Galatians 2:20-21 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me… "He loved me and gave Himself for me." Each sinner, each saint around His cross might have used these words of the apostle. For His blessed mother and St. John; for the Roman judge and for the Roman soldiers; for the chief priest and for the Pharisee; for the vilest and hardest of His executioners, and for the thieves who hung dying beside Him, our Lord gave Himself to death. For all who have been first and greatest, for all who have been least and last in human history, for all whom we have loved or seen, for our separate souls, He gave Himself. True, His creatures indeed are still free to accept and appropriate or to refuse His gift. But no lost soul shall murmur hereafter that the tender loving-kindness of God has not willed to save it. No saint in glory shall pretend that aught in him has been accepted and crowned save the infinite merit, the priceless gifts of his Redeemer. The dying love of Jesus embraces the race, and yet it concentrates itself with direct — as it seems to us — with exclusive intensity upon each separate soul. He dies for all, and yet he dies for each; as if each soul were the solitary object of His incarnation and of His death. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: 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. |
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