Find Yourself By Dying

Title: Finding Yourself by Dying Script: Gal. 2:20

Type: Expository Where: 6-19-22

Intro: In her book, It Only Hurts When I Laugh, Ethel Barret tells how four outstanding servants of God died to self and sin. George Mueller, when questioned about his spiritual power, responded simply, “One day George Mueller died.” D. L. Moody was visiting New York City when he consciously died to his own ambitions. Pastor Charles Finney slipped away to a secluded spot in a forest to die to self. And evangelist Christmas Evans, putting down on paper his surrender to Christ, began it by writing: “I give my soul and body to Jesus.” It was, in a very real sense, a death to self. John Gregory Mantle wrote, “There is a great difference between realizing, ‘On that Cross He was crucified for me,’ and ‘On that Cross I am crucified with Him.’ The one aspect brings us deliverance from sin’s condemnation, the other from sin’s power.” We all recognize that when Christ saves us we have new life in Him. However, in today’s verse we’ll notice that new life is manifested in

Prop: Exam. Gal.2:20 we’ll realize 3 Lives the Cross of Christ calls every believer to.

BG: 1. Galatians is the 1st of Pauline Epistles. Written around 48 ad to combat Judaizer heresy.

2. Paul had 2 purposes in writing Galatians – reassert his authority to church who spurned him, combat the destructive lies that were leading people to reject authentic Christianity.

3.

Prop: Examining Gal. 2:20 we see the cross of Christ calls every believer to 3 lives.

I. The Relinquished Life – “I have been crucified with Christ…”

A. Paul considers the Implications of a Relinquished Life.

1. How had Paul experienced a Relinquished Life?

a. In Acts 9:1-19 we read of the miraculous confrontation Saul of Tarsus had with Jesus Christ and his subsequent conversion and renaming: “Paul”. There was Saul, a young zealous religious leader of the Jews intent on destroying the Christian faith. “He went to the high priest 2 and asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any there who belonged to the Way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem.” V.2 He was a hateful man. A hell bent man intent on defamation, destruction, and detention. He lived his life under the assumption that he was right and everyone else was wrong. He was taking matters into his own hands and assumed he even had God’s blessing in do so. (Sounds like a lot of us before we met Christ!)

b. And there, on that dusty road to Damascus a light flashed around him, he was knocked to the ground and a voice said to him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you Lord? I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.” Right then, Paul has an encounter with the Cross of Christ! Saul thought he was living righteously. He thought he was faultless. He thought he was right. He didn’t care about anyone else. No mercy. No grace. The cross of Christ condemned him as a vile sinner.

2. What does Paul mean when he declares: “I have been crucified with Christ?”

a. One of the most dramatic aspects of becoming a disciple of Christ is the fact that He invites sinners to die to themselves in order to experience new life. Those who have become united to Christ experience a radically different way of being human because they have in fact died to their old selves and their sinful ways of living.

b. “I have been crucified..” depending on the translation, either 4-5 words in English, yet only one word in the Greek. Only time used in the entire NT. It meant “to impale in company with another”, we might say to “crucify together”. Now, Paul was not literally there when Jesus was crucified. Two men were. Paul was not. Yet, the spiritual reality of the crucifixion for the Christian is that we were there. Had ramifications for us.

B. Have you and I considered the Implications of a Life Relinquished to Christ?

1. What are the implications of a relinquished life?

a. Have you relinquished your life to Christ or are you still attempting to live it for yourself?

Illust: When James Calvert went out to be a missionary to the cannibals in the Fiji Islands, the captain of the ship warned him, “Sir, you will lose your life and the lives of those with you if you go among such savages.” Calvert’s response was instructive to all Christians of every generation: “We died before we came.” There comes a time in every Christian’s life when we stop living for our own plans in life, give up ownership of ourselves, and declare to the Lord: “Your will be done in me.”