I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.
—Galatians 2:20
The thought of fellowship with Christ in bearing His cross has often led to the futile attempt to follow Him and bear His image in our own power. But this is impossible for man until he first learns to know what it means to say, “I am crucified with Christ.”
Let us try to understand this. When Adam died, all his descendants died with him and in him. In his sin in Paradise, and in the spiritual death into which he fell, you and I had a share; we died in him. And the power of that sin and death, in which all his descendants share, works in every child of Adam every day.
Christ came as the Second Adam. All who believe in Him have a share in His death on the cross. Each one may say in truth, “I am crucified with Christ.” As the Representative of His people, He took them up with Him on the cross. This includes you and me. The life that He gives is the crucified life in which He entered heaven and was exalted to the throne, standing as “a Lamb as it had been slain” (Revelation 5:6). The power of His death and life does its work in us. As we hold fast the truth that we have been crucified with Him, and that now we no longer live, but Christ lives in us, we receive power to conquer sin. The life that we have received from Him is a life that has been crucified and made free from the power of sin.
This is a deep and very precious truth. Most Christians have little knowledge of it. This knowledge is not gained easily or speedily. It requires a great desire to be dead to all sin. It requires a strong faith, given by the Holy Spirit, so that the union with the crucified Christ and the fellowship of His cross can each day become our life. The life that He lives in heaven has its strength and its glory in the fact that it is a crucified life. And the life that He imparts to the believing disciple is a crucified life with its victory over sin and its power of access into God’s presence.
It is indeed true that “nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” As we realize this by faith and hold fast the fact that the crucified Christ lives in us, life in the fellowship of the cross becomes a possibility and a blessed experience.