I am crucified with Christ, and no longer live, *I*, but Christ lives in me; but [in] that I now live in flesh, I live by faith, the [faith] of the Son of God, who has loved me and given himself for me.
Paul has just told Peter in public that keeping the law puts no one right with God. Now he turns that argument on himself, and raises the question every reader feels at once: how can a man be dead and alive at the same time?
The sentence already carried out
The law's verdict on a lawbreaker is death. This verse says God carried that verdict out. He did not set it aside. One writer traces the logic step by step:
For the one who believes in Jesus, Christ our Substitute has already taken that death sentence in His own death. His death was the death of our old man — the man under judgment. So the believer can say, "I have been crucified with Christ." We passed through death in the death of our Substitute, so we are free from the law. The law can condemn a man to death for the life he has led. But once the man is dead, he no longer lives the life the law applied to. The law can have nothing to say to a dead man.
A finished act, not a daily effort
This crucifixion happened with Christ. So it is not a work the believer does to himself:
The word of God treats the believer's crucifixion with Christ as a finished act that will never happen again. He died once, and we were then, and there, and forever identified with Him... God never tells the believer to crucify himself or his flesh. He counts it as already done.
This does not mean the struggle is over. The same writer adds a balance. The call to put sin to death in daily life is given to people who can already say they were crucified with Christ.
Crucified, and still alive
The verse holds two things together that look like opposites:
All this involves a paradox, which the apostle states in verse 20. He has been crucified, he says, and still he lives. Crucifixion has reached me, yet it has left me a living man. It has reached me because I am joined to Christ. Its effect is to push self, the old "I," out of the way and put Christ in its place. He now lives in us by His Spirit, so that His character can be seen in us.
The same person, a new character
The man who wrote this was the same person he had always been. What changed was the life that came out of him:
Though crucified we live. We are still living people on earth, yet we no longer live the old character of life. We live a life of a new order, a life whose character, summed up in one word, is CHRIST. Saul of Tarsus had been crucified with Christ. Yet the individual known as Saul of Tarsus was still living. Still living, yet in an entirely different character... he did not keep his old name. Soon after his conversion he became known as Paul, which means "Little one." He must be little if Christ is to live in him.
Once self is displaced, something has to take its place as the aim of living:
Self, wretched self, which is the end and object of the natural man in everything he does, is gone... Christ enters and takes the place of self. "For to me to live is Christ" — that is, to have Christ, not self, as my end and object. Christ, not self, is the spring now.
The object of the new life
The second half of the verse shows what keeps this new life going day by day:
This new life, like all life in the creature, has and must have an object to sustain it. If the Lord Jesus is our life, He is also personally the object of that life... Faith sees Christ, looks to Him, trusts Him, feeds on Him, and rests in His love. It knows with joy that He is for us, in all the depth of the love that led Him to give Himself for us.
Living by faith will not last forever. One day something better takes its place. When life in our mortal bodies is over, "we shall live by the sight of the Son of God. Meanwhile we live by faith in Him" (F. B. Hole).
Love narrowed down to one name
The verse ends in the singular — "me." One writer says that is deliberate:
"He loved me and gave Himself for me." It is impossible to find language more individual. It is more than the general truth that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life." The soul that now believes can claim the love of Christ as its own.
Taking it personally is not going too far. It is the ordinary work of faith: "Faith takes for itself what grace reveals... It never deals in generalities" (Andrew Miller).
Summary
- Died. Christ took the law's death sentence, so the law has nothing left to say to a man who has already died.
- Done. Crucifixion with Christ is a finished act to believe, not a self-punishment to attempt.
- Displaced. The old "I" is set aside so Christ's character, not self, becomes the spring of everyday life.
- Focused. The new life keeps going by looking to Christ — faith now, sight later.
- Owned. The love that did all this is stated in the singular, and faith is meant to say "me."