Read Galatians 2:15-21
We continue our exploration of faith, so let’s begin with what should be a very familiar defining verse from the King James Version.
We are going to talk about some things not seen. How many have been nailed to a cross? I am talking real nails and real holes in your body and real blood pouring out.
How many have experienced the whole shebang? I’m talking raised up on a cross and labored breathing on top of the bleeding?
How many have ever been present for a crucifixion? You weren’t the guy getting nailed to the cross, but you were present when it happened.
I can only think of two guys who could say, I have been crucified with Christ. And only one of those two might be able to say, Christ lives in me.
We use these words from the Apostle Paul on a frequent basis. I have been crucified with Christ. Christ lives in me. We think that Paul was not crucified. He may have been beheaded but did not get nailed to a cross. Roman citizens were exempt from crucifixion.
Paul was stoned before but that didn’t kill him. So, Paul’s punitive death did not come via the cross or even according to Hebrew tradition. How can Paul say, I have been crucified with Christ?
These words are about faith.
Paul was explaining to the Galatians who had been taken off course by those Jews who were insisting on some aspects of the law being essential to salvation. Circumcision was chief among them.
Paul noted that what these believers had received—the gospel of life in Jesus Christ—didn’t need anything to go with it as far as salvation was concerned.
Paul noted that while he had visited Peter and James, they did not influence the gospel that he delivered. In fact, on one occasion, he had to confront Peter for his treatment of Gentile believers.
Paul was teaching that there is no Jesus Plus gospel. Plus what? Plus anything else. This applies to Jew and Gentile alike. Nobody comes to salvation or justification or anything that restores the relationship with God other than Jesus the Son.
And we must receive the Son by faith.
The man who persecuted those who lived by faith is preaching only faith. No one will be justified by the law.
Today, that’s not a sore subject in our daily discussions. When you are dealing with First Century Christians who grew up their entire lives in the Jewish tradition, you have spit in their grits.
Paul does not discount the law. The Law of Moses was big time to God’s Chosen People. It was given to his people for their own good. But understand Paul’s treatment of this law to the believer.
For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. The life that I live in this body, I live by faith.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
The language is figurative, but the message holds true. It’s a bold way to express the new creation that we have become because of our faith in Christ Jesus.
We have died to the old self. We have died a gruesome death in the manner of Christ Jesus. We were not granted the Roman exemption. The old self is gone. It was a painful experience, but we now live only because of and for Christ Jesus.
He lives in me. My life is not my own.
But I look in the mirror and the new person looks a whole bunch like the old person. There are no holes in my hands. I don’t look like I’m 5 quarts low on blood. I don’t look like I have been crucified.
How can I be new? How can Christ live in me? How could I have died to the law through the law and not look differently?
The answer is that I do look different. The word of Christ dwells richly in me. Everything that I do, I do it in the name of Christ Jesus. Every step I take is purposed to bring glory to God.
We are different. We can’t see it outwardly, but we see it through faith. We see what is unseen through faith!
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
Because of our faith, we can say, We have been crucified with Christ. We can all say: I don’t live for myself. Christ lives in me.
We can’t see it but it is true. It is real. It comes through faith.
So do we ignore the law? No. It was given to God’s own people for their own good and remains a guide to good living. But our lives are not justified by the law. Christ alone has put us in right relationship with God the Father.
Let’s put some thoughts together and walk by faith by saying them aloud.
Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
I have been crucified with Christ, Christ lives in me.
If we believe, if we have faith, if we trust in the Lord, then these lives that we live are not our own. Are we still trusted with a thousand decisions each day? Yes.
Are we constrained to walk in fear of messing up? No.
Are we restrained from sin? No.
Are we counseled as how to live? Yes! Moment to moment God’s Spirit speaks to us. God’s holy word dwells richly in us. Christ lives in us.
And if we trust him with all of our heart.
And if we rely upon him over our own understanding.
And if we acknowledge him with our every step.
He will keep us on the right path.
We still make our own decisions, but they are truly his decisions because his word and his Spirit abide in us.
The old person has died. The new person is indwelled by God’s Spirit and his word. We can say in all truthfulness, Christ lives in me.
It is not our logic, not our intellect, and not our own understanding that enables us to speak these words. It is not visible evidence as the world would demand. It is the substance of things hoped for. It is the evidence of things not seen.
It is faith.
Faith brings us to where we can say these words: I have been crucified with Christ. Christ lives in me.
If there was any other way for us to be right with God, then Christ died for nothing!
We have received the definition of faith as the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
We have been challenged to walk by, that is live by, faith not sight.
Now, we are challenged to say goodbye to our old self—let it be nailed to the cross, and receive by faith this new creation that is indwelled by God himself. Christ lives in me.
It’s a crazy notion that the world rejects. It’s not something that you accept intellectually. It is a reality that comes only through faith.
But we who live in these jars of clay sometimes struggle with this affirmation. When we came to Christ by repenting of our sins and worldly living, this should have been automatic. We should have left the world and all of its trappings behind. We should have repented completely.
Ash Wednesday isn’t too far off. I will make a mess or your foreheads and say these words: Repent and believe the good news.
You might wonder, why say this to a group of people who are saved, at least most are anyway?
Repent is an interesting word. In the Hebrew, it most often means to turn away from or to return to. In the Greek, the word that we translate as repent is to change your mind or to change your inner self.
What should we know about repentance? We are to turn away from the world and return to God.
When we turn away, we are to leave our old thinking, old paradigms, old models behind and receive and embrace the new. We receive the mind of Christ and we live as a new creation.
We don’t turn away but make a treasure map of how to get back one day.
We don’t turn away but do so on a tether so we can find our way back to where we once were.
Did you watch the Bird Cage? It was unique with subplots and other twists. I didn’t really like it. Why? At the end of the movie, someone or something needs to explain where the menacing force that killed everyone who saw it came from. Was Donald Sutherland already booked?
In any case, there is one scene, maybe more where Sandra Bullock tethers herself to a boat that they are escaping in. She wants to make it back to the boat where her kids are—are at least they are supposed to be.
She tethers herself because she wants to return. When we turn away from the world, we must do so without this desire to return. We must be untethered.
If we are struggling with letting go of our past, of the world’s grip on us, of the blindness imposed by the Evil One, we need to truly repent. We must let go, turn around, and return to God untethered to what we leave behind.
We need to say and believe and have faith that we can not only turn away from the ways of the world, but leave those ways in our past. We exchange what was our old self for the new creation we have become.
We leave all the junk behind. We don’t turn away from it but take a few things along just in case.
We don’t turn away yet remain anchored to who we were.
We don’t turn away but keep pleasant memories of who we were in the world.
It is a wholesale exchange. True repentance—and there shouldn’t be any other kind—is a complete exchange of the old for the new. That’s the way it should be, but, that old self wants his old status back.
I give a lot of my stuff to the Mission House and Christi’s, depending which way we are driving that day. Both support good ministries. I look at a shirt that I haven’t worn for 5 years and my human nature says, “You might need it next week. Better hold on to that.”
I don’t need the shirt—though it still looks pretty good. I’m not going to wear it. It needs to go.
We don’t list the number of items when we donate clothing to the thrift stores. We note the number of cubic yards of clothing. The stuff has got to go. I don’t need it!
But the stuff still wants its place in my life. It doesn’t give up. I have to put it in my past and get it out the door.
The world does not want us to repent. The world does not want us to turn away. The world does not want to let go of us. The world does not want to get the short end of the stick in a wholesale exchange of our hearts and minds, so it calls out to us. “You might need that shirt next week.”
And here is the thing. I might need it, but I have to have faith that I won’t or that I will have something better in its place. I can’t do this except by faith.
Even though it’s going to a good cause, I have to discharge it from the things that I own or that own me. I can have no more connection with it.
Understand that to repent is to completely let go of what was. It is to say goodbye once and for all to what was. It is to nail it to the cross. It is to turn around and embrace the new, in this case the new creation that we are.
It is to say with a genuine voice that can only come from faith, I have been crucified with Christ. Christ lives in me.
Amen.
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