Galatians 2:20–Crucified With Christ

Galatians 2:20: "I have been crucified with Christ, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.  And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."

When reading this verse, my thought is: "What if I haven't been crucified by Christ?"  The truth is, in order for Christ to live in me, as this verse asserts, I must be brought into His crucifixion.  Unless I take part in Christ's death, I can have no business in His life.  It is by way of His death that we are given His life eternal.  In the eternal sense, you cannot have life without death.

This is the depth of the second part of this verse.  It is by faith in the Son of God that life is imparted to the believer.  But this faith is not faith in some abstract sense and it is certainly not a faith spiritualizes, as in, a faith that spiritualizes Christ without considering the historicity of His life, death, and resurrection.  No.

Faith of the right sort is a faith in the crucified Messiah, the risen Lord.  This faith forms the foundation for a life lived by faith, one that is dependent on the reliability of the Word of God and the historicity of Jesus of Nazarene.  The risen, living self is thus founded on the risen, living Lord just as the sin flesh is put to death in the crucifixion of Christ Jesus.  Amen to God that He has orchestrated such an amazing wonder as this!

Love Laid Down

1 John 3:16: By this we know love, that He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers."

When confronting this verse my immediate thought is: "what does it mean to lay my life down?"  While this may seem an obvious answer, I am not so sure.  Perhaps it is because I only think of laying down in reference to sleep or, in the ultimate, to that final sleep of death.  So when John, empowered and influenced by the Holy Spirit, says that we should lay down our lives it must encompass a certain sobriety.

I think of a toothpaste container being emptied.  As the paste is expelled from the tube it shrinks.  The tube is squeezed and pressed and rolled up to siphon every last bit of toothpaste from the container.  When I think of laying down my life for the people I love, this is what I think of: I am the tube, my love the paste.

However, the irony of this whole ordeal is that for every bit of love that is squeezed out of me, God refills my stores with a grander, greater, truer love.  It turns out that for me to be filled with greater love, I need to rid myself of all the love I have.  Additionally, as a balloon swells to ever increasing sizes, God continually enlarges our capacity for love and to love.  This is the utter beauty of Christianity and one of its unique features among the so-called world religions.  Praise God for its truth!

2 Corinthians 5:15: Dead to Self to Live to God

2 Corinthians 5:15: "And He died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for Him who died for them and was raised again."

It is an odd thought to think that we must die in order that we may live.  To think that true life comes from upon the brink of death is what nature continually confirms.  Think of the strange wonder that the soil is enriched with the biological compost of what has come and died before.  However, it is a much odder thing to think that a dead man could do anything at all other than die.  But this is exactly what Christianity asserts.

It is on the cusp of death that life is born.  In the case of eternal life, it is met through faith.  When we offer ourselves up to Christ in faith and we accept the reality that we are, in fact, already deceased, then we are able to begin life anew.  Only once the obituary of our life is written can we begin to live the life that is everlasting.  However, and this cannot be overstated, we should be warned that there is a time limit, an expiration to this opportunity to live.

When our bodies do perish we have missed the date.  No longer will we be able to be slain by faith because we have already been murdered by disbelief.  This is the rub: either we will live by faith or we will die by non-faith.  There is no middle ground, no DMZ, no neutral forking road by which we can safely choose faith in God.  We are either already dead or we will accept our dead state and seek to be made alive in Christ.

It is by God's grace through Christ that we have been made alive, but we do not live that life until we accept that we are dead in sin.  By accept that death we put sin to death in ourselves through Christ.  It is thus Christ who causes us to be made alive but He also assists us in putting sin to death utterly so that we truly can live without sin in Him.  Amen that God has done all this for us and let us never lose sight that we are alive in Him and in Him alone!

Covenant Membership: A Matter of Justification

Romans 3:28: "For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law."

This verse comes as part of the primary argument of the book of Romans, the main point being that justification is not a matter of ethnic distinction or even religious rites.  On the contrary, justification is a matter of faith, more directly, faith in Christ Jesus.  And while justification is one of the major considerations of Paul, and through Paul the Holy Spirit, it can be easily misconceived as something other than to what Paul is referring.  Because of this, a brief note about justification is in order.

For starters, justification is a dense word dealing with the legal tenders of humans, but it can be reduced to a single phrase: covenant membership.  In this way, justification means covenant covenant membership.  So, the major argument of Romans is a matter of what makes someone a member of the covenant of Christ.  In this, then, 'works of the law' refers not to works-based-righteousness; it refers to what makes someone a member of the covenant.  In other words, 'works of the law' is synonymous with circumcision and other Israelite rites.  This alludes to the juxtaposition present in this verse, arming justification by faith with justification by works of the law.

This is still so relevant to Christians today.  We often consider our faithfulness to the covenants of God as a matter of things we do or have done, as in, if I go to church and know the right Scriptures then I will prove me as a member of the covenant of Christ.  But Paul, and the Holy Spirit that inspired this passage, is saying something different altogether.  No longer is covenant membership a matter of 'works of the law' a.k.a. circumcision.  Now justification is a matter of faith alone; faith in Christ Jesus.  In this way, the covenant and its promises have been opened and made available to all those who have faith.  And as a gentile Christian all I can say is: "Amen!"

Ephesians 1:7-10: Everything According to His Plan

Ephesians 1:7-10: "In Him we have the redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according the His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unity all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth."

The above passage, while brimming with a density of theology, can be simply contracted into a single phrase: God has saved us in Christ Jesus because of His good pleasure and according to His divine plan.  To be sure, the solidity of this assertion has a heaviness that boggles both the mind and heart.  However, for today, I will simple say: "Amen!"

The Long Walk of Faith: A Matter of Practice

The long walk in the same direction that is Christianity is an endurance race, an ardent patience of struggling to step forward steadfastly and sure through the troughs and snare of life.  Throughout this arduous race our only assurance unto perseverance is faith in God Himself.  But this strength is the ultimate source of strength that can cause all of us to be ever emboldened and comforted in the journey.

But this is not to say that faith is a passive endeavor.  On the contrary, faith is always reckoned actively.  Remember: "I will show you my faith by my works."  (James 2:18).  Faith, to be sure, is as much a matter of practice as it is about ritual, and it is as much an endeavor of individual experiences as it is one of everyday exercise.  

The everyday faith is, it turns out, the strongest faith man is capable of rendering to God.  It is that faith that so wholly suffuses the person's character with the regularity of the everyday exercises.  It is explained easy enough: start your day in prayer and study, throughout the day continue seeking after God and praying, and then ending your day the same way it began.

Humility: the Bedrock of Virtue

Humility is one of the chief character traits of Christianity. It could be said that it forms the cornerstone of Christian virtue for as a bedrock it serves to support every other virtue. But humility for humility's sake would be as useful as buying new shoes when you have no feet. It the source of humility in the life of the Christian that matters: namely, God.

When we are confronted with the terrible majesty and overwhelming awesomeness of God, this is humility in its utmost.  Humility, the virtue of being humble, seeks to suffuse one's life with a sense of perspective, reckoning all others above oneself is its chief aim.  Because this is the aim of humility, the means by which this tremendous task is accomplished is one of recognition.

Seeing God in all His glory is humbling.  The truth, however, is that all humanity will see His glory in the end and the response will be either humility in faith or humiliation in cower to His awesomeness. Therefore, humility is a supreme statement to the grace of God.  It is our response of repentance and faith, having seen His glory we then respond in humble kind with utter repentance and ardent faith.  Let us then never lose sight of who God is and in so doing never usurp humility with silly pride.