He had taught falsehood and was thereby a minister of sin! Such an accusation must have shaken Peter to his bones. To be called a hypocrite stung enough, but to be called a sinner was unthinkable, and to be accused of making Jesus a minister of sin was shocking and repulsive. Yet the logic of Paul’s argument was inescapable. By his actions, Peter had in effect condemned Jesus Christ. He therefore had to forsake his Judaistic sympathies or continue to make His Lord a liar. To his own question Paul immediately responded, May it never be! It must have been painful to Paul to suggest even hypothetically that Christ could participate m, much less promote, sin. But the drastic danger of Judaistic legalism demanded such drastic logic. He knew of no other way to bring Peter and the others to their senses. By using the term we in the previous verses, Paul had graciously identified himself with the compromisers to a certain extent. Now he even more graciously and lovingly softens the blow to his friends by using himself as a hypothetical example. For if I rebuild what I have once destroyed, he said, I prove myself to be a transgressor. In other words, if anyone, including myself, tries to rebuild a system of legalism alter he has once destroyed it by believing and preaching the gospel of God’s powerful grace and man’s sinful helplessness, he proves himself, not Christ, to be a transgressor. He proves himself to be a hypocrite and a sinner by abandoning grace for law. “I could never do such a thing,” Paul asserts, “for through the Law I died to the Law, that I might live to God. The idea of legalism clashes with God’s clearest truth and my own deepest convictions. Now that I have accepted grace and died to the Law, I could never go back to its system of rituals and ordinances. Otherwise I could not live to God.” The law is not the believer’s master; God is. It is not his relation to the law that saves him, but his relation to God. “Do you not know, brethren,” Paul asked the believers at Rome, “that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives? For the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. … Therefore, my brethren, you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead that we might bear fruit for God” (Rom. 7:1–2, 4).What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace might increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it? Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, in order that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death, certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection, knowing this, that our old self was crucified with H ira, that our body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin; for he who has died is freed from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ. having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him. For the death that He died, He died to sin, once for all; hut the life that He lives, He lives to God Even so consider’ yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus.Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you are not under law, but under grace. (Rom. 6:1–14) In both Romans and Galatians, Paul is referring to the fact that when a person exercises faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, he is placed in transcendent spiritual union with Christ in the historical event of His death and resurrection, in which the penalty of sin was paid in full. If a man is convicted of a capital crime and is put to death, the law obviously has no more claim on him. He has paid his debt to society. Therefore, even if he were to rise from the dead, he would still be guiltless before the law, which would have no claim on his new life. So it is with the believer who dies in Christ to rise in new life. He is free forever from any claim of the law on him. He paid the law’s demand when he died in Christ. His physical death is no punishment, only a release to glory provided in his union with Christ. Legalism’s most destructive effect is that it cancels the effect of the cross. I have been crucified with Christ, Paul testifies, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. To go back under the law would be to cancel one’s union with Christ’s sacrifice on the cross and therefore to go back under sin. I died to the Law, Paul explains, because I was crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live. The old man, the old sell is dead, crucified with Christ, and the new man lives (Col. 3:9–10). Now I … live to God, because Christ lives in me (Rom. 8:9). The life I received by faith I now also live by faith. The Greek verb behind live is in the perfect tense, indicating a past completed action that has continuing results. When a believer trusts in Christ for salvation he spiritually participates with the Lord in His crucifixion and in His victory over sin and death.That is why, the apostle continues, the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God. The true Christian life is not so much a believer’s living for Christ as Christ’s living through the believer. Because in Christ “all the fulness of Deity dwells in bodily form” (Col. 2:9), the fulness of God also dwells in every believer, as “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4). I do not have such a divine life and the magnanimous privilege of being indwelt with the living, powerful Son of God because of anything I have done or merited, but only because He loved me, and delivered Himself up for me. The surpassing motive, therefore, for all spiritual devotion and obedience is gratitude to the sovereign, gracious Lord. The statement who loved me refers to the motive behind God’s saving grace. The New Testament is replete with teaching on this great truth (John 3:16; Rom. 5:8; Eph. 2:5). The gift of love was not taken from Christ, but He delivered Himself up for me, says the apostle. This is reminiscent of our Lord’s words in John 10:17–18, “I lay down my life that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down of My own initiative. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again.”All of this saving work is the gift of God’s sovereign grace. Consequently, Paul concludes, I do not nullify the grace of God; for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly. In effect he was saying to Peter, “By withdrawing from fellowship with your Gentile brothers you take your stand with the Judaizers and against Christ. You nullify the grace of God by denying the need for Christ’s death, just as you did when you rebuked the Lord for declaring it was necessary for Him to suffer, be killed, and raised on the third day (Matt. 16:21–22). The two pillars of the gospel are the grace of God and the death of Christ, and those are the two pillars that, by its very nature, legalism destroys. The person who insists that he can earn salvation by his own efforts undermines the very foundation of Christianity and nullifies the precious death of Christ on his behalf.

Harper - 2:11-21, Confrontation in Antioch. After the conference, Cephas (Peter) visited Antioch. Here a church had been founded where Gentiles had been accepted into the life of the Christian community (Acts 11:19-26; → Antioch). When Cephas arrived, he participated in the meals of the congregation—meals where Jewish and gentile converts ate together without regard to Jewish food laws. Later, when some emissaries of James arrived, Cephas withdrew, because he feared the partisans of circumcision. The latter are probably to be identified with the “false Christians” of Gal. 2:4, while the unnamed people from James were probably more moderate. They recognized the Jerusalem agreement, but believed the people of God needed an identity that would set them apart from the pagans. Following the lead of Cephas, the rest of the Jews of the Antioch church joined in his hypocrisy—a kind of playacting rather than honesty. Barnabas, Paul’s associate in gentile mission (Acts 13:1-14:18; 15:35-16:4), was “carried away,” too.

Paul opposed Cephas “to his face” (Gal. 2:11) in front of the church. According to Paul, Cephas and the others were not conforming to “the truth of the gospel.” Paul quotes his indictment of Cephas, but the extent of the quotation cannot be ascertained. Verse 14 is certainly part of the quotation, since Paul spoke directly to Cephas in second-person singular. When Paul said that Cephas lived like a Gentile, he referred to Cephas’s original conduct in Antioch. When Paul charged Cephas with compelling the Gentiles to live like Jews, he implied that Cephas’s withdrawal was equivalent to requiring the Gentiles to keep Jewish rules in order to participate in the community. In vv. 15-17, Paul continues to address the Jews (and perhaps Cephas) as his use of “we” indicates. We, he says, are Jews by nature (born and reared as Jews) and not gentile sinners, that is, those who do not have the law (Rom. 2:14; 1 Cor. 9:21). Yet we Jewish Christians know that a person is not brought into right relationship with God by “works of the law” but by faith in Christ. “From the works of the law, no one will be declared righteous” (a loose quotation of Ps. 143:2). When Paul says that the Jews, in being justified, are found to be sinners, he means that the fact that righteousness is by faith has the effect of putting Jews, like Gentiles, outside the law (Gal. 2:15). This action, which identifies the Jews as sinners, however, does not mean that Christ is a minister of sin, since the Jews (before faith) were already in actuality sinners in need of God’s grace (Rom. 2:17-24). In Gal. 2:18-21, Paul changes from “we” to “I.” To rebuild what he once destroyed would be to return to the works of the law. But Paul cannot do this, since he has died to the law (Rom. 7:1-4). This death has been accomplished by unity with Christ—a unity signified by baptism (Gal. 3:27; Rom. 6:3-10). Through faith, Paul has shared in the crucifixion and resurrection, so that the living Christ is present in him (Phil. 1:21). In his old body (“in the flesh”), Paul has a new identity. He lives by faith in the Son of God who loved him (Rom. 5:6-8; 2 Cor. 5:14) and gave himself as a redemptive sacrifice (see Rom. 3:24-25). This assertion of Paul confirms the grace of God—that redemption is a gift. But to claim that righteousness comes through the law is to make Christ’s death unnecessary.

IVP) A Personal Confession of Faith (2:19–21) The points of agreement and disagreement that Paul sets forth in response to the crisis in Antioch (and Galatia) are founded upon his own personal confession of faith in Christ (vv. 19–20). His faith in Christ involved both a death and a new life. When Paul says Through the law I died to the law, he is not speaking of physical death. In his vocabulary, to die to something means to have no further relation to it (see Rom 6:2, 10–11). So to die to the law means, in this context, to cease to be under the supervision of the law. Paul’s death to the law was accomplished through the law (v. 19). The phrase through the law is taken by some interpreters as a reference to Paul’s own subjective experience under the law. The law led him to discover his inability to keep the law and its inability to make him righteous. Thus it was through the law that Paul was finally led to abandon the law as the means to righteousness and to seek salvation in Christ. But this interpretation is not warranted by the immediate context. Paul does not say in this context that he died to the law because of his terrible sense of guilt and frustration under the law. Instead he declares that his death was accomplished by identification with the cross of Christ—I have been crucified with Christ (v. 20). When we interpret through the law in light of this declaration, I have been crucified with Christ, then we can see that death to the law through the law is accomplished by identification with the death of Christ. Paul explains in the next chapter that the law pronounced a curse on Christ as he hung on the cross (3:13). In this sense Christ died through the law. By crucifixion with Christ, believers also die because of the curse of the law on the one who hangs on the cross—and so, in this sense, they also die through the law. The perfect tense of the verb have been crucified points to the permanent condition of Christians in relation to the law: we remain dead and fully punished. Therefore the law can no longer condemn us. The result of dying to the law is a new kind of life, not a life of moral license, but a life for God—that I might live for God (v. 19). This new kind of life is not ego-centered but Christ-centered: I no longer live, but Christ lives in me (v. 20). This new life of faith is motivated and guided by the sacrificial love of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me (v. 20). Participating by faith in the death of Christ (I have been crucified with Christ) and the resurrection life of Christ (Christ lives in me) is the only way to live for God. But attempting to attain righteousness through the law sets aside the grace of God and negates the value of Christ’s death (v. 21).In succinct, compact form, Paul’s confession of faith expresses his own experience that Christ, not the law, is the source of life and righteousness. The reason for his personal confession was his insistence that Jewish and Gentile believers should not be separated as the law demands, but united as the truth of the gospel demands. His new spiritual identity—I no longer live, but Christ lives in me—is the basis of his new social identity: “There is neither Jew nor Greek … for you are all one in Christ” (3:28). When we make Paul’s confession of faith in Christ our own, we must keep in mind both the spiritual and social dimensions of our union with Christ. Without the social dimension, our faith in Christ degenerates into individualism. We then become interested only in our personal faith and neglect to maintain and express our union with all believers in Christ. Such individualism has been a root cause of constant division in the church. But without the spiritual dimension, all efforts to maintain unity in the church are fruitless. Not until we can truly know and experience the reality of Paul’s affirmation—I no longer live, but Christ lives in me—will we be able to live in true harmony with our brothers and sisters in Christ. For until then we will be ego-centered, not Christ-centered. The experience of union with Christ as expressed here by Paul is a mystical experience in the sense that it transcends rational explanation: direct, intimate communion with God in Christ cannot be fully described. This mystical experience, however, should not be confused with the mysticism prevalent in the Hellenistic mystery religions of Paul’s day, or the mysticism of Eastern religions touted by New Age prophets in our day. Both Hellenistic and Eastern types of mysticism emphasize ascetic disciplines leading to absorption into the divine, negation of individual personality and withdrawal from objective reality. The mystical experience of union with Christ is not accomplished by human effort but granted by God’s grace (I do not set aside the grace of God); it is not a loss of individual personality but a renewal of true personality (the life I live in the body, I live by faith); it is not a withdrawal into isolation but an involvement in service (“serve one another in love”—5:13). Mystical union with Christ also needs to be understood from the historical perspective: it is not a totally subjective experience divorced from objective historical reality. Just as a person who becomes a citizen of the United States has decided to live within the historical reality created by events in Philadelphia on July 4, 1776, so the person who becomes identified with Christ has decided to live within the new historical reality created by the events of the cross of Christ and his resurrection. Paul places the subjective experience of faith in Jesus Christ in the context of God’s redemptive work in history (3:6–25). The practical outworking of union with Christ comes into focus in Paul’s ethical appeal (5:13–6:10). There we find that the experience of union with Christ includes both passive (being led by the Spirit) and active (walking in the Spirit) dimensions. So it would be a mistake to take Paul’s words I no longer live, but Christ lives in me as a proof text for total passivity in the Christian experience. The very next phrase underscores the necessity of active faith: The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God (v. 20). We do not become just empty pipes that God’s power flows through, as I’ve heard preachers say. I no longer live as an egocentric person in obedience to all my selfish passions and desires, for Christ is now at the center of my life. Now I live in obedience to him, for he loved me and gave himself for me.

Life App - 2:20      I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. In several short phrases the apostle captured the breathless wonder believers experience as the realization dawns that we are no longer living “our” lives, but have surrendered to the author of life, who now lives his life in and through us. Paul continued his thought from verse 19. The perfect tense of the verbs indicates something that happened in the past but influences the present. Paul “died to the law” by being crucified with Christ. Christ completely fulfilled the law (past tense); this act influenced Paul in the present (who, as an imperfect human, could not keep the law). Yet because of Christ’s death, the law no longer had a hold on either of them. What profound relief Paul must have felt! He no longer needed to fear that, after spending his entire life studying and trying to keep the law, somehow he might still miss God. The Cross of Christ shows that although the law had to be kept, it was fulfilled by a perfect human. Christ paid sin’s penalty for imperfect humans.Being crucified with Christ refers to the conversion experience, a once-for-all transaction that has ongoing results. We do not have to be crucified with Christ again each day. As Christians, we must daily take up our cross to follow him, but this refers to the responsibilities of discipleship. We are required to daily withstand our sinful human desires. (5:16–25.) Scholars have looked at Paul’s phrase “I have been crucified with Christ” in different ways. This could mean that

     all believers participate in the benefits of Christ’s death and resurrection;

     all believers experience death and new life because Christ did so on their behalf;

     all believers will have experiences like those Christ endured (Romans 8:17; Philippians 3:10); or

     all believers actually participate in Christ’s death and resurrection because of the mystical union that believers have with the Lord (see also Romans 6:4–8; Colossians 2:12–14, 20; 3:1–4).

This statement holds in its simplicity the incomprehensible depth of each believer’s union with Christ. Each of the above suggestions actually emphasizes an aspect of the workings and benefits of Christ’s death on our behalf. Our biggest danger is in trivializing Christ’s death. Being a part of the “body of Christ” means more than just church membership. Union with Christ means that believers share his death, burial, and resurrection. Believers are so united with Christ that Christ’s experiences become their experiences. Paul would later write to the Romans:  Don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life. If we have been united with him like this in his death, we will certainly also be united with him in his resurrection. (Romans 6:3–5) Paul claimed he had been “crucified,” but he found himself still alive. Paul had died with Christ, but it was his “old self” that had died: it is no longer I who live. The self-centered, Jewish Pharisee, Christian-persecuting, law-abiding, violent, and evil Paul “no longer” lived. That person’s sinful life had been crucified with Christ on the cross when Paul was saved. This is the “I” of the flesh (see 5:13–24), of sinful human desires, of works and pride. Paul was released, not only from the tyranny of the Mosaic law, but also from the tyranny of self. Thus, this verse could read, “I no longer live I myself” or “I no longer I the old self in the flesh live.”

Instead, Paul was a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17) because, he explained, Christ lives in me. In other words, Paul had turned over his life to Christ. Each of the phrases is a crucial aspect of the sequence of salvation: We relinquish our old life and turn to Christ for his life. The self-centered self now becomes the Christ-centered self. It is as if Paul was saying, “My old life, my old goals and plans, even old relationships were nailed to the cross with Christ. Now I have a new life because Christ came in and filled the empty spaces all those old pursuits could not fill. Now he lives in me and is the focus of my life.” To accomplish this, there must be a radical cleansing of our old selfish nature. But there must also be a turning to the empowering of Christ. Just as in repentance we turn away from sin and toward Christ, we must turn from the self in the flesh to the self hidden in Christ. Mystical? Yes. Difficult to understand? Certainly. True? Beyond a doubt—ask any Christian. And that is precisely Paul’s point in the following section. Although mystical, this resurrection life is not beyond anyone’s reach, for the key to living it is by faith. Paul no longer focused his life on trying to please God by obeying laws; instead, with Christ in him, the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Believers’ lives are still lived “in the flesh” (in their bodies prone to sin) while they remain on earth. But with Christ in charge, they are new creations, living life “by faith.” This faith is not a one-shot deal—have faith, be saved, end of story. Rather, it is an attitude, a lifestyle. This new life is lived every day, every moment, through every situation “by faith.” (For more on “gave Himself,” see the notes on 1:4. See also Mark 10:45; Romans 5:6; and 1 John 4:10.) What is the object of that faith? Our Lord Jesus Christ. We have faith in his act of loving us and giving himself (dying) for us. In other words, “Because he loved me and died for me, he can live in and through me.” DYING TO LIVE How have we been crucified with Christ? Legally, God looks at us as if we had died with Christ. Because our sins died with him, we are no longer condemned (Colossians 2:13–15). Relationally, we have become one with Christ and identified ourselves with him, and his experiences are ours. Our Christian life began when, in unity with him, we died to our old life (see Romans 6:5–11). In our daily life, we must regularly crucify the sinful desires that keep us from following Christ. This too is a kind of dying with him (Luke 9:23–25). And yet the focus of Christianity is, not dying, but living. Because we have been crucified with Christ, we have also been raised with him (Romans 6:5). Legally, we have been reconciled with God (2 Corinthians 5:19) and are free to grow into Christ’s likeness (Romans 8:29). And in our daily life, we have Christ’s resurrection power as we continue to fight sin (Ephesians 1:19–20). Relationally, we are no longer alone, for Christ lives in us—he is our power for living and our hope for the future (Colossians 1:27).

Matthew Henry - (v. 20): I am crucified with Christ, etc. And here in his own person he gives us an excellent description of the mysterious life of a believer. [1.] He is crucified, and yet he lives; the old man is crucified (Rom. 6:6), but the new man is living; he is dead to the world, and dead to the law, and yet alive to God and Christ; sin is mortified, and grace quickened. [2.] He lives, and yet not he. This is strange: I live, and yet not I; he lives in the exercise of grace; he has the comforts and the triumphs of grace; and yet that grace is not from himself, but from another. Believers see themselves living in a state of dependence. [3.] He is crucified with Christ, and yet Christ lives in him; this results from his mystical union with Christ, by means of which he is interested in the death of Christ, so as by virtue of that to die unto sin; and yet interested in the life of Christ, so as by virtue of that to live unto God. [4.] He lives in the flesh, and yet lives by faith; to outward appearance he lives as other people do, his natural life is supported as others are; yet he has a higher and nobler principle that supports and actuates him, that of faith in Christ, and especially as eyeing the wonders of his love in giving himself for him. Hence it is that, though he lives in the flesh, yet he does not live after the flesh. Note, Those who have true faith live by that faith; and the great thing which faith fastens upon is Christ’s loving us and giving himself for us. The great evidence of Christ’s loving us is his giving himself for us; and this is that which we are chiefly concerned to mix faith with, in order to our living to him.

Wuest - I am crucified with Christ. The verb is in the perfect tense which speaks of a past completed action having present finished results. Paul uses it to show that his identification with Christ at the Cross was a past fact, and that the spiritual benefits that have come to him through his identification are present realities with him. By this statement he also shows how he died to the law, namely by dying with Christ who died under its penalty. The law’s demands were satisfied and therefore have no more hold on Paul. But thus being crucified with Christ, meant also to Paul, death to self. When Paul died with Christ, it was the Pharisee Saul who died. What he was and did up to that time passed away so far as he was concerned Saul was buried, and the old life with him. The dominating control of the Adamic nature had its power over him broken. Nevertheless I live. Saul the self-righteous Pharisee, died, but Paul the great apostle, lives. The ego (ἐγο) remained. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. It is no longer a self-centered life that he lives, but a Christ-centered one. His new life is a Person, the Lord Jesus living in Paul. And through the ministry of the Holy Spirit. the Lord Jesus is manifest in his life. The new life is no longer, like the former one, dependent upon the ineffectual efforts of a man attempting to draw near to God in his own righteousness. The new life is a Person within a person, living out His life in that person. Instead of attempting to live his life in obedience to a set of rules in the form of the legal enactments of the Mosaic law, Paul now yields to the indwelling Holy Spirit and cooperates with Him in the production of a life pleasing to God, energized by the divine life resident in him through the regenerating work of the Spirit. Instead of a sinner with a totally depraved nature attempting to find acceptance with God by attempted obedience to a set of outward laws, it is now the saint living his life on a new principle, that of the indwelling Holy Spirit manifesting forth the Lord Jesus. That is what Paul means when he says: And 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. Translation. With Christ I have been crucified, and it is no longer I who live, but there lives in me Christ. And that life which now I live in the sphere of the flesh, by faith I live it, which faith is in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself on my behalf.

*Gal.2:20 is a forceful way of making the point that his conversion to Christianity meant a complete change in his way of life.

JM - You foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you, before whose eyes Jesus Christ was publicly portrayed as crucified? (3:1)  . Crucified translates a perfect passive participle, indicating that the crucifixion was a historical fact that had continuing results.

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