But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.
—Galatians 6:14
What Paul had written in Galatians 2 is here confirmed at the end of the epistle and is expressed even more strongly. He insisted that his only glory was that, in Christ, he had been crucified to the world and entirely delivered from its power. When he said, “I am crucified with Christ” (Galatians 2:20), it was not only an inner spiritual truth, but also an actual, practical experience in relation to the world and its temptations.
Christ had spoken about the world hating Him and about His having overcome the world. Paul knew that the world that had nailed Christ to the cross had in that deed done the same to him. He boasted that he lived as one who had been crucified to the world, and that the world as a powerless enemy was now crucified to him. It was this that made him glory in the cross of Christ. It had brought him complete deliverance from the world.
How very different is the relationship of Christians to the world today! They acknowledge that they must not commit the sins that the world allows. But still they are good friends with the world, and they feel free to enjoy as much of it as they can, if they only stay away from “open sin.” They do not know that the most dangerous source of sin is the love of the world with its lusts and pleasures.
Dear Christian, when the world crucified Christ, it crucified you with Him. When Christ overcame the world on the cross, He made you an overcomer, too. He calls you now, at whatever cost of self‑denial, to regard the world, in its hostility to God and His kingdom, as a crucified enemy over whom the cross can ever keep you a conqueror.
The Christian who has learned to say by the Holy Spirit, “I am crucified with Christ…[the crucified] Christ liveth in me” (Galatians 2:20), has a very different relationship to the pleasures and attractions of the world. Let us ask God fervently that the Holy Spirit, through whom Christ offered Himself on the cross, may reveal to us in power what it means to “glory…in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me.”