Co-Crucified with Christ: Pt. 1

Galatians 2, 20 and 21. Let me review of the whole book so far just very quickly in Galatians. And I like this outline from Merrill Tenney. And the gospel, his gospel, Paul's gospel is not according to man. So he starts out in 112. He's trying to pull away from, my gospel came from Jesus Christ himself, independent of human teaching. You see that in verse 12 of chapter one, I neither received it from man nor was I taught it.

Then he's trying to establish that it's independent of the Judean churches. You see in verse 22 of chapter 1, I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea, which were in Christ. And that's the church in Jerusalem. Then he's trying to break away or establish independence from the Judaizing brethren.

And in chapter 2, verse 5, you see he says, I did not yield in subjection to them for even an hour. And there's other phrases too in there that I don't have in there, but I like this because it shows the whole. the whole movement of where he's trying to, where he comes up to now, and we're at chapter 2 and verse 15 when he addresses Peter. Then the fourth point here, he's trying to establish independence of the apostolic pressure from James and Peter and Andrew and Philip and all those guys, and of course they were in Jerusalem. And he says, to those of high reputation, they contributed nothing to me and my gospel that Christ gave to me in chapter 2 of verse 6. And then where we are this morning, it's independence of selfish interest is what Tenney calls it.

And that's Galatians 2.20. There's no selfishness in it for him because now he's divorced from the law. He's divorced from his former his former self, which was, he was a Pharisee of Pharisees, right? And now he's totally independent of that. And he's just crucified with Christ. And he says, I died to the law. It is no longer I who live. So he's gone, but Christ lives in me. So there you go. I like that little short kind of overview of Paul's argument thus far.

Maybe I won't read the whole narrative from chapter 2 and verse 11, but now Peter comes up to Antioch and he was eating with the Gentiles, having a nice time of fellowship, but then Jews came up from Jerusalem and from James, from his cohort, and Peter started to pull away at meals and he would pull away and wash his hands ceremoniously and maybe not hang out with the Gentiles as much because the Gentiles were considered sinners and bad people back then. by the Jews. So he confronts Peter to his face, you know, if you, Peter, being a Jew, live like the Gentiles and not like the Jews, how is it that you compel the Gentiles to live like us Jews? And then he goes on to say, we are Jews by nature and not sinners from among the Gentiles. And then he goes into this justification by faith alone, apart from the works of law. And it's just through belief in Jesus Christ.

So that's from 15 through 18 there. And he's saying, if I You know, I've left Judaism and left the law. And if I go back to it, I'm rebuilding it. And that makes me a transgressor. And then in 19, down at the bottom there, he says, for through the law, I died to the law so that I might live to God. And then here's our verse for today, verse 20, I've been crucified with Christ. And it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I live now in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God. This is for next week. For if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died needlessly or in vain.

So that's the context of where we are now. That's the Wolford rule, is to put everything in context, which I've become much better at, because he set down the rule there. Well, he was admonishing you. Yes, yes. We're going to talk about the monastery. I think years ago, I would just jump into where we were. But this is a fascinating, because this is a whole narrative here in Galatians, isn't it? But what's important about context, context, context, is this. I'll show you this. This picture of Peter admonishing, there you go, or Paul admonishing Peter. And if you notice, he's speaking, right? I've been crucified with Christ and is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

I had missed for years and years and years that Galatians 2.20 is spoken word from Paul to Peter, if that makes sense. I thought that maybe he talked to Peter at Moshim up in verse 15, and then it stopped, and then it goes into doctrine, right? Yeah, but check the quote marks. This is, yeah, this is, he's coming up with this uh, from the his spirit on the fly speaking it and that Was pretty fascinating when I found that out, uh, or discovered that Uh, you know several weeks ago Um, I said wow and some one of you mentioned it and I was like, oh, yes He's still speaking and then after 21 he ends speaking and then he gets into doctrine, right?

Yeah, so, um So there you go. You learn something new from context and paying attention to punctuation, actually, too. So some observations here with this confrontation with Peter. Prior to these Jews coming in from Jerusalem, Peter was just fine with the Gentiles. He was, I think, enjoying himself, enjoying their company, their fellowship, and he was probably edified by them. They were edified by him. I thought about this and imagine Paul's shock when Peter dissimulates or pulls away from these Gentile brothers and spending time with them, especially in meals.

And then if you think about If you were one of these Gentile believers, new believers, who were enjoying Peter's company over many weeks, whatever it was, having an incredible time of fellowship with a great one, Peter, and he starts to pull away, what do they think? What did we do? Did we offend him? You can see it from their eyes that Boy, they must have felt bad. And they felt like second-class citizens, I think.

And I've learned that in Galatians 2.2, when he says that he, when he's interviewing the apostles and things from Jerusalem, and he says that he's fearing that he's been running in vain with his gospel of grace. Um, and when he says that he wasn't worried about himself. He was, he was saying, hey, these guys from Jerusalem, these old apostles.

They're singing from a different hymn book. I've been given grace, this gospel of grace, and they're still in the law. So what is with it? And it's not me. So it's them. They haven't quite caught up to this new gospel of complete grace apart from the law. So yeah, he was concerned about the ones from Jerusalem and not his own gospel. And it makes it sound like he was worried about himself, like he was running in vain. But really, he was worried about the other side.

So the public discourse to Peter here, because it's justification by faith in 320, it falls closely Romans 3. into Romans chapter 4, and it's all in there, it's talking about justification by faith alone, apart from the works of law. And it's kind of neat studying this Galatians and Romans at the same time, because I remember that, hey, when you read through Galatians, you're like, oh, this sounds exactly like what he says in Romans. And they match up really well. Galatians chapter 3 lines up with Romans chapter 4.

Galatians 2.19 through 2.21. directly ties into Romans 6, right? You know, concept for concept.

And in Galatians 2.20, the last part of 2.20, the life I live now, the life which I which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me, matches up with Romans 8, chapter 8.

And especially when he says, for the law of the Spirit of life in Jesus Christ has set us free from the law of sin and death. And that's a very good match there. So here's Galatians 2, 19 and 20. 19, for through the law I have died to the law so that I might live to God. And into 20, I've been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me.

And I put this and I didn't take it out because I was writing on the fly, but I missed one of the matches up between Galatians and Romans, and that is 7, Romans 7. If you go up to verse 19 of Galatians 2 up there, for through the law, I've died to the law, so that I might live to God. Well, in 7, 1 through 4, he says, or do you not know, brethren, that the law has jurisdiction over a person as long as he lives?

For the married woman is bound by the law to her husband while he is living. But if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning her husbands. So then, If, while her husband is living, she's joined to another man, she's called an adulteress. But if her husband dies, she is free from the law of her husband, and she is not an adulteress, though she marries another man.

Therefore, and this is where it really matches up perfectly, therefore, my brother, you also were made to die to the law through the body of Christ so that you might be joined to another, that is to him who is raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.

I have this, and I might make this point later, and it's just a theory, that Galatians was, he wrote Galatians on the fly, kind of quickly, to address this problem of legalism and the Judaizers. And then years later, when he was camped out at Corinth, Yeah, it's Corinth. For what, three years? Was it three years where he wrote Romans in Corinth? He had all this time to sort of unpack all these truths that he just spills out quickly in Galatians. That's what I think. So Galatians and Romans are very tied in closely together.

Miles Stanford had a comment on Galatians 2.20, and he says, for all you folks who have Galatians 2.20, I'm crucified with Christ, no longer live, as their life verse. Well, he says, well, 2.20 is really a verse about the law. It has to do with the law. Which is fine, but it's kind of a law verse. It's making an argument about the law.

And he says, the law shows us we're lost sinners. The law takes us to the Lord Jesus Christ. It brings us to the end of ourselves. The law works for the unsaved to bring them to the Savior. And the law works for the saved by bringing them beyond the Savior to Christ, who is our life. And that's our subject for today. The believer who only knows the Lord as a Savior never gets very far in growth. I like that quote from Miles Stanford in one of his lessons. So let me go into this point I got, and here's where I got, well, no, it's later on. Let me save that for later on.

But point number one, we're going to look at this, the verb in Galatians 2.20, I've been crucified with Christ. So, what kind of verb is it?

We're going to be doing some just compulsory stuff this morning, if you know what that is, which is just going through the technical, the little technical basics of Galatians 2.20.

Do you remember when people used to skate in the Olympics, there was the compulsories And it was a little competition where they had to do a perfect figure eight, and they were judged on how well they did that, or they were judged on maybe a simple pirouette or something. And they used to have that as part of the Olympics on TV. Then they took it away. They stopped the compulsories in 1999, I found out. And now they just do the artistic part of figure skating, the long program and such like that.

So we're doing the compulsories this morning on this, on the verb. I've been crucified with Christ. So is it past tense, present tense, aorist tense, future tense? So get your brains to sort of go through the choices here. It sounds like past tense, right? Yeah. Sounds like past tense. Could be heiress tense. It's not future tense, that's for sure.

So what I say is, did it happen in the past? Or is it an ongoing action right now, which would be present tense? Or neither? Did it happen in a point in time, and the fact that it happened is the critical issue? That's the heiress tense. So is it just pointing to the fact of the action? Well, it's none of those. It's the perfect tense.

I've been crucified and continued and continue to be crucified with Christ. Or Merriman says, with Christ, I stand crucified or vulvered. Wolvard and Zuck in their book on this say, I have been and am now crucified with Christ. So it's a past action that has ongoing results into the present is the perfect tense. And if you think about that, that's really good because that's what we need in our Christian life is that active crucifixion, it's still an active thing in our life that will affect our walk.

You have a question, Andrew? Yeah. Are you saying it's impossible to be uncrucified with Christ? No, no, it's well, yeah, yes, it is. It is. Yeah, it is because yeah, I guess the uncrucified with crows. Yeah, it's a function of the cross, but his, well, let's see. That's a. So you're right. It's impossible to not be crucified. And now I'm going to get kind of turned around here. It's impossible not to be crucified with Christ because he did it. It's a done deal.

But Andrew, it doesn't mean that you know that. And people don't know that. Many believers do not realize. They've never understood what that's saying. So if you're on day one of, if you just became a believer, in Christ 10 minutes ago, you don't know that yet. I was pretty sure to say it's not long in that. Yeah, or years.

But the effect of being crucified with Christ, you might be offline from that, right? Even though you know it. So it it's not affecting your your stance your your Walk, yeah, or your condition, right? You might be conditionally, right? I That might be clunky to say you could be uncrucified in your condition Jim Yeah, yeah But if you're if you're like if If I'm in sin right now, boy, the crucifixion isn't having an effect on me.

Yeah. Something like, boy, but that would be a good six-week study there. But, yes, you're right. It's impossible to be not to be crucified with Christ, because it's a, it's a fact, right? And it happened at the moment of salvation. Yeah. And we didn't have any, and we didn't, we didn't put forth any effort. To be crucified with Christ, it happened to us. Uh, hold that thought. Hold that thought.

Yeah. Good. Yeah. Good. Good thought though. So what about the voice? Uh, the, in the Greek there's, uh, there's, there's tense voice and mood, right? So, oh, here, there you go, Jim. Did I do it? Is it active voice, passive voice? Did I do. The crucifixion, or was it done to me? So it must have been, must be passive voice. Yes. Ah, you're good, see? Yeah, very good. Passive voice. It was done by an outside agency, God, to me.

Or it's, in baseball, that's an HBP. And it's official rule 5.05 B, but what does HP stand for that when I used to score for a little league, and I did like once and it was too hard. So I kind of quit. But if you're up to bat and you get hit by the pitch.

Oh, I see. Hit by pitch. Uh-huh. So if you hit the pitch, that's active voice. Oh, if you're hit by. If you're hit by the pitch, hit by pitch, that's passive, right? OK, good, yes. So that's what I was going for there. I'm just thinking of my dad, who always used baseball as the, did I hit the ball or was I hit by the ball? But the more accurate thing is to say I was hit by pitch hit by the pitch. So it's voice there.

So yeah, there's nothing we can do to inject ourselves into being crucified with Christ. It just. It's an operation of the cross. Right. What about mood? The final thing. Am I being commanded to be crucified as in the imperative mood? Or is it just a potential reality? And that kind of goes along the lines of what Jim was getting at. That would be the subjunctive mood. Maybe I'm crucified with him. Maybe I'm not subjunctive. That's the subjunctive mood. Or is there a wish expressed? Boy, I wish I was crucified with Christ.

I think that's the optative mood if we get really geeky about the Greek here. If you say the mood is how you feel about it, then you're wrong. If you're happy about it, or if you're sad about it, that's not the mood we're talking about. This is the Greek mood. So the mood is the indicative mood.

It's my crucifixion together with Christ is presented as a fact. It is an assertion of fact. It's just asserting the reality that it happened. And it's an assertive fact. That's the indicative mood. So it's a perfect, tense, passive voice, indicative mood. I've been crucified with Christ. You see how he couldn't, Roger, quite get out of this? That's good. No, I love it. I love it. So it's I only have two Sundays, but we're going to I know you only got about 20 minutes left. Yeah, that compulsory is or less. Okay. But that's okay. We can continue next week. And then it's going to go really fast. And you'll all be very excited, I think.

I want to look at this word crucified, which I don't think many people do when they look at Galatians 2.20.

Crucified is the word. starao, starao. But in this, in 220, it's sustarao. It's that sun plus the starao. And that means sun, or s-y-n, you see there, is together with. That's what it means. So the whole great doctrine of identification with Christ comes from this little prefix Sune, together with, I'm together with, crucified with Christ. And I added in here perhaps the word baptizo, that's also important to the identification truce, is it not?

Suntopto in Romans 6.4, that's together with buried. Suzao there is to live together with. That's sun, S-Y-N, plus life, zao, and that's enjoying real life with one. As it says in Romans 6, 8, now if you have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him. And that live with him is suzao. And that's future tense, right? We shall live with him, future tense, active voice, and it's an assertion of fact, indicative mood. So point number three is, and I was not going to go into this, but then I thought, wow, this is really interesting, this word crucifixion or crucified, starao. And it means to drive down stakes or drive down with stakes or to impale with stakes.

And it was done by other nations, not the Jews, but they would hang conquered soldiers and kings on, if you think about a fortified wall, they would hang bodies on that fortification and they would leave the corpse to rot there. As long as it took, and it was meant as a message, and it was meant to strike fear in people. It's also meant to mock the enemy, the crucifixion. Let me get.

Oh, so all the nations, all the great nations in history practiced crucifixion. The Syrians, the Persians, the Greeks. And they all had different methods, depending on the time and where you were. And they all perfected it and added things and things like that. So it had different forms and developments. They could impale your body on a stake, or they could hang you with arms outstretched, drive your hands in with nails, or tie your hands to the crossbar. The Romans developed the cross, the crossbar with the crossbar, and that's what Christ died on. That's the cross.

And crucifixion is by no means a Jewish thing or a godly thing. It's not in the law of Moses. There is capital punishment in the law of Moses and Leviticus 20, but it's death by stoning. And I just, this is an opinion of mine, death by stoning is clean, it's fast, it's efficient, and it's not meant to glorify the killing or take pleasure in it. And Deuteronomy 21, 22, and 23 says that you can put a rebellious son to death by stoning, and you can hang him on a tree, but not for too long, not for overnight, because that defiles the land. So you have to take him down. But the nations would leave them up there indefinitely. But that's not a Jewish thing.

So it says in Galatians 3.13, for he who is hanged is accursed of God. And you can see how Christ being crucified on a cross And it became a curse for us. That's Galatians 3, 13. And you can see the word crucified and how that is closely tied in with this verse. And it comes up again when Paul says he's crucified to the world and the world's crucified to me. And in Corinthians, he says that, you know, The crucifixion, it's the wisdom of God. So it's a very important kind of point of all this. Me, Andrew? Yeah.

I believe, you know, the Pharisees tried to stone Jesus twice, and it failed. I think they wanted him crucified to make sure he was killed. And for another reason, I believe that they knew about that verse in one, I believe it's Deuteronomy, where someone who is hung on a tree is cursed. They wanted to prove to the world that Jesus was cursed. And God turned that around. He wanted him lifted up like Moses did the snake in the wilderness, so that everyone would come to him.

Yeah, yeah, good point, because I thought about that too, is that we must have been eating the same breakfast cereal all week, Jim. I had the same thoughts. Yeah, and we'll get to that. I have a point about that coming up here. But hold that thought as well.

So if you do a crucifixion, you don't need to torture a person or lash a person with whips for them to die on a cross. All you do is hang them there and put nails through their hands. And eventually, they'll die of exhaustion and suffocation. And that could take several days. Because eventually, your body isn't able to keep up keep your weight up, and then when the weight of your body sinks down, your blood won't circulate and you'll suffocate. Oh, interesting point here. If you were a Roman citizen, you were exempt from crucifixion. It was only reserved for slaves and criminals.

An interesting thought, and this is just a thought I have that, and this is a total opinion of mine, but I think that Jesus was crucified. He had two thieves or two criminals on either side of him. And I think Christ was taken away and put in the tomb. And mainly it was because of Joseph of Arimathea dialed in a special favor to Pilate to take his body away early and according to Jewish custom.

But I don't know. I think maybe those two thieves, they could have been left there for the week, like the Romans usually do. It's kind of an interesting point. Well, it could have been up there, but they broke their legs. Because the Pharisees wanted them taken down before the end of the night, before the night began. Well, but did the Pharisees worry about those two thieves, though, do you think? Especially if they were from Greece or something? No, they wanted them taken down.

So they went to Pilate and asked him to break their legs. I mean, yeah, I ordered them have their legs broken and they went to Jesus. They saw he was already dead, so they didn't break his legs. Right. So the thieves did die. They broke their legs. They didn't break Jesus because he was dead already. But I'm saying, I don't know if they broke their legs so that if they were dead, but that doesn't mean that they took the thieves down because they just left them up there to rot away.

That's sort of the crucifixion. If those thieves were Jewish, then they would have demanded that they be taken down. Right. Yeah, right. And that's true. That's true. But do we know whether they were Jewish or not, the two thieves? I don't know. But it's just a, we're kind of going down a rabbit hole here, but it's kind of interesting. But here's the, this point here, Jim, is the point you were making, an observation.

So the chief priests and the Pharisees who were of the law of Moses, they were supposedly wholly blameless and set apart, somehow they went into a frenzy And at Jesus's trial, they said, crucify him, crucify, crucify. But that's not according to the law of Moses.

Stoning is the proper method. So they were going against the law, their law, that they followed by demanding he be crucified. as under the Roman system. And that's the point you were making. And they tried to stone him in the past. They just were unsuccessful. But then they came up with the idea to really do this crucifixion through the Romans. So it's clear why the The cross is such a reproach. It's brutal, and it's connected to heathen, the heathen empires. It's the one reason I think that it's why it's a stumbling block to the Jews, because how could their Messiah be crucified?

It's such a bad thing. It's vile. It's offensive. It's a curse. It was gratuitous. And you can see how it's a reproach. uses the word several times in his epistles. I've been crucified with Christ. And he uses that, I think, to jar people into the memory of the brutality of the cross and its importance. And it all goes back to that, in the Old Testament, that hanging on a tree is a curse for one who hangs on a tree. Very important in the work of the cross there.

So we'll go through this and then we'll end here. I've taken this from the Greek, just transliterated it from the Greek. It's not from the English, so it's just the, what do I call that, the Greek version? Interlinear. Interlinear, yes, thank you. The interlinear version of Galatians 2.20.

So it's Christ I've been crucified with. I live now, no longer I, lives, however, in me Christ. This is directly from the Greek. That which then now I live in the flesh, through faith I live, that from the Son of God, the one having loved me and having given up himself for me. So that's the inner lineary.

So we're just gonna do this exercise of Which of the eyes are the old man, which are the new man? Oh dear. Andrew, one point. Nith, since you already went back and showed us that the verb is co, I'm surprised you didn't, you don't want to make that co-crucified in the first phrase? I don't know. I have been co-crucified with Christ. Oh, yeah. I did it. I mean, I just, you know, I don't know. I guess I'm nitpicking here. That's good, yeah. Why isn't it like that in our, just our... Well, the interlinear, I don't know. I haven't looked at mine. I don't have it with me right now, but so it doesn't have co-crucified... Well, the Greek has... Yeah, at least the one I was looking at.

Yeah, but good point. It should be Susteraro, right? And that's huge. To my mind, that's huge. Okay, yeah. You're part of the deal. Well, keep in mind, just put that in your memory bank when you see crucified here, it means... co-crucified, together with crucified. Okay, so now let's get to the eyes. Okay, so the old man, Christ I have been crucified with, which is that, or let's do it from the English above, I've been crucified with Christ. Who's the eye there? It's beholden. It's the old man. Yeah, because yeah, it's and that's Romans.

It tells you that that the the old man and I've come to Use the the term the old man and not the old self anymore because it's not a pass and one of you mentioned that and yeah, no, that's good now I've disciplined myself by not saying my old self, but the old man anthropos and So which, I live now, no longer I. How about that I? I live now. New man. Old man. The first one is new man. Old man. OK. The old man's been crucified. The old man's been crucified there.

So who's living? And no longer I who live. Or no longer I so but I did in the Greek Interlinear ease it's saying I live now. So we're to there. So the life it's at the point of the life I now live in the flesh so Which I is that I think new man. I live now, right? Yes, that'd be the new man living no longer. I that's easy, which I Old man.

Lives, however, in me Christ. And who's that me? You, man. Good. You guys are getting this test very well. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. And so here's what I did, because Are you guys in agreement with that? I think that's correct.

The last me, though, might be the old man. Oh, good catch there, Marilyn. I could be the one giving himself up for me. Yeah, because that would be kind of pre-salvation, wouldn't it? as a substitutionary thing. So yeah, OK, good catch, Marilyn. All right, I'll have to go back and change that. If Marilyn didn't show up, this would be a perfect lesson, I guess. No, but that's a good point, Marilyn. I'll change that thing. That's good.

OK, but we'll stop there, how about, and then we'll look more into this next week, as I see we're at the time, right? Okay, so I'll pray and we'll close up. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for this wonderful truth here in Galatians 2.20, and we just pray that you'll give us the heart to understand it and to live by it. It's your word, and your word is true, and it's eternal, and we thank you for the cross. We thank you for our salvation, and these things we pray in Christ's name, amen.