The Life We Live
Galatians 2:20
Dr. Roger W. Thomas, Preaching Minister
First Christian Church, Vandalia, MO
Introduction: Galatians is small but important. Martin Luther said he considered it the most important book in the New Testament. It contains only six chapters and one hundred forty-eight verses. Each chapter is stuffed full of vital lessons for Christians then and now. Our text, Galatians 2:20, provides the heart of the book’s message. Tonight I want to use this verse as the framework from which to look at the entire book.
Note how the verse has two connected halves. The verse forms a circle. The two halves each speak of two subjects. Both halves talk of death and life. The whole verse actually speaks of two deaths and two lives—Christ’s and ours. The first half of the verse begins with death. “I have been crucified with Christ.” It then moves to life. “Christ lives in me.” The second half of the verse reverses the order. It begins with life. “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.” This second half then ends on the subject of Christ’s death much like the first half began. “Who loved me and gave himself up for me.” Together the two halves form a circle of life—the life we live in Christ. Let’s work our way around this circle.
I have been crucified with Christ. The message of the cross was the heart of Paul’s Gospel. That’s what he had proclaimed to the Galatians when he first came as a missionary a few years before. He is probably referring to this preaching of the cross when he reminds them in 3:1, “Before your very eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed as crucified.” His message made the cross real and personal. Galatians begins with this emphasis, “Grace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father… (1:3-4).
Not everyone likes that message, then or now. I needn’t remind you of the controversy created by The Passion of the Christ last year. Many Hollywood types who routinely applauded the sleaziest films imaginable suddenly complained that The Passion was too gory and violent. It was gory and violent, but it was also historically accurate. The real problem for many was the same problem the cross has always created. Paul says in his day, “The preaching of the cross was a scandal to the Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” But he insisted it was the power of God.
Why the problem with the message of the cross? Three reasons—who, how, and why. All three are hinted at in the opening of our verse. Some object to the claims about Christ. The gospel insists that it was not just anyone who died. He was the Christ, the Messiah. He was the Son of the Living God coming to earth to reveal the will of heaven in flesh. That’s incredible, many insist. A God who would die! Do you believe that?
Second, some object to how he died. Crucifixion was not a pretty picture. I won’t go into all of the gory details again. You have all heard it before. It might be one thing for a Messiah to die, but in that way? That was too much. The cross was over the top. It is!
If who died and how he died wasn’t enough, the clincher was what the Gospel claimed about why he died. He didn’t die for his own crimes. He did die as a victim of men’s brutality. He wasn’t just a victim. He was a sacrifice. He laid down his life for our sins. Indeed he died for us, not himself. That’s how our verse closes. “He gave up himself for me.” This is the heart of the Christian message. We can easily forget that. Some think we should.
Evangelist D. M. Stearns tells of a conversation following a preaching appearance in Philadelphia some years ago. At the close of the service a stranger came up to him and said, "I don’t like the way you spoke about the cross. I think that instead of emphasizing the death of Christ, it would be far better to preach Jesus, the teacher and example."
Stearns replied, "If I presented Christ in that way, would you be willing to follow Him?" "I certainly would," said the stranger without hesitation. "All right then," said the preacher, "let’s take the first step. He did no sin. Can you claim that for yourself?"
The man looked confused and somewhat surprised. "Why, no," he said. "I acknowledge that I do sin." Stearns replied, "Then your greatest need is to have a Savior, not an example!"
To confess “I have been crucified with Christ” means that we own his death as our own. It means we believe that he died for us, for our sins. We needed him to do that. It was as if we had died. He took our place. That’s the Gospel that we have heard and believe.
I no longer live, Paul continues. The old me, the one who lived for self and the world, no longer exists. He’s dead and buried, gone. He died with Christ. He was buried with him in baptism. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation,” the Gospel insists. His guilt and sin is done away with. The old man’s claims on my life are over and done with. Finished. Starting over with Christ is like being “born again.” You’ve heard that somewhere before!
But if my old self with its sin and guilt is dead and buried so are all the privileges that I might have appealed to back then. In Christ, we are on equally footing. We have all started over brand new. I can’t lay claim to how much good I used to do. That guy’s dead and gone. I can’t insist that my race, or position, or accomplishments make me better than somebody else. That’s buried with the past. In Christ we all stand as equals. The ground at the foot of the cross is level.
Now do you understand what Paul was driving at when he insists in Galatians 3, “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ." There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise” (26-29). “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live…”
But Christ lives in me. One of the big objections to the Gospel of Grace has always been that it is too easy, too cheap. The Gospel insists that our standing with God is not based on our performance. No one is going or not going to heaven because he or she is good or bad. If that were the standard, none of us would go. None of us are good enough. That is easy to say, but a lot harder to really let sink in. Most folk when they first hear that immediately think that if my relationship with God is not based on my performance, then it doesn’t make any difference how I live or what I do. I might as well live it up. Wrong!
The Gospel doesn’t say that how we live doesn’t matter. It says that on our own our lives will never be good enough. We need help—help from the inside. We don’t need Christ to just provide us with an example. We need him to be our savior and then come and live through us so that we can become more and more what he wants.
The Christian life is like a glove. By itself, a glove is an empty shell. When filled with the hand, the glove takes on life and power. We are the glove. Alone we are empty and powerless. “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” Paul promises in another place. “Christ lives in me,” he says here.
That’s the first half of the Galatians 2:20. It begins with our death with Christ. It concludes with Christ’s life in us. The second half of the verse reverses the path and takes us back. Paul begins the second half with life. “The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God.” Two truths stand out in these words.
First, he speaks of life in the body. This is important. Some in the ancient world tried to argue that physical life doesn’t matter, only spirit or soul life matters. Even some modern Christians try to contend that if we are spiritual enough we can rise above the mortal concerns of this world. We will move beyond the concerns of the flesh. Paul says even Christians must live out their lives in the flesh. There lies our problem.
Christ lives in us. But we live in the body. The conflict between the flesh and the spirit continue as long as we remain in this life. Listen to how Galatians 5 describes this, “16So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. 17For 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.”
The Christian life is lived in this world with all its temptations and appeals. The difference is we have Christ, the Holy Spirit, living and empowering us from the inside. Our only hope of victory over sin comes through believing that and allowing the Spirit to led us to victory.
The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God. Here’s the heart of Galatians. Acts 13-15 record the events surrounding Paul’s missionary trip to Galatia. Paul and Barnabas had planted the churches, appointed elders, and then moved on to start more churches in other territories. It’s important to note that most of the converts in these new churches were Gentiles. A lot of the first Christians were Jews born and raised on the Old Testament’s promise of a coming Messiah. But not the Galatians. Most of them came straight out of paganism and idolatry into the church, bypassing the Jewish synagogue and the Old Testament faith. There lies a problem. Not all veteran believers were sure if that was kosher or not. Was it actually possible to be a follower Christ without first being a Jew? That question runs in the background of the book.
Shortly after the missionaries left, other teachers arrived. They claimed to be believers in Jesus the Messiah. But they added a twist. Paul pointed you in the right direction, they said. He told about Jesus. But he didn’t tell you everything. Believing in Jesus is a good start, but that’s not enough. Jesus was the Jewish Messiah after all. If you really want to go to heaven, you need to go all the way by following the rules and rituals of the Old Testament Law. Jesus gets you started, but only the Law and its rules can take you the rest of the way. They were insisting that we may be saved by faith but must live by works.
Paul insists that we are both saved and live by faith in Christ. Our good works, good intentions, and rule keeping can no more make us holy after our baptism than they could before.
When Paul hears what the teachers are telling the converts, he is irate. Listen to some of his responses in Galatians. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—7which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned! 9As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let him be eternally condemned! …1You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you?… 15What has happened to all your joy? I can testify that, if you could have done so, you would have torn out your eyes and given them to me. 16Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth? 17Those people are zealous to win you over, but for no good. What they want is to alienate you from us, so that you may be zealous for them. 18It is fine to be zealous, provided the purpose is good, and to be so always and not just when I am with you. 19My dear children, for whom I am again in the pains of childbirth until Christ is formed in you, 20how I wish I could be with you now and change my tone, because I am perplexed about you!…7You were running a good race. Who cut in on you and kept you from obeying the truth? 8That kind of persuasion does not come from the one who calls you. 9“A little yeast works through the whole batch of dough.” 10I am confident in the Lord that you will take no other view. The one who is throwing you into confusion will pay the penalty, whoever he may be.”
We are vulnerable to the same false teaching today. Christ isn’t just a good beginning for our new life. He is the life. To claim that the cross is only about our past misses the point. Laws, rules, rituals, and human disciplines won’t make us any better after our baptism than they could before. The life we live is first and last through faith in what Christ does for us. It is not about what we can do for our ourselves or about what we can do for God. To claim anything else is to change the Gospel. Note the verse that follows our text. “I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!”
Conclusion: Finally, note how our verse comes full circle. “Who loved me and gave up himself for me.” ‘I have been crucified with God…{Christ}loved me and gave up himself for me.” The substitution of Christ for us is the beginning and end of the Gospel. Romans 5:8 makes it clear, “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
A true story offers a parable. Many of you have probably heard of the infamous Civil War incident known as the Palmyra Massacre. It happened not far from here in Marion County, Missouri. I want to tell you the rest of the story.
The Union Army had established a large encampment at the Palmyra fairgrounds. A large number of Confederate soldiers were held there as prisoners of war. A number of locals had also been arrested for conspiring with the rebels.
In October of 1862, Union General John McNeil, later known as the Butcher of Palmyra, returned to camp to find that one of his aids and older local man by the name of Andrew Allsman was missing. It was rumored that Allsman was serving as an informant for the Union. McNeil suspected Allsman had been kidnapped or killed by Confederate insurgents in the area. No one knew for sure.
McNeil was furious. The General ordered a proclamation stating that if Allsman was returned in ten days, he would put to death ten Confederate prisoners in reprisal. Allsman was not returned. McNeil kept his word. The killing became known as the Palmyra Massacre. The news of the incident did far more harm than good to the Union cause in Missouri.
Among the ten men chosen for execution was William T. Humphrey. Humphrey was the father of several children. When his wife learned of the sentence, she came to Palmyra to plead for his husband’s life. She was in poor health, she told McNeil. If he killed her husband, the children would likely become orphans.
We don’t know all of the details about what happened next. We do know the results. Hiram Smith, a younger prisoner who had no family, agreed to take the place of Humphrey. He said he thought that it was better for a single man to die than a man with a family. On October 17, 1862, Hiram Smith gave himself up for William Humphrey!
To this day, a stone monument stands over the grave of Hiram Smith at the Mount Pleasant Church cemetery near Palmyra. It was placed by G. W. Humphrey, the son of the man whose place Smith had taken. The inscription reads: “This monument is dedicated to the memory of HIRAM SMITH, the hero who sleeps beneath the sod here, who was shot at Palmyra, October 17, 1862 as a substitute for William T. Humphrey, my father.”
Likewise, that cross, this communion table, the legacy of our personal baptisms stand as a monument to one “who loved us and gave himself up for me.”
***Dr. Roger W. Thomas is the preaching minister at First Christian Church, 205 W. Park St., Vandalia, MO 63382 and an adjunct professor of Bible and Preaching at Central Christian College of the Bible, 911 E. Urbandale, Moberly, MO. He is a graduate of Lincoln Christian College (BA) and Lincoln Christian Seminary (MA, MDiv), and Northern Baptist Theological Seminary (DMin).
