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"I have been crucified with Christ . . ." -
Galatians 2:20
The inescapable spiritual need each of us has is the need to sign the death
certificate of our sin nature. I must take my emotional opinions and
intellectual beliefs and be willing to turn them into a moral verdict against
the nature of sin; that is, against any claim I have to my right to myself. Paul
said, "I have been crucified with Christ . . . ." He did not say, "I have made a
determination to imitate Jesus Christ," or, "I will really make an effort to
follow Him"-but-"I have been identified with Him in His death." Once I reach
this moral decision and act on it, all that Christ accomplished for me on the
Cross is accomplished in me. My unrestrained commitment of myself to God gives
the Holy Spirit the opportunity to grant to me the holiness of Jesus Christ.
". . . it is no longer I who live . . . ." My individuality remains, but my
primary motivation for living and the nature that rules me are radically
changed. I have the same human body, but the old satanic right to myself has
been destroyed.
". . . and the life which I now live in the flesh," not the life which I long to
live or even pray that I live, but the life I now live in my mortal flesh-the
life which others can see, "I live by faith in the Son of God . . . ." This
faith was not Paul’s own faith in Jesus Christ, but the faith the Son God had
given to him (see Ephesians 2:8 ). It is no longer a faith in faith, but a faith
that transcends all imaginable limits-a faith that comes only from the Son of
God.
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