Religious Performance Exhaustion
In Galatians 2:20, there's something hiding in plain sight, and this can help if you've been exhausted trying to die to yourself. Maybe you feel like you're getting it wrong. You've probably heard this verse your whole Christian life.
Maybe someone handed it to you as the solution to a struggle. Die to self. Crucify your flesh. Let go and let God. And you've tried, and it hasn't worked. Or it has for a week, and then it hasn't.
And quietly, somewhere in the back of your mind, you've started to wonder if maybe you're just bad at being a Christian. This verse is where I want to take you today, because what the text actually says might be the thing you needed to hear for years.
In our verse, Paul has just described a disagreement with Peter, a hard one, and whether Jewish Christians were living consistently with the gospel. And right in the middle of the argument, he writes this: 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.
That's one packed verse. Have you ever thought, I want to live for God, but I'm not very good at it? Maybe you've been sitting with this verse and feeling the gap between what it describes and what your life actually looks like. The gap is what we're going to look at.
Let's just start with the first line, I have been crucified with Christ. When you hear that, what do you picture? If you're like most people, you picture a command, something you're supposed to keep doing, an ongoing spiritual practice, kill the old self, mortify the flesh. But here's what the text actually says.
In the original Greek, the word translated, I have been crucified, is in the perfect passive tense. Now don't let that scare you off, because once you understand what it means, this verse will never sound the same. The perfect passive in Greek does two things at once.
Perfect means the action is done. It happened and it's over. Passive means it was done to you and you are not the one who acted.
Put this together, I have been crucified means someone else already finished this and the results are still fully in effect right now. There is no command in this sentence. Paul is not telling you to crucify yourself. He's announcing something that has already happened.
The crucifixion of self that was condemned under the law, that happened in Christ when he died for you. You didn't do it. You weren't asked to do it. It was done to you and for you.
This can be hard because we're programmed to think about how I must do my part. You may be trying to kill something that's already dead. Remember what I postulated at the beginning? Maybe you feel like you're failing at Christianity. Maybe you feel like you're failing because you're trying to do a job that was already finished before you showed up.
Now look at the rest of the verse. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The I that is gone is the old self. The self that tried to earn standing before God. The self that stood under the law's verdict. That I is dead.
The life being lived now has a different source entirely. Christ himself living in you by the Spirit. And then Paul ends with something almost everyone rushes past so they can get back to the die to self part at the beginning.
Who loved me and gave himself for me. That's the climax of the verse, not the crucifixion metaphor, not the mystical union language. The climax is me.
Paul doesn't say who loved sinners. He doesn't say who gave himself for the world. He narrows it all the way down: who loved me and gave himself for me. This is the Son of God and the specific object of his substitutionary death. It's the individual standing in front of him. That's you, not the group, not the category, you.
So what do you do with this? Here's the application and it comes directly from the grammar of this verse. Stop trying to crucify yourself. That's not your job.
Your job, the only thing the text asks of you, is to live by faith in the Son of God. When you feel that old pull towards spiritual performance, when you think I need to get myself under control, I need to die to this, I need to try harder, stop and ask, what has already been done? Not what do I need to do? What has been done? Because the answer is Christ has already been crucified in your place.
The verdict against the old self has already been carried out. And the one living in you right now is not your best effort. It is Jesus himself.
When the performance anxiety kicks in, you receive. Because receiving by faith in the Son of God is exactly what this verse describes. Not accomplishing, not achieving, receiving.
Let's pray about this:
Father, you are the one who acts, who loved, who gave, who finished. You did not ask me to do what only you could do. Forgive me for trying to kill something you already put to death, for treating your finished work like a project left for me to complete. Thank you that Jesus gave himself for me, not for the category, not for the concept, but for me, by name, before I knew how much I needed it. Please cause us to put down the weight of a job you already finished. In Jesus' name we pray.
Remember, you were not asked to crucify yourself. That was finished by Christ, and he is living in his children right now.