What does it mean to live by faith (Galatians 2:20)?

(V. 20.) For the one that believes in Jesus, this sentence of death has been carried out in the death of Christ our Substitute. His death was the death of our old man — the man under judgment. So the believer can say, "I am crucified with Christ." Thus having passed through death, in the death of our Substitute we are free from the law. The law can condemn a man to death because of the life that he has led; but directly the man is dead, he no longer lives in the life to which the law applied. The law can have nothing to say to a dead man. Moreover, if as believers we have died to the old life to which the law applies, we have a new life in Christ. So the Apostle can say, "Nevertheless I live: yet not I but Christ lives in me." If I would see this new life in all its perfection, I must look at Christ. As one has said, "When I … turn my eyes to Jesus, when I contemplate all His obedience, His purity, His grace, His tenderness, His patience, His devotedness, His holiness, His love, His entire freedom from all self-seeking, I can say, That is my life … It may be obscured in me; but it is none the less true, that that is my life" (J.N.D.). Thus it is our privilege to hold ourselves dead to the law that we may live this new life to God.

A further great truth is that this new life, like all life in the creature, has, and must have, an object to sustain the life. If the Lord Jesus is our life, He is also personally the object of the life. So the Apostle adds "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith, the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me." Faith sees Christ, looks to Him, confides in Him, feeds upon Him, abides in His love, in the blessed consciousness that He is for us in all the depths of love that led Him to give Himself for us.

The life of faith is not simply looking once to Christ for salvation, but going on with Him hour by hour. Being justified by faith, we live day by day on the principle of faith. We do not receive life from the once crucified Lord, and then go on in our own power: "As ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in Him" (Col. 2:6) — by faith. Every day the believer needs Christ as his strength; and living by faith, he is living outside his own resources, and by the Son of God, who loved him and gave Himself for him.

"I, NOT I." If "Christ liveth in me," then this life has its object, its food, its pursuits; it cannot be satisfied with that with which the old man sought to be satisfied; it can neither be nourished by its own works, nor by ordinances. It must have an object, and food, and pursuits congenial to it. All these are found in Christ. "The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God." The life now lived is not in its native climate; nothing around it really ministers unto it. It is a life pre-eminently "of faith." That same Jesus, the Son of the living God, who in heaven will be the one absorbing object, is the one absorbing object to faith now. Would any be kept from the bondage of legalism, it must be by looking unto Jesus. It is not a speculative life; on the contrary, it is a life full of affection; for its object is Jesus, as the disciple (rather than the apostle) adds, "who loved me, and gave Himself, for me." The affection of Jesus to us draws forth ours to Him. The love of Jesus, when He was here, found its activities amidst all the miseries of this world; and if His love produces the like in us, he who is most living by the faith of the Son of God, will be most active in the midst of the misery of this world, because, as the disciple of the CROSS of Christ, he has learnt that nothing short of divine love can meet its miseries.

And now let us see how the Christian lives. You cannot live in this world without an object before you; so he says, "I live by the faith of the Son of God." How far can we say that we live by the faith of the Son of God? "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus," that will be by the faith of the Son of God.

What life was the apostle Paul referring to when he said, "The life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God" (Gal. 2:20)?

I think it was this life coming out in practice. He was no longer living to himself, but living to and for Christ in that new impulse of life he had received from the Son of God. No doubt in Galatians it stands in contrast to trying to live by the law; he lived by the faith of the Son of God indicating, no doubt, Christianity in its power.

The apostle now turns from "we" to "I" as he does in Romans 7. In the death of that blessed One, who had died under the solemn curse of a broken law, he had died; and in that death he had died to law, to the intent that he might live to God. "I am crucified with Christ;" Saul, the Pharisee, with all his religious accomplishments as well as with all his sins, has come to an end judicially in the cross of Christ, and a new man is risen up in his stead. "Not, I, but Christ lives in me;" a life communicated from the risen Jesus, a life that death cannot touch. As this life has its source in heaven, its tendencies are to things in heaven. It is spiritual life in contrast to natural life, and so the apostle adds, "The life which I now live in the flesh;" it is lived in the flesh now, in a poor, groaning, earthly tabernacle; but it will not always be so; we await our house from heaven, a body perfectly suited to its heavenly environment. "I live by the faith of the Son of God." Soon we shall be manifested with Christ in glory, but meantime, before we see Him as He is, we live by the faith of the Son of God. He is "the object bright and fair, to fill and satisfy the heart." With what feelings of unspeakable joy and delight do we utter these precious words "Who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

Therefore the apostle says, "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me: 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" (ver. 20). Here we get Christian life in a nutshell. Crucified with Christ, the old life closed with all its appurtenances; a new life possessed — Christ. The life is sustained by faith in its heavenly object, the Son of God. How blessed is this for the Christian! A positive new life implanted in the soul from God, indestructible, eternal, and divine; and its true object set before it. This is put too in the most touching possible way, for the apostle adds, "Who loved me, and gave himself for me." This draws out the affections, and produces heavenly fruit for God. Who would not be for ever adoringly occupied with such an One? What a contrast to mere cold legalism! Yet the heart is ever ready to return there, to its own loss and the Lord's dishonour.

All this, however, involves a paradox which the apostle states in verse 20. "I am crucified," says he, "nevertheless I live." Crucifixion has reached me, yet has it left me a living man. It has reached me in identification with Christ, and its effect is the displacing of self, the old "I," in favour of Christ; so that He, vitally in us now by His Spirit (see Rom. 8:9 and 10), may live in us characteristically — that is, that His character may be seen in us.

Such a life is not possible apart from instant and continuous dependence upon Himself. If Christ is to live in me, and consequently be displayed as to His character by me, He must be abidingly my Object. Hence Paul adds, "The life which I now live in the flesh [that is, in the body, as a man in this world] I live by the faith of the Son of God." By-and-by, when out of the flesh, and in bodies of glory, we shall live by the sight of the Son of God; now we live by the faith of Him. Faith makes Him a living, bright reality to us, and that which acts as the motive force in it all is His love. "The Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

In, which here signifies character. 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, the character of which, 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 another character entirely. As you observed him you saw not the Saul-of-Tarsus character coming into expression, but Christ. In keeping with this he did not retain his old name, but soon after his conversion he became known as Paul, which means, "Little one." He must be little if Christ is to live in him.

By which introduces us to the Object that controlled Paul's soul, and made this new character of life possible. Presently, when the life we now live in the flesh — that is, in our present mortal bodies — is over, we shall live by the sight of the Son of God. Meanwhile we live by the faith of Him. If faith is in activity with us He is made a living bright reality before our souls. The more He is thus before us objectively, that is, as "… the object bright and fair, To fill and satisfy the heart." the more will He be seen in us subjectively.

The apostle gives us a full statement of this blessed truth, as in his own case. "I am crucified with Christ," he says, "nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me." Here he speaks of himself, in one point of view, as dead; and in another, as alive. How can this be understood? By faith only. He speaks of two "I's "; the old "I," or self, as slain — or crucified. The new "I," as his new life — Christ in him. The first, he treats as dead, and for ever done with; the second, as his only life now. "Christ lives in me." The practical effect of this truth, when believed, is immense. Self, wretched self, which is the end and object of the natural man, in all he does, is gone — gone, I mean, to faith. Christ enters and takes the place of self. "For me to live is Christ" — is to have Christ, not self, for my end and object. Christ, not self, is the spring now. We know, of course, that Paul had his natural life here below — the life he ever had as a man, but the life in which he lived, was a wholly new one — Christ in him. "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."

All this is as true now, in principle, of every Christian, as it was of the apostle, though it may not be so brightly manifested. There must first be faith in the truth, then a life answering to the strength which that faith gives. However, it is plainly written, "They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts." Not, observe, are crucifying it, but have crucified it. But of whom is this great truth stated? Of highly advanced Christians? No, simply of "they that are Christ's." It is as true of the babe, as of the young man, or the father in Christ. What was it that needed crucifying on the cross? Something that belonged to Christ, or to me? It was the old and great "I," that needed to be slain — nailed to the tree, and that was done in Christ, for ever, blessed be His name. Oh! to believe it, — to keep self where the cross has put it — to walk in the liberty and power of the Holy Spirit, and be only, and always, occupied with the risen and glorified Christ.