Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.
Click to listen to this blog be read by the author
Sometimes a little thought occurs to me and I have what I call a small spiritual breakthrough in my understanding of how the Gospel impacts my life with God. Today I was driving to go to eat lunch with an old friend in White Co. TN. We meet to solve the world’s problems at a meat and three every month or so. It’s a good time. It’s quite therapeutic. As I drove through the rural countryside, other than enjoying the pastoral scenery, I prayed and meditated on Galatians 2:20. “It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me,” that was my focus. The living Christ is alive in me! What a truth to behold. Suddenly I had this mental image in my mind (nobody tell the Puritans) of my being unified with the ascended Christ. But then secondarily, in the same image, I saw the Divine Son unified with the Father. Another verse leapt to mind in response.
John 14:19-20
Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
In Christ God and Man meet and are fully reconciled. So fully reconciled that when the Holy Spirit indwells a person Jesus says, “In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.” In a wonderful mystery we begin at the point of our regeneration to participate in the life of the Triune God because the Holy Spirit unifies us with the living Christ who is God in the flesh.
Let me add another layer to my meditation. As I was driving I had been praying, “Father let there be nothing between me and You.” Only to realize from my mental image that there is nothing between myself and the Father at all. And I don’t just mean that there is no sin between us. Christ has taken away my sin, this I fully grasp. My prayer was that there be nothing between us. No other idols. No other desires. No other anything, not even me. “I have been crucified with Christ” the Scriptures say.In a flash I realized there is only Christ between myself and the Father. This of course means there is nothing between us since I am in union with Christ, and Christ is in union with His Father.
Finally, another verse bubbled up into my consciousness, “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3) There is no more me. The life I have is in the Living Christ’s Life, Who is Himself God, and in God, and in me. Mystery of mysteries, we are tangled up in the Divine. Joyfully intertwined into the life of God. With this backdrop, old standards like Romans 8:38-39 glow just a little bit brighter in our hearts. Understanding ourselves to be caught up in the life of God gives us confidence to assert with even more surety, “that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:38-39) I am so grateful to be able to rest in the knowledge that Jesus gives us in John 10:29-30, “My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.I and the Father are one.” There is no separating us from God, as there is no power that is able to untie the Gordian Knot made between the believer and the Lord Jesus Christ by the Spirit. There is nothing between us and God, there is only Christ.
Pro Christo Rege… For Christ the King