Galatians 2:19-21 Podcast To invest in BYM, click here
19 “For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God. 20 I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!” (Galatians 2:19-21)
In Galatians 2:19, we discover that when we chose to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as our savior, we die to our attempts to be good enough to gain God's favor.
Through Christ's cross, we are out from under the jurisdiction of the Law so that we can have a personal relationship with God. It was quite strategic of God to use the Apostle Paul to get this point across, because he had learned through his own experience with the Law that he just couldn't be good enough.
Galatians 2:20 is one of the most well known verses in the Bible. The crucifixion of Jesus Christ is the most vivid display of mankind's depravity. Such a high payment the Lord Jesus had to pay to satisfy the penalty of our sin.
When we believe that Christ died for us, our old proud self which loves to display its goodness, has and should continue to die. In time, we learn that self-reliance and self-confidence is useless. When Christ died, we died to our former way of thinking that we could earn God's favor. But, the problem with living sacrifices is they climb down from the altar. And, by the way, this living sacrifice operates in the arena of our sanctification, not our justification, for we could never earn God's favor through our performance.
According to v.20 Christ abides within us, in order to take over where pride and self has died. To be Christian is to believe on the Lord Jesus as our justifier. But, to live Christianly means we no longer call the shots in our lives, but Christ who lives in us!
As believers in Christ, we now look away from self and now we trust in the Son of God, who loved us and gave Himself for us. This means the end of us as sinners in God’s sight. Now, God sees us through the lens of His Son's perfection. It means the end of us as people seeking to earn salvation by our own efforts. It means the end of us as people under the condemnation of the Law.
According to v.21, the grace of God is at the basis of the justification Christ has provided the believer. We have discovered that the disease of self is not our ally, despite the fact that we will serve self, even after we have been born again. The Law never loved us but Jesus Christ loved us enough to take the consequence for our self and sin.
Vance Havner once said, "The first discovery a Christian needs to make is that he cannot of himself live the Christian life. Living the Christian life is not so much our responsibility but our response to His ability."
