Galatians 2:20

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth 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.

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(20) In the last verse the Apostle had spoken of himself as “dead to the Law, and living unto God.” The prominent idea in the first half of this clause had been the release from that burdensome ceremonial which the Judaising party wished to bind upon Christian consciences. By a natural transition, the Apostle’s thought had passed from what the Law could not do to what Christianity could do.

The Law could not make men righteous before God. In Christ they were made righteous. How? Here, too, there was death. The Christian died with Christ to something else besides the Law. With his eye fixed upon the cross, he died a spiritual death and rose to a new spiritual life. The “old man” in him, the self-seeking and sinful element in his nature, is slain, and for it is substituted a life of such close and intimate communion with Christ that it seems as if Christ Himself were dwelling in the soul. Living upon the earth in a body of human flesh, as he is, he is animated by an intense faith in the Saviour who has given him such proofs of self-sacrificing love.

Here we come upon the same vein of mysticism that is developed in Romans 6. One main way of conceiving of the specially Christian life is through the idea of union with Christ. This idea, when ultimately pressed to precise logical definition, must necessarily contain a certain element of metaphor. Consciousness, rigorously examined, tells us that even in the most exalted souls there is no such thing as an actual union of the human and divine. At the same time, there is possible to man an influence from above so penetrating and so powerful that it would seem as if the figure of union could alone adequately express it. Nor ought this to be questioned or denied because the more common order of minds do not find themselves capable of it. (See the Notes on Romans 6, and Excursus G to that Epistle.)

I am crucified . . .—The idea is something more than that of merely “dying with Christ”—i.e., imitating the death of Christ after a spiritual manner: it involves, besides, a special reference to the cross. It is through the power of the cross, through contemplating the cross and all that is associated with it, that the Christian is enabled to mortify the promptings of sin within him, and reduce them to a state of passiveness like that of death.

Nevertheless I live.—This death unto sin, death upon one side of my nature, does not hinder me from having life upon another side. The fact is that I live in a truer sense than ever before.

Yet not I.—It is, however, no longer the old natural man in me that lives: it is not that part of the human personality which has its root in matter, and is “of the earth, earthy,” but that part which is re-formed by the Spirit of Christ.

Now.—In my present condition as a Christian opposed to the old condition prior to the conversion.

In the flesh.—In this bodily human frame; man though I be. The Christian is outwardly the same as other men; it is his inner life which is “hid with Christ in God.”

By the faith.—The article is better omitted: by faith. The Apostle does not quite go so far as to say that faith is the cause of his physical life, though we may see, by other passages, that he is at least prepared to look upon faith as the great pledge, and even cause, of the physical resurrection. Here he is speaking of faith rather as the element or atmosphere in which the Christian lives. He is, as it were, steeped in faith.

Of the Son of God—i.e., faith of which the Son of God is the object; faith in the Son of God.

There is a curious variation of reading here. Some ancient authorities (including the Codex Vaticanus) instead of “faith in the Son of God,” have “faith in God and Christ.” This might appear to have some internal probability, as the less obvious expression of the two; but it may be perhaps explained satisfactorily in another way. On the whole, it seems best to abide by the Received text, which is that of the majority of MSS.

Who loved me.—Christ died for the whole world, but each individual Christian has a right to appropriate His death to himself. The death of Christ was prompted by love, not for the abstraction humanity, but for men as individuals.

MacLaren's Expositions

Galatians

FROM CENTRE TO CIRCUMFERENCE

Galatians 2:20.

We have a bundle of paradoxes in this verse. First, ‘I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live.’ The Christian life is a dying life. If we are in any real sense joined to Christ, the power of His death makes us dead to self and sin and the world. In that region, as in the physical, death is the gate of life; and, inasmuch as what we die to in Christ is itself only a living death, we live because we die, and in proportion as we die.

The next paradox is, ‘Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.’ The Christian life is a life in which an indwelling Christ casts out, and therefore quickens, self. We gain ourselves when we lose ourselves. His abiding in us does not destroy but heightens our individuality. We then most truly live when we can say, ‘Not I, but Christ liveth in me’; the soul of my soul and the self of myself.

And the last paradox is that of my text, ‘The life which I live in the flesh, I live in’ {not ‘by’} ‘the faith of the Son of God.’ The true Christian life moves in two spheres at once. Externally and superficially it is ‘in the flesh,’ really it is ‘in faith.’ It belongs not to the material nor is dependent upon the physical body in which we are housed. We are strangers here, and the true region and atmosphere of the Christian life is that invisible sphere of faith.

So, then, we have in these words of my text a Christian man’s frank avowal of the secret of his own life. It is like a geological cutting, it goes down from the surface, where the grass and the flowers are, through the various strata, but it goes deeper than these, to the fiery heart, the flaming nucleus and centre of all things. Therefore it may do us all good to make a section of our hearts and see whether the _strata_ there are conformable to those that are here.

I. Let us begin with the centre, and work to the surface. We have, first, the great central fact named last, but round which all the Christian life is gathered.

‘The Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ These two words, the ‘loving’ and the ‘giving,’ both point backwards to some one definite historical fact, and the only fact which they can have in view is the great one of the death of Jesus Christ. That is His giving up of Himself. That is the signal and highest manifestation and proof of His love.

Notice {though I can but touch in the briefest possible manner upon the great thoughts that gather round these words} the three aspects of that transcendent fact, the centre and nucleus of the whole Christian life, which come into prominence in these words before us. Christ’s death is a great act of self-surrender, of which the one motive is His own pure and perfect love. No doubt in other places of Scripture we have set forth the death of Christ as being the result of the Father’s purpose, and we read that in that wondrous surrender there were two givings up The Father ‘freely gave Him up to the death for us all.’ That divine surrender, the Apostle ventures, in another passage, to find dimly suggested from afar, in the silent but submissive and unreluctant surrender with which Abraham yielded his only begotten son on the mountain top. But besides that ineffable giving up by the Father of the Son, Jesus Christ Himself, moved only by His love, willingly yields Himself. The whole doctrine of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ has been marred by one-sided insisting on the truth that God sent the Son, to the forgetting of the fact that the Son ‘came’; and that He was bound to the Cross neither by cords of man’s weaving nor by the will of the Father, but that He Himself bound Himself to that Cross with the ‘cords of love and the bands of a man,’ and died from no natural necessity nor from any imposition of the divine will upon Him unwilling, but because He would, and that He would because He loved. ‘He loved me, and gave Himself for me.’

Then note, further, that here, most distinctly, that great act of self-surrendering love which culminates on the Cross is regarded as being for man in a special and peculiar sense. I know, of course, that from the mere wording of my text we cannot argue the atoning and substitutionary character of the death of Christ, for the preposition here does not necessarily mean ‘instead of,’ but ‘for the behoof of.’ But admitting that, I have another question. If Christ’s death is for ‘the behoof of’ men, in what conceivable sense does it benefit them, unless it is in the place of men? The death ‘for me’ is only for me when I understand that it is ‘instead of’ me. And practically you will find that wherever the full-orbed faith in Christ Jesus as the death for all the sins of the whole world, bearing the penalty and bearing it away, has begun to falter and grow pale, men do not know what to do with Christ’s death at all, and stop talking about it to a very large extent.

Unless He died as a sacrifice, I, for one, fail to see in what other than a mere sentimental sense the death of Christ is a death for men.

And lastly, about this matter, observe how here we have brought into vivid prominence the great thought that Jesus Christ in His death has regard to single souls. We preach that He died for all. If we believe in that august title which is laid here as the vindication of our faith on the one hand, and as the ground of the possibility of the benefits of His death being world-wide on the other--viz. the Son of God--then we shall not stumble at the thought that He died for all, because He died for each. I know that if you only regard Jesus Christ as human I am talking utter nonsense; but I know, too, that if we believe in the divinity of our Lord, there need be nothing to stumble us, but the contrary, in the thought that it was not an abstraction that He died for, that it was not a vague mass of unknown beings, clustered together, but so far away that He could not see any of their faces, for whom He gave His life on the Cross. That is the way in which, and in which alone, _we_ can embrace the whole mass of humanity--by losing sight of the individuals. We generalise, precisely because we do not see the individual units; but that is not God’s way, and that is not Christ’s way, who is divine. For Him the _all_ is broken up into its parts, and when we say that the divine love loves all, we mean that the divine love loves each. I believe {and I commend the thought to you} that we do not fathom the depth of Christ’s sufferings unless we recognise that the sins of each man were consciously adding pressure to the load beneath which He sank; nor picture the wonders of His love until we believe that on the Cross it distinguished and embraced each, and, therefore, comprehended all. Every man may say, ‘He loved me, and gave Himself for me.’

II. So much, then, for the first central fact that is here. Now let me say a word, in the second place, about the faith which makes that fact the foundation of my own personal life.

‘I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me.’ I am not going to plunge into any unnecessary dissertations about the nature of faith; but may I say that, like all other familiar conceptions, it has got worn so smooth that it glides over our mental palate without roughening any of the _papillæ_ or giving any sense or savour at all? And I do believe that dozens of people like you, who have come to church and chapel all your lives, and fancy yourselves to be fully _au fait_ at all the Christian truth that you will ever hear from my lips, do not grasp with any clearness of apprehension the meaning of that fundamental word ‘faith.’

It is a thousand pities that it is confined by the accidents of language to our attitude in reference to Jesus Christ. So some of you think that it is some kind of theological juggle which has nothing to do with, and never can be seen in operation in, common life. Suppose, instead of the threadbare, technical ‘faith’ we took to a new translation for a minute, and said ‘_trust_,’ do you think that would freshen up the thought to you at all? It is the very same thing which makes the sweetness of your relations to wife and husband and friend and parent, which, transferred to Jesus Christ and glorified in the process, becomes the seed of immortal life and the opener of the gate of Heaven. Trust Jesus Christ. That is the living centre of the Christian life; that is the process by which we draw the general blessing of the Gospel into our own hearts, and make the world-wide truth, our truth.

I need not insist either, I suppose, on the necessity, if our Christian life is to be modelled upon the Apostolic lines, of our faith embracing the Christ in all these aspects in which I have been speaking about His work. God forbid that I should seem to despise rudimentary and incomplete feelings after Him in any heart which may be unable to say ‘Amen’ to Paul’s statement here. I want to insist very earnestly, and with special reference to the young, that the true Christian faith is not merely the grasp of the person, but it is the grasp of the Person who is ‘declared to be the Son of God,’ and whose death is the voluntary self-surrender motived by His love, for the carrying away of the sins of every single soul in the whole universe. That is the Christ, the full Christ, cleaving to whom our faith finds somewhat to grasp worthy of grasping. And I beseech you, be not contented with a partial grasp of a partial Saviour; neither shut your eyes to the divinity of His nature, nor to the efficacy of His death, but remember that the true Gospel preaches Christ and Him crucified; and that for us, saving faith is the faith that grasps the Son of God ‘Who loved me and gave Himself for me.’

Note, further, that true faith is personal faith, which appropriates, and, as it were, fences in as my very own, the purpose and benefit of Christ’s giving of Himself. It is always difficult for lazy people {and most of us are lazy} to transfer into their own personal lives, and to bring into actual contact with themselves and their own experience, wide, general truths. To assent to them, when we keep them in their generality, is very easy and very profitless. It does no man any good to say ‘All men are mortal’; but how different it is when the blunt end of that generalisation is shaped into a point, and I say ‘I have to die!’ It penetrates then, and it sticks. It is easy to say ‘All men are sinners.’ That never yet forced anybody down on his knees. But when we shut out on either side the lateral view and look straight on, on the narrow line of our own lives, up to the Throne where the Lawgiver sits, and feel ‘I am a sinful man,’ that sends us to our prayers for pardon and purity. And in like manner nobody was ever wholesomely terrified by the thought of a general judgment. But when you translate it into ‘I must stand there,’ the terror of the Lord persuades men.

In like manner that great truth which we all of us say we believe, that Christ has died for the world, is utterly useless and profitless to us until we have translated it into Paul’s world, ‘loved _me_ and gave Himself for _me_.’ I do not say that the essence of faith is the conversion of the general statement into the particular application, but I do say that there is no faith which does not realise one’s personal possession of the benefits of the death of Christ, and that until you turn the wide word into a message for yourself alone, you have not yet got within sight of the blessedness of the Christian life. The whole river may flow past me, but only so much of it as I can bring into my own garden by my own sluices, and lift in my own bucket, and put to my own lips, is of any use to me. The death of Christ for the world is a commonplace of superficial Christianity, which is no Christianity; the death of Christ for myself, as if He and I were the only beings in the universe, that is the death on which faith fastens and feeds.

And, dear brother, you have the right to exercise it. The Christ loves each, and therefore He loves all; that is the process in the divine mind. The converse is the process in the revelation of that mind; the Bible says to us, Christ loves all, and therefore we have the right to draw the inference that He loves each. You have as much right to take every ‘whosoever’ of the New Testament as your very own, as if on the page of your Bible that ‘whosoever’ was struck out, and your name, John, Thomas, Mary, Elizabeth, or whatever it is, were put in there. ‘He loved _me_.’ Can _you_ say that? Have you ever passed from the region of universality, which is vague and profitless, into the region of personal appropriation of the person of Jesus Christ and His death?

III. And now, lastly, notice the life which is built upon this faith.

The true Christian life is dual. It is a life in the flesh, and it is also a life in faith. These two, as I have said, are like two spheres, in either of which a man’s course is passed, or, rather, the one is surface and the other is central. Here is a great trailing spray of seaweed floating golden on the unquiet water, and rising and falling on each wave or ripple. Aye! but its root is away deep, deep, deep below the storms, below where there is motion, anchored upon a hidden rock that can never move. And so my life, if it be a Christian life at all, has its surface amidst the shifting mutabilities of earth, but its root in the silent eternities of the centre of all things, which is Christ in God. I live in the flesh on the outside, but if I am a Christian at all, I live in the faith in regard of my true and proper being.

This faith, which grasps the Divine Christ as the person whose love-moved death is my life, and who by my faith becomes Himself the Indwelling Guest in my heart; this faith, if it be worth anything, will mould and influence my whole being. It will give me motive, pattern, power for all noble service and all holy living. The one thing that stirs men to true obedience is that their hearts be touched with the firm assurance that Christ loved them and died for them.

We sometimes used to see men starting an engine by manual force; and what toil it was to get the great cranks to turn, and the pistons to rise! So we set ourselves to try and move our lives into holiness and beauty and nobleness, and it is dispiriting work. There is a far better, surer way than that: let the steam in, and that will do it. That is to say--let the Christ in His dying power and the living energy of His indwelling Spirit occupy the heart, and activity becomes blessedness, and work is rest, and service is freedom and dominion.

The life that I live in the flesh is poor, limited, tortured with anxiety, weighed upon by sore distress, becomes dark and gray and dreary often as we travel nearer the end, and is always full of miseries and of pains. But if within that life in the flesh there be a life in faith, which is the life of Christ Himself brought to us through our faith, that life will be triumphant, quiet, patient, aspiring, noble, hopeful, gentle, strong, Godlike, being the life of Christ Himself within us.

So, dear friends, test your faith by these two tests, what it grasps and what it does. If it grasps a whole Christ, in all the glory of His nature and the blessedness of His work, it is genuine; and it proves its genuineness if, and only if, it works in you by love; animating all your action, bringing you ever into the conscious presence of that dear Lord, and making Him pattern, law, motive, goal, companion and reward. ‘To me to live is Christ.’

If so, then we live indeed; but to live in the flesh is to die; and the death that we die when we live in Christ is the gate and the beginning of the only real life of the soul.

Benson Commentary

Galatians 2:20-21. The apostle proceeds in describing how he was freed from the dominion as well as guilt of sin, and how far he was from continuing in the commission of it. I am crucified with Christ — To sin, to the world, and all selfish and corrupt desires and designs; my old man, my sinful nature, with its affections and lusts, is crucified with him; that is, through his death on the cross, and the grace procured for me, and bestowed on me thereby, that the body of sin may be destroyed, Romans 6:6. In other words, I have such a sense of his dying love in my hearty and of the excellence of that method of justification and salvation which he hath accomplished on the cross, that in consequence of it, I am dead to all the allurements of the world and sin, as well as to all views of obtaining righteousness and life by the law. Nevertheless I live — A new and spiritual life, in union with God through Christ, and in a conformity to his will; yet not I — The holy, happy life which I now live, is neither procured by my own merit, nor caused by my own power. Or, as ζω δε ουκ ετι εγω is more properly rendered, I live no longer, namely, as to my former sinful self, state, and nature, being made dead to the world and sin; but Christ liveth in me — By his word and Spirit, his truth and grace; and is a fountain of life in my inmost soul, from which all my tempers, words, and actions flow. And the life that I now live in the flesh — Even in this mortal body, and while I am surrounded with the snares, and exposed to the trials and troubles of this sinful world; I live by the faith of — Or rather, as the apostle undoubtedly means, by faith in, and reliance on, the Son of God — The spiritual life which I live, I derive from him by the continual exercise of faith in his sacrifice and intercession, and through the supplies of grace communicated by him; who loved me — With a compassionate, benevolent, forgiving, and bountiful love; to such a degree that he gave himself — Delivered himself up to ignominy, torture, and death; for me — That he might procure my redemption and salvation. In the meantime I do not frustrate — Or make void, in seeking to be justified by my own works; the grace of God — His free, unmerited love in Christ Jesus, which they do who seek justification by the law; for if righteousness come by the law — If men may be justified by their obedience to the law, ceremonial or moral; then Christ is dead in vain — There was no necessity for his dying in order to their salvation, since they might have been saved without his death; might, by the merit of their own obedience, have been discharged from condemnation, and by their own efforts made holy, and consequently have been both entitled to, and fitted for, eternal life.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

2:20,21 Here, in his own person, the apostle describes the spiritual or hidden life of a believer. The old man is crucified, Ro 6:6, but the new man is living; sin is mortified, and grace is quickened. He has the comforts and the triumphs of grace; yet that grace is not from himself, but from another. Believers see themselves living in a state of dependence on Christ. Hence it is, that though he lives in the flesh, yet he does not live after the flesh. Those who have true faith, live by that faith; and faith fastens upon Christ's giving himself for us. He loved me, and gave himself for me. As if the apostle said, The Lord saw me fleeing from him more and more. Such wickedness, error, and ignorance were in my will and understanding, that it was not possible for me to be ransomed by any other means than by such a price. Consider well this price. Here notice the false faith of many. And their profession is accordingly; they have the form of godliness without the power of it. They think they believe the articles of faith aright, but they are deceived. For to believe in Christ crucified, is not only to believe that he was crucified, but also to believe that I am crucified with him. And this is to know Christ crucified. Hence we learn what is the nature of grace. God's grace cannot stand with man's merit. Grace is no grace unless it is freely given every way. The more simply the believer relies on Christ for every thing, the more devotedly does he walk before Him in all his ordinances and commandments. Christ lives and reigns in him, and he lives here on earth by faith in the Son of God, which works by love, causes obedience, and changes into his holy image. Thus he neither abuses the grace of God, nor makes it in vain.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

I am crucified with Christ - In the previous verse, Paul had said that he was dead. In this verse he states what he meant by it, and shows that he did not wish to be understood as saying that he was inactive, or that he was literally insensible to the appeals made to him by other beings and objects. In respect to one thing he was dead; to all that was truly great and noble he was alive. To understand the remarkable phrase, "I am crucified with Christ," we may remark:

(1) That this was the way in which Christ was put to death. He suffered on a cross, and thus became literally dead.

(2) in a sense similar to this, Paul became dead to the Law, to the world, and to sin. The Redeemer by the death of the cross became insensible to all surrounding objects, as the dead always are. He ceased to see, and hear, and was as though they were not. He was laid in the cold grave, and they did not affect or influence him. So Paul says that he became insensible to the Law as a means of justification; to the world; to ambition and the love of money; to the pride and pomp of life, and to the dominion of evil and hateful passions. They lost their power over him; they ceased to influence him.

(3) this was with Christ, or by Christ. It cannot mean literally that he was put to death with him, for that is not true. But it means that the effect of the death of Christ on the cross was to make him dead to these things, in like manner as he, when he died, became insensible to the things of this busy world. This may include the following things:

(a) There was an intimate union between Christ and his people, so that what affected him, affected them; see John 15:5-6.

(b) The death of the Redeemer on the cross involved as a consequence the death of his people to the world and to sin; see Galatians 5:24; Galatians 6:14. It was like a blow at the root of a vine or a tree, which would affect every branch and tendril or like a blow at the head which affects every member of the body.

(c) Paul felt identified with the Lord Jesus; and he was willing to share in all the ignominy and contempt which was connected with the idea of the crucifixion. He was willing to regard himself as one with the Redeemer. If there was disgrace attached to the manner in which he died, he was willing to share it with him. He regarded it as a matter to be greatly desired to be made just like Christ in all things, and even in the manner of his death. This idea he has more fully expressed in Philippians 3:10, "That I may know him, (that is, I desire earnestly to know him,) and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;" see also Colossians 1:24; compare 1 Peter 4:13.

Nevertheless I live - This expression is added, as in Galatians 2:19, to prevent the possibility of mistake. Paul, though he was crucified with Christ, did not wish to be understood that he felt himself to be dead. He was not inactive; not insensible, as the dead are, to the appeals which are made from God, or to the great objects which ought to interest an immortal mind. He was still actively employed, and the more so from the fact that he was crucified with Christ. The object of all such expressions as this is, to show that it was no design of the gospel to make people inactive, or to annihilate their energies. It was not to cause people to do nothing. It was not to paralyze their powers, or stifle their own efforts. Paul, therefore, says, "I am not dead. I am truly alive; and I live a better life than I did before." Paul was as active after conversion as he was before. Before, he was engaged in persecution; now, he devoted his great talents with as much energy, and with as untiring zeal, to the cause of the great Redeemer. Indeed, the whole narrative would lead us to suppose that he was more active and zealous after his conversion than he was before. The effect of religion is not to make one dead in regard to the putting forth of the energies of the soul. True religion never made one lazy man; it has converted many a man of indolence, and effeminacy and self-indulgence to a man actively engaged in doing good. If a professor of religion is less active in the service at God than he was in the service of the world; less laborious, and zealous. and ardent than he was before his supposed conversion, he ought to set it down as full proof that he is an utter stranger to true religion.

Yet not I-- This is also designed to prevent misapprehension. In the previous clause he had said that he lived, or was actively engaged. But lest this should he misunderstood, and it should be inferred that he meant to say it was by his own energy or powers, he guards it, and says it was not at all from himself. It was by no native tendency; no power of his own; nothing that could be traced to himself. He assumed no credit for any zeal which he had shown in the true life. He was disposed to trace it all to another. He had ample proof in his past experience that there was no tendency in himself to a life of true religion, and he therefore traced it all to another.

Christ liveth in me - Christ was the source of all the life that he had. Of course this cannot be taken literally that Christ had a residence in the apostle, but it must mean that his grace resided in him; that his principles actuated him: and that he derived all his energy, and zeal, and life from his grace. The union between the Lord Jesus and the disciple was so close that it might be said the one lived in the other. So the juices of the vine are in each branch, and leaf, and tendril, and live in them and animate them; the vital energy of the brain is in each delicate nerve - no matter how small - that is found in any part of the human frame. Christ was in him as it were the vital principle. All his life and energy were derived from him.

And the life which I now live in the flesh - As I now live on the earth surrounded by the cares and anxieties of this life. I carry the life-giving principles of my religion to all my duties and all my trials.

I live by the faith of the Son of God - By confidence in the Son of God, looking to him for strength, and trusting in his promises, and in his grace. Who loved me, etc. He felt under the highest obligation to him from the fact that he had loved him, and given himself to the death of the cross in his behalf. The conviction of obligation on this account Paul often expresses; see the Romans 6:8-11; Romans 8:35-39 notes; 2 Corinthians 5:15 note. There is no higher sense of obligation than that which is felt toward the Saviour; and Paul felt himself bound, as we should, to live entirely to him who had redeemed him by his blood.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

20. I am crucified—literally, "I have been crucified with Christ." This more particularizes the foregoing. "I am dead" (Ga 2:19; Php 3:10).

nevertheless I live; yet not I—Greek, "nevertheless I live, no longer (indeed) I." Though crucified I live; (and this) no longer that old man such as I once was (compare Ro 7:17). No longer Saul the Jew (Ga 5:24; Col 3:11, but "another man"; compare 1Sa 10:6). Ellicott and others translate, "And it is no longer I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." But the plain antithesis between "crucified" and "live," requires the translation, "nevertheless."

the life which I now live—as contrasted with my life before conversion.

in the flesh—My life seems to be a mere animal life "in the flesh," but this is not my true life; "it is but the mask of life under which lives another, namely, Christ, who is my true life" [Luther].

I live by the faith, &c.—Greek, "IN faith (namely), that of (that is, which rests on) the Son of God." "In faith," answers by contrast to "in the flesh." Faith, not the flesh, is the real element in which I live. The phrase, "the Son of God," reminds us that His Divine Sonship is the source of His life-giving power.

loved me—His eternal gratuitous love is the link that unites me to the Son of God, and His "giving Himself for me," is the strongest proof of that love.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

This Epistle is much of the same nature with that to the Romans, and the substance of what the apostle saith in the latter part of this chapter, agreeth much with Romans 6:1-23; where we find an expression much like to this, Galatians 2:6: Our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin.

I am (saith the apostle) crucified with Christ; not only by justification made partaker of the benefits coming by a Christ crucified, but also as having communion with the death of Christ, in the mortification of my lusts. A figure of which (as he informs us, Romans 6:4) we have in baptism, buried with him by baptism into death.

Nevertheless I live; yet (saith he) I live a holy, spiritual life; though dead to the law, and though crucified with Christ.

Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; but I cannot say so properly that it is I, for my motions are not according to my natural propensions and inclinations; but Christ, by his Spirit, liveth in me, having renewed and changed me, made me a new creature, and begot new motions and inclinations in me. And though I live in the flesh, yet I live by the faith of the Son of God; all my natural, moral, and civil actions, being principled in faith, and done according to the guidance of the rule of faith in Jesus Christ.

Who loved me, and gave himself for me; of whom I am persuaded that he loved me, and from that love gave himself to die upon the cross for me.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

I am crucified with Christ,.... Not literally, for so only the two thieves were crucified with him, but mystically; Christ was crucified for him in his room and stead, and so he was crucified with him, and in him, as his head and representative. Christ sustained the persons of all his people, and what he did and suffered was in their name, and on their account, and so they were crucified and suffered with him, as they are said to be buried with him, and to be risen with him, and to sit together in heavenly places in him. Moreover, their old man was crucified with him; when he was crucified, all their sins, the whole body of them, were laid upon him, and he bore them, and bore them away, destroyed and made an end of them; they received their mortal wound by his crucifixion and death, so as never to be able to have any damning power over them; and in consequence of this the affections and lusts are crucified, and the deeds of the body of sin mortified by the Spirit and grace of God, in regeneration and sanctification, so as not to have the dominion over them; the world is crucified to them, and they to the world; and this is another reason proving that justification by Christ is no licentious doctrine. This clause is, in the Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions, put at the end of the preceding verse.

Nevertheless I live; which is to be understood, not of his natural, but of his spiritual life; the life of justification he lived, by faith, on the righteousness of Christ; and the life of sanctification which he had from Christ, by the quickening influences of his Spirit, by virtue of which he walked in newness of life. The believer is a mere paradox, he is dead to the law, and "yet lives" to God; he is crucified with Christ, and yet lives by him; yea, a crucified Christ lives in him.

Yet not I; not the same I as before, but quite another man, a new creature: he did not now live as in his state of unregeneracy, and whilst in Judaism; he was not now Saul the blasphemer, the persecutor, and injurious person; nor did he now live Saul the Pharisee: or the life he had was not of his own obtaining and procuring; his life of righteousness was not of himself, but Christ; his being quickened, or having principles of life and holiness implanted in him, was not by himself, but by the Spirit; and the holy life and conversation he lived was not owing to himself, to his power and strength, but to the grace of God; or it was not properly himself, or so much he that lived,

but Christ liveth in me: who was not only the author and maintainer of his spiritual life, but the life itself; he was formed in his soul, dwelt in his heart, was united to him, was one with him, whence all vital principles and vital actions sprung, and all the communion and comforts of a spiritual life flowed.

And the life which I now live in the flesh; in the body, whilst in this mortal state, whereby he distinguishes that spiritual life he had from Christ, and through Christ's living in him, both from the natural life of his body, and from that eternal life he expected to live in another world; and which, he says,

I live by the faith of the Son of God; meaning, not that faith which Christ, as man, had, but that of which he is the author and object, by which the just man lives; not upon it, for the believer does not live upon any of his graces, no, not upon faith, but by faith on Christ, the object; looking to him for pardon, righteousness, peace, joy, comfort, every supply of grace, and eternal salvation: which object is described as "the Son of God"; who is truly God, equal with his Father; so that he did not live upon a creature, or forsake the fountain of living waters, but upon the only begotten Son of God, who is full of grace and truth: of whom he further says,

who loved me; before the foundation of the world, from everlasting, prior to his love to him; and freely, without any regard to worth or merit, and though he was a blasphemer and a persecutor; and him personally, and particularly, in a distinguishing manner, of which he had a special knowledge and application by the Spirit of God; and was a reason and argument constraining him, and prevailing on him to live to him who loved him, and died for him, or, as he adds,

and gave himself for me; his whole self, his soul and body, as in union with his divine person, into the hands of justice, and unto death, in his room and stead, as an offering and sacrifice for sin, and which he did freely and voluntarily; and is a strong and full proof of his love to him. Now though Christ gave his life a ransom for many, and himself for his whole church, and all the members of his mystical body, yet the apostle speaks of this matter as singularly respecting himself, as if almost he was the only person Christ loved and died for; which shows that faith deals with Christ not in a general way, as the Saviour of the world, but with a special regard to a man's self: this is the life of faith; and these considerations of the person, love, and grace of Christ, animate and encourage faith in its exercises on him.

Geneva Study Bible

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not {u} I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the {x} flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.

(u) The same that I was before.

(x) In this mortal body.

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Meyer's NT Commentary

Galatians 2:20. Ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγὼ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός] The comma which is usually placed after ζῶ δὲ is correctly expunged by Lachmann, Rückert, Usteri, Matthies, Schott, Tischendorf, Wieseler, Hofmann; for, if ζῶ … ἐγώ were not to be conjoined, ἀλλά must have stood before οὐκέτι. The second δὲ is our but indeed after a negative (Hartung, Partikell. I. p. 171), and ζῶ and ζῇ are on both occasions emphatically prefixed: alive however no longer am I, but alive indeed is Christ in me; whereby the new relation of life is forcibly contrasted to the previously expressed relation of death (Χριστῷ συνεστ.). After the crucifixion of Christ followed His new life; he, therefore, who is crucified with Christ, thenceforth lives also with Him; his whole pre-Christian moral personality is, in virtue of that fellowship of death, no longer in life (ὁ παλαιὸς αὐτοῦ ἄνθρωπος συνεσταυρώθη, Romans 6:6), and Christ is the principle of life in him. This change is brought about by faith (see the sequel), inasmuch as in the believer, according to the representation here given of Paul’s own experience, it is no longer the individual personality that is the agent of life (“mortuus est Saulus,” Erasmus), but Christ, who is present in him (through the Spirit, Romans 8:9 f.; Ephesians 3:16 f.), and works, determines, and rules everything in him, ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ, ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Χριστός: the mind of Christ is in him (1 Corinthians 2:16), the heart of Christ beats in him (Php 1:8), and His power is effectual in him. Thereby is the proof of the words ἵνα Θεῷ ζήσω rightly given; see on Romans 6:10.

ὃ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκὶ κ.τ.λ.] Explanation of what has just been said, ζῶ … Χριστός: but that which I now live in the flesh, I live in faith on, etc. This explanation is placed by δέ in formal contradistinction to the preceding apparent paradox. The emphasis, however, lies on νῦν, now, namely, since the beginning of my Christian condition of life, so that a glance is thrown back to the time before the Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι, and νῦν corresponds with οὐκέτι. Νῦν is often understood—as by Erasmus, Grotius (adhuc), Rückert, Usteri, Schott, following Augustine and Theodoret—in contrast not with the pre-Christian life, but with the future life after death (rather: after the παρουσία). A reference of this kind is, however, entirely foreign to the context, does not harmonize with the emphasis which is laid on νῦν by its position, and is by no means required by ἐν σαρκί; for this addition to ζῶ is made by Paul simply with a view to indicate that after his conversion the material form of his life remained the same, although its ethical nature had become something entirely different.

ἐν σαρκί] denotes life in the natural human phenomenal form of the body consisting of flesh. The context does not convey any reference to the ethical character of the σάρξ (as sedes peccati). Comp. Php 1:22; 2 Corinthians 10:3.

ἐν πίστει] not per fidem (Chrysostom, Beza, and others), but, corresponding to ἐν σαρκί, in faith; so that faith—and indeed (comp. Galatians 1:16) the faith in the great sum and substance of the revelation received, in the Son of God (notice the anarthrous πίστει, and then the article affixed to the more precise definition)—is the specific element in which my life moves and acts and is developed. It is prefixed emphatically, in contrast to the entirely different pre-Christian sphere of life, which was the νόμος.

τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντός με κ.τ.λ.] points out the special historical fact of salvation, which is the subject-matter of the faith in the Son of God, giving impulse to this new life. Comp. Romans 8:37; Ephesians 5:2. Καί is explanatory, adding the practical proof of the love. Observe also the μέ and ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ (see on Galatians 1:4) as expressive of the conscious and assured fiducia in the fides.[109]

Lastly, the construction is such, that ὅ is the accusative of the object to Ζῶ, and the whole runs on in connection: the life which I live, I live, etc. See Bernhardy, p. 106; Fritzsche, ad Rom. I. p. 393 f.; Dissen, ad Dem. de cor. p. 302. The interpretation: quod vero attinet, quod, etc. (Winer), is indeed grammatically admissible (see on Romans 6:10), in so far as ὅ is likewise retained as the accusative of the object; but it needlessly injures the flow of the discourse.

[109] Luther well says, “Hae voces: dilexit me, plenissimae sunt fidei, et qui hoc breve pronomen me illa fide dicere et sibi applicare posset, qua Paulus, etiam futurus esset optimus disputator una cum Paulo contra legem.” But this faith is not the fides formata (Catholics, including Bisping and Reithmayr), although it is the source of Christian love and Christian life.

Expositor's Greek Testament

Galatians 2:20. Χριστῷ συνεστ. The Greek order throws special emphasis on Χριστῷ: union with Christ became from that time the central feature of his life; it entailed in the beginning a fellowship with his crucifixion, a real crucifixion of heart and will. By this figure he describes the intense agony of spiritual conflict, the crushing load of shame and bitter remorse which he underwent during the three days of darkness and silent despair that followed his vision of the Christ.—ζῶ δὲ: And I live. I can perceive no ground for rendering δέ nevertheless (A.V.) or yet (R.V.). There is no contrast here between the life and the previous death: on the contrary, the life is presented as the direct outcome of the death. As the resurrection of Christ was the sequel of the crucifixion, so Paul was joined to Christ in death that he might be joined to Him in spiritual life.—οὐκ ἔτι … The new life is no longer, like the former, dependent on the struggling efforts of a mere man to draw near to God in his own righteousness. Christ Himself is its source, as the vine is the source of life to the branches.—ὃ δὲ ζῶ: But in that I live. Our versions make this = ἣν ζωὴν ζῶ; but it seems to me more accordant with the context and with Greek forms of expression to make ὅ = in that, as it is rendered by A.V. in Romans 6:10. Two instances of this adverbial use of ὅ for a connecting particle have been already noted in this Epistle (Galatians 1:7, Galatians 2:10). Paul is here accounting for the fact that he now possesses spiritual life, though still in the flesh and subject to motions of sin in his members: it belongs to him in virtue of his faith in the Son of God.—με … ἐμοῦ. The previous clauses have expressed the intimate personal union between the spirit of Paul and his Divine Master. In harmony with that view an exclusive personal aspect is presented of the love of Christ and of His sacrifice on the Cross, as though Paul himself had been their sole object.

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

20. I am crucified] Better, I have been crucified. The mention of death and life suggests the Death which bore fruit in Resurrection. The Christian is by faith ‘incorporated into’ Christ (Hooker). Of this incorporation Baptism is the sign and the pledge. Hence the prayer in the Office for Public Baptism, ‘that he may crucify the old man, and utterly abolish the whole body of sin; and that as he is made partaker of the death of Thy Son, he may also be partaker of His Resurrection’. Crucifixion, though a lingering mode of death, is yet as certain in its issue as that by the rope or the axe. Two robbers were ‘crucified with Christ’, on separate crosses. One was with Him in His Cross, and therefore with Him in Paradise.

nevertheless I live] more exactly, ‘And it is no longer I that live’. The ‘old man’ is crucified. The ‘new man’ which has put on the Lord Jesus Christ, is clothed in Him, has Him as the principle of its life (ch. Galatians 3:27). Christ is now “our life” (Colossians 3:4), and ‘He that keepeth His commandments dwelleth in Him, and He in him. And hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath given us’, 1 John 3:24.

the life which I now live in the flesh] my life as a man on earth, since I became a believer. It is termed ‘in the flesh’, to shew that more is meant than the life of the soul. St Paul was no mystic. With him Christianity was not abstraction from the duties of social life. It elevated, purified, ennobled them. He claimed and used his rights as a citizen of Rome, while living as a citizen of Heaven.

by the faith of the Son of God] Rather, ‘in faith’—a faith which has for its object the Son of God. The life in the flesh is lived in faith. This is the sum of practical religion. What a perversion of the truth to apply to those who withdraw from the world, with its duties, its trials, its opportunities, the title of ‘religious’!

The object of this faith is not termed, as usual, Jesus Christ. It is “the Son of God”. But that is not all. He, in His uncreated Majesty, as “the effulgence of the Father’s glory and express image of His substance”, could not win the confidence of the conscious sinner. But His eternal Sonship gave its value to His atoning sacrifice, and is “the source of His life-giving power”.

gave Himself for me] = delivered Himself up for me to anguish, and shame and death. The same verb occurs in the passive Romans 4:25, “who was delivered up”. Luther remarks on this passage, ‘Here have ye the true manner of justification set before your eyes, and a perfect example of the assurance of faith. He that can with a firm and constant faith say these words with Paul, is happy indeed. And with these words Paul taketh away the whole righteousness of the law and works”. See Additional Note, p. 90.

ADDITIONAL NOTE ON CH. Galatians 2:20This verse strikes the key-note of the Epistle, and is a summary of the whole Christian revelation subjectively considered. St Paul here discloses to our view the secret of his life as a Christian and as an Apostle, the mainspring of his wonderful activity, the source and the object of the enthusiasm by which he was inspired. We know something of his life and his labours. Here he tells us how that life was lived, and why those labours were undergone. A full record of his teaching has been preserved to us. Here is a summary of it all.

A comparison of two other passages of the N. T. will serve to throw light on this verse. In Ephesians 2:4 St Paul speaks of that ‘great love wherewith God loved us, and even when we were dead in sins quickened us together with Christ’. In Revelation 1:5 St John ascribes praise ‘to Him that loveth us and released us from our sins in His own blood’. In the former of these passages, the love displayed is that of God the Father[36]. Here it is the Lord Jesus Christ who loved the Apostle. In the latter passage, the love of Christ is regarded as still exercised, unchanged, towards those who are its objects[37]. (Comp. John 13:1.) But in both passages it is the love of the Church collectively, not of the individual Christian, which is affirmed. In the verse before us St Paul appropriates this love. His language is intensely personal. ‘Who loved me’. He claims as his own the assurance made long before to the prophet Jeremiah (ch. Jeremiah 31:3), ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love’. Of this love the proof and pledge was the great Sacrifice of the Cross. He ‘gave Himself for me’. There is no boasting here, save that which the Apostle avows when he says (Galatians 6:14) ‘God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ’. Such boasting is the confidence of true humility, the faith which constitutes personal Christianity.

[36] This love of God is ‘in Christ Jesus our Lord’. Romans 8:39. Comp. Romans 8:35.

[37] The present tense, ‘loveth us’, has the support of the best MSS., and is adopted in the R. V.

Bengel's Gnomen

Galatians 2:20. Συνεσταύρωμαι, I am crucified with) Death is included in the cross, as is evident from the antithesis, I live; comp. Php 2:8. On communion with the same; Php 3:10.—ζῶ δὲ, nevertheless I live) after that death.—οὐκ ἔτι ἐγὼ) [Engl. Vers., yet not 1.] No longer I, as a Jew: Colossians 3:11.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 20. - This verse brings out into fuller detail the several points bound up in the succinct statement of ver. 19. I am crucified with Christ (Ξριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι); I have been crucified with Christ. I am on the cross, fastened thereto with Christ; the object, therefore, with him of the Law's abhorrence and anathema. If we ask, how and when he became thus blended with Christ in his crucifixion, we have the answer suggested by himself in Romans 6:3, 6, "Are ye ignorant, that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?" - "that our old man was crucified with him?" It was by believing in Christ and being baptized into him; comp. Galatians 3:27, "All ye who were baptized into Christ did put on Christ " - words which have to be taken in connection with the reference to "faith in Christ" in ver. 26. The perfect tense of the verb συνεσταύρωμαι points to a continued state of being, following upon that decisive crisis of his life; the apostle images himself as still hanging on the cross with Christ, while also sharing in his resurrection-life; his "old man" is on the cross, while his spirit partakes in and is renewed by Christ's life in God (Romans 6:6, 8, 11). The pragmatism of the passage, however, that is, its relevancy to the subject discussed by him with St. Peter, consists in the twofold statement:

(1) that the Law as a ceremonial institute has now nothing to do with him nor he with it, except as mutually proclaiming their entire disseverment the one from the other; and

(2) that nevertheless, while thus wholly apart from the Law, he has life in God, as he further proceeds to declare. Nevertheless I live (ζῶ δέ). Notwithstanding all the Law's anathema, I am alive unto God (comp. Romans 6:11), the object of his love, and an heir of his eternal life. With this exalted blessedness of mine the Law cannot in the slightest degree meddle, by any determination which it will fain propound of cleanness or uncleanness. No ceremonial pollution of its constituting can touch this my life. My own life and my fellow-believer's life in God is infinitely removed from the possibility of receiving taint of pollution through eating (say) of blood, or suet, or pork, or through touching a leper or the remains of a deceased man. Nothing of this kind can mar or stain my righteousness or my fellow-believer's righteousness. Both he and I, sharing in the like "life" and righteousness, rejoice and exult together; let the Law denounce us for unclean as loudly and as bitterly as it will. Nay, if I were to allow myself to be disquieted by any such denouncement of pollution, I should, in fact, be allowing myself to harbour misgivings and unbelief touching the very essence of the grace of Jesus Christ. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me (οὐκ ἔτι ἐγώ ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Ξριστός); and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me. It was essential to the apostle's argument that he should assert himself to be, in spite of the Law's anathema, "alive," in the full possession of life in God; but he hastens to qualify this assertion by explaining how entirely he owes this life of his to Christ; and, in his eagerness to do this, he compresses the assertion and the qualification in one clause so closely together as, in a way not at all unusual with him, well-nigh to wreck the grammatical construction. A method, indeed, has been proposed by critics of disposing this clause with respect to the preceding in such a manner as to make the sentence run quite smoothly; thus: Ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἀγώ ζῇ δὲ ἐν ἐμοὶ Ξριστός: that is, as given in the margin of the Revised English Version, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." But not only does this method of construing altogether efface the apostle's assertion of his being alive notwithstanding the Law's malediction - an assertion which agrees so thoroughly with the defiant tone of the argument, but the abruptness of the construction as presented in the ordinary reading of the passage is its very recommendation; for such uncouthness of style is wont to show itself in St. Paul's more eager, impassioned passages. "No longer I;" as in those old days when I prided myself on being an especial favourite of Heaven, eminently righteous through meritorious doings of my own, through my punctilious observance in particular of all that the Law prescribes for gaining and maintaining ceremonial sanctity (comp. Philippians 3:4, 6). "In those days it was I that was alive; it is not so now." The ἐγὼ ἔζων, "I was alive," of Romans 7:9, serves again as a perfect illustration of the phraseology of the present passage; only we have still to bear in mind that the apostle is at present contemplating the ceremonial aspect of his old life, rather than, as in the Romans, the moral; the two being no doubt, however, in his former Pharisee scheme of religion, essentially conjoined. The in-being of Christ is to be understood as blending in one the two notions, of Christ as the ground of our acceptableness before God and of our being alive unto God, and of Christ as the motive spring of true practical well-doing (Romans 8:10). The two things, though notionally distinct, cannot exist apart, but the former is the more prominent idea here. And the life which I now live in the flesh (ο{ δὲ νῦν ζῶ ἐν σαρκί). "Life" still denotes his spiritual state of being, and not his moral activity, though by inference in-relying this latter; as if it were "the life which I now possess." The construction of ο{ ζῶ is paralleled by the ο{ ἀπέθανε, "the death that he died, he died," and the ο{ ζῇ, "the life that he liveth, he liveth," of Romans 6:10. "Now," as well as "no longer," stands in contrast with his old life in Judaism. But, on the other hand, "in the flesh," viewed in conjunction with (ἐν πίστει) "in faith," or "by faith," must be taken as in Philippians 1:22, that is, as contrasted with the future life; while we are in the flesh "we walk by faith, not by sight" (2 Corinthians 5:7). I live by the faith of the Son of God (ἐν πίστει ζῶ τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ Θεοῦ); I live by faith, the faith which is in the Son of God. By faith, not by works of the Levitical Law. It was by faith in Christ that I first became partaker of this life; it is by faith in Christ that I continue to partake of it; letting go my faith in Christ, I partake of the life no longer. The especial relevancy of this statement of the apostle's, whether with respect to the matters agitated at Antioch, or with respect to any such revival of Levitical notions of acceptableness with God as was now perplexing the Churchmen of Galatia, is the warning which it implicitly conveys that, to revert to Levitical notions of uncleanness or of righteousness, was to sin against faith in Christ, and therewith against the very essence of a Christian's spiritual life. It was the strong sense which the apostle had of the absolutely fatal tendency of such relapses towards Judaism that inspired the deep pathos which here tinges his language. Hence the magnificent title by which he recites Christ's personality, "the Son of God;" possessing as such an absolutely commanding claim to his people's adherence, which they dare not decline. Hence, too, the words which follow. Who loved me, and gave himself for me (τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντός με καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ ἐμοῦ); who loved me, and gave himself up for me. Fain would the reader realize to his mind the fervid, thrilling tones and accent of voice in which the apostle, while uttering these words, would give vent to the sentiment which so powerfully swayed his whole life, and which he so vividly describes in writing to the Corinthians: "The love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died [namely, to all but him]. and he died fur all, that they which live should no longer live unto themselves, but unto him who for their sakes died and rose again" (2 Corinthians 5:14, 15). The same appropriation of Christ's love to his own individual self which the apostle here gives utterance to, "who loved me, and gave himself up for me," may every human creature also express in whom only is the faith which takes hold of his love. In fact, the apostle speaks thus for the very purpose of prompting every individual believer who hears him to feel and say the same. This, he indicates, should be their feeling just as much as his; a sentiment just as irresistibly regulative of their life. Why not? Do they not also owe to him all their hope on behalf of their souls? For the expression, "gave himself up," comp. Galatians 1:4 and note. The Greek verb παραδόντος is distinguished from the simple δόντος, "gave himself," by its bringing more distinctly into view the notion of Christ's giving himself over into the hands of those who sought his life. Galatians 2:20

Vincent's Word Studies

I am crucified with Christ (Χριστῷ συνεσταύρωμαι)

This compound verb is used by Paul only here and Romans 6:6. In the gospels, Matthew 27:44; Mark 15:32; John 19:32. The statement explains how a believer dies to the law by means of the law itself. In the crucifixion of Christ as one accursed, the demand of the law was met (see Galatians 3:13). Ethically, a believer is crucified with Christ (Romans 6:3-11; Philippians 3:10; 1 Corinthians 15:31; 2 Corinthians 4:10), and thus the demand of the law is fulfilled in him likewise. Paul means that, "owing to his connection with the crucified, he was like him, legally impure, and was thus an outcast from the Jewish church." He became dead to the law by the law's own act. Of course a Jew would have answered that Christ was justly crucified. He would have said: "If you broke with the law because of your fellowship with Christ, it proved that both he and you were transgressors." But Paul is addressing Peter, who, in common with himself, believed on Christ (Galatians 2:16).

I live; yet not I((ζῶ δὲ οὐκέτι ἐγώ)

The semicolon after live in A.V. and Rev. should be removed. Rend: and it is no longer I that live, but Christ, etc. The new life of Christ followed his crucifixion, Romans 6:9-11. He who is crucified with Christ repeats this experience. He rises with Christ and shares his resurrection-life. The old man is crucified with Christ, and Christ is in him as the principle of his new life, Romans 4-11.

I now live

Emphasis on νῦν now, since the beginning of my Christian life, with an implied contrast with the life in the flesh before he was crucified with Christ. Then, the I was the center and impulse of life. Now, it is no longer I, but Christ in me.

By the faith of the Son of God (ἐν πίστει τῇ τοῦ υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ)

Better, as Rev., in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God. Thus the defining and explicative force of the article τῆ after πίστει is brought out. In faith is better than by faith, although ἐν is sometimes used instrumentally. In corresponds better with ἐν σαρκὶ in the flesh. It exhibits faith as the element in which the new life is lived.

And gave himself (καὶ παραδόντος ἑαυτὸν)

Καὶ and has an explanatory force: loved me, and, as a proof of his love, gave himself. For παραδόντος gave, see on was delivered, Romans 4:25.

"For God more bounteous was himself to give

To make man able to uplift himself,

Than if he only of himself had pardoned."

Dante, Paradiso, vii. 115-117

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