Oh Good! I Died! Gal, 2:20
Galatians 2:20 · Vern Peterman · Apr 11, 2004
Holidays
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/482623534393

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

We're going to be, of course, working into this Galatians 2.20 passage and have good news for you. We won't be taking seven months this morning, okay? But what we will be doing, we'll be looking at the verse and trying to grab hold of the details there and look at the marvelous truths that are put there for us. If you're a guest here this morning, we're glad to have you with us, and we want to welcome you. I want to give you a little introduction.

You'll see on the corner of those sheets that are also included in your handout, there's a handout page number that's at the bottom corner there. And you'll also see on each page the page number that's noted there, one of, in this case, four sheets, and a place for some notes. And the pattern generally goes like this. Too many zigs and zags, you've probably done it, you know, not quite right, but that's the zigs and zag pattern that we use, okay? So glad you could be with us and hope you can follow along.

Anyway, we're going to step into this Galatians 2.20 passage. Oh, one other piece I have to pass along to you here. Our rule of thumb is you might see some languages you don't recognize, don't worry about it. Our rule of thumb here is if you can't read it, I don't worry about it, okay? So, anyway. Enjoy what you can read. All right.

We want to focus with this word crucified here. Obviously the pivotal word here in this passage. And so we'll take a look at that here first. The gospel accounts describe Christ's crucifixion in something similar to what we see on the screen here. This scene has some things, I might critique small details, but this in general is what it describes physically as taking place on that day in which Christ was crucified.

Now, one of the things that we point out here is the Romans were very good at this crucifixion process, and no, that's not a misspelling there. Crucifixion made pain and simple. They were good at it. They got to be expert. What's interesting here, the top right photograph there is actually a crucified man's foot bone that was found with a nail in it. You can imagine that. The Romans didn't care if they put the nails right through the bones, didn't bother them in the least. And so this one is actually from the first century. And in fact, physical anthropologists determined this fellow was crucified in his middle 20s. Yehohanam is the fellow's name. They had his name on the bone box.

Crucifixion was reserved for those who were slaves and for the Roman Empire's low life. Only for the worst of people and the worst of criminals was crucifixion done. And furthermore, the word to crucify, as Scripture repeatedly makes reference to in the New Testament, was actually a word not spoken in polite company. We find, as we read through the New Testament, that Pilate did, in fact, use the word. As a matter of fact, he asked the crowd, shall I crucify him? But in fact, the Roman Empire, recognizing that it wasn't nice to say the word, it was considered so disgusting, that it was legal for them to pronounce the judgment of crucifixion using alternate wording, if you can imagine that. They could go ahead and execute it using the awful and the growth wording, but to pronounce it was something that in polite company you just didn't do.

Nonetheless, if you think about it, this is the external part of it. In fact, frequently a lot of our observance of what takes place during the week in which Christ was crucified and then resurrected, it's easy to get caught up in the externals, isn't it?

The truth is that the external part is only, that's what we see on the outside. Nails, after all, can only do so much. What we want to do is to take a look at what does it mean. Some of us here may have seen the movie. I frankly haven't myself yet, but the passion that of course has gotten a lot of people's attention. What that movie does is give you a pictorial view of what happened. What it doesn't tell you is what does it mean. And that's what we want to look at this morning. What does it mean? So let's take a look here.

Galatians 2.20. This first phrase I'd like us to take a look at, and I call it a phrase here, In truth, it's one word in the Greek.

This key word here, crucified, is sustarao. And it's a compound word. It means together crucified. Together crucified. And this prefix, sun, is a prefix for a great many of these words that you find in the New Testament. that says we have been crucified together with Christ, we have been buried together with Christ, we have been raised together. So this prefix soon or separately the word soon is used to tell us that together we have been crucified, buried, raised, ascended and seated with Christ. The idea is that when Christ is crucified, we were crucified together with Him. That's the message that comes out in this Word.

It's the same message that comes across in Romans 6.6. It says our old man was crucified.

Now, something we have to clarify here, you might say, well, wait a minute. I've never been old yet, and I'll never be a man, maybe. And so that leaves a little bit better than half the congregation here that isn't going to qualify or hasn't yet. Right? So when we say old man, we're talking about the person that we were, all of whom we were before faith in Christ. That's what we mean by that terminology. Okay? So it has nothing to do explicitly with gender or age. But it is all of who we were before faith in Christ. I became a believer at age four-and-a-half. My folks asked me to wait, but I demanded that they tell me. So at four-and-a-half, I had an old man. My old man, when I was four-and-a-half, because of my belief in Christ, was crucified with Christ. How about that?

Now, the Word is a perfect, passive, indicative verb. Now, you might say, what on earth is a perfect passive? Well, let me tell you what a perfect passive isn't. It's not this. This is not what I mean by perfect passive, even if this critter here is perfectly passive.

Now, what we mean is this. It's a completed past action. That's what this perfect means. It has ongoing results into the future. The perfect intense has the implication, strong implication, of completeness and permanence. Completeness and permanence. That is why the Lord could say, it is finished. And He could say it in the, believe it or not, the perfect tense as well.

Done deal. So, we have been crucified. It is not an ongoing thing that's being expressed here. It's a done deal that's being expressed. It's a completed action. ongoing results into the future. And that's why we want to take a look at it here. The next thing is the passive. We're the receivers of the action.

We didn't say, hey, you know, I think I'll walk on up to the cross today and be crucified with Christ. It is God's action upon us. It's His doing, not my own. I don't earn it. I don't work for it. I don't volunteer and say, hey, I'll certainly jump on that opportunity. It's the Lord's doing. It's His accomplishment. Finally, it's an indicative. It's a statement of fact. It's not wishful thinking. It's not just simply a possibility. It's not a, boy, would that be nice? But it is a statement of fact.

That's what it's coming across with here. So as we look at those things, crucified, buried, raised, ascended and seated, it's speaking of the first of those here. We've been crucified with Christ, the very first one. You have on your handout a miniaturized form of this. Hopefully it's readable to you.

These are some of the passages in the New Testament that convey our having been with Christ in His crucifixion, burial, resurrection, ascension, and seeding. Where you see the capital T, it means that's the explicit teaching of the verse. Where you see the lowercase i, it means it's implied. And so what you see in this verse as we go through it It explicitly tells us that we have been crucified with Christ.

Implied in there, and we'll see as we go through here, is that we have also been buried and raised with Him. Okay? Okay. So the question comes up, how do we know we've been crucified with Christ? How do we know? If you think through that a minute, It says there, I've been crucified with Christ, but we've got a few questions to ask here.

People who were there didn't see that. It wasn't like the Apostle John was sitting there and he looked and he said, you know, that looks for all the world like Ben King up there. No. The people that were there didn't see this take place. This was quite invisible to them. They saw Christ, most certainly that's what they saw. They did not see this. The people that were there didn't witness this.

We don't remember being there. I don't know about you, but I don't. I even remember when I became a believer at four and a half, but I don't remember being there that day. We don't recall it personally. People around us don't look at us and say that we were there.

I haven't had the experience of walking up to the grocery store line and somebody in front of me says, hey, weren't you crucified with Christ? You sure look like it. Yeah, you got those marks on your hands and on your feet. It's not the way it is, is it? Nobody else recognizes it. Nobody else can look at us and say, well, you sure look like you've been crucified with Christ. People don't see that.

So how do we know? We've got this question. How do we know? How we know is not on the basis of anything that we can touch, feel, sense, any of those things. We can't arrive at it by reason. I think, therefore I'm crucified. None of that. We can't feel it. We can't say, boy, my wrists and my feet sure hurt. There's nothing about that that tells me I've been crucified. There's one basis.

It's only by revelation from God, period. That's the only reason we know we've been crucified. It's been revealed to us and for us. That's how we know. That's the basis on which we know we've been crucified. And that's fine, but just like we mentioned in the movie, this movie can tell you what, it doesn't tell you however what it means. And that's the significant thing. That's what this verse is telling us that the movie could not.

And that is the first thing here, our old man was crucified. Again, this has nothing to do with being male. It has nothing to do with being old. It is all of who we were before faith in Christ. Our old man was crucified. The old man who we were before faith in Christ was crucified together with Christ.

That's the message of Galatians 2.20. When our old man died, so did our identity and history in the old man.

Isn't that amazing? One of the things that's real critical for us to understand here, oftentimes people will say, well, who are you? And so I know who I am and I've got this age. Matter of fact, I can pull out this card and it's got this picture and here's the address and everything.

Our identity and our history has now been wiped out. How about that? You don't have the history that you had. You don't have your own history. If you're a believer here this morning, you have Christ's history. All of who we were was crucified on that cross. Your identity and your history, all of who you were, just got wiped out. You now have a new history. That's a part of what it means to have been crucified with Him.

The next part that comes up is this died to, and we see in Scripture, in the writings of Paul explicitly, several places where there is this message of died to. Died to sin, twice. Died to the law. Died to the world. These are the passages that come up in Romans and in Galatians there. There is a death unto, and what's meant by that?

We have died in relationship to. Died in relationship to. Death, as we read it in the New Testament epistles, is not annihilation, termination, and cessation. Death is separation. That's what this is talking about. Died in relationship to. Death is separation. What have we died in relationship to?

The sin, Romans 6.2.

I have here, sin nature. If you want to add that on your notes, that's fine. The sin, as it's spelled out. It's the sin nature. As unbelievers, we had an unbreakable bondage. to the sin nature. We were entirely subject to the sin nature. The sin nature called all the shots, all the time, absolutely. We died in relationship to that sin nature, separated from. It doesn't mean the sin nature is eliminated and terminated. It means that our relationship to that nature was separated. The inevitable outcome of that slavery to the sin nature was death. Now, we need you to think for a moment like Roman soldiers. If that means you start talking in Latin and fighting with each other, then we've gone too far.

But we want you to start thinking for a minute like Roman soldiers. Now, the Roman soldiers got paid for what they did. They worked hard for it. One of the reasons I show a road here in the background is because the Roman soldiers, once they had this job of fighting in order to gain territory, a good deal of their work and effort went into road construction. And we kind of lose sight of that. We think of them as warriors, and yes, they did do that.

But a good deal of what they did went into road construction. They built enough roads by hand to go around the globe twice. That's a lot of roads. The Roman Empire extended all the way from what is now Britain down to the Persian Gulf. That's a lot of territory. And they built roads through it all.

As they did so, here's what they did. They would dig down into the ground, and then they would build from there a foundation up, the top of which was covered with these stones. All that was done by hand. They dug by hand. They moved the stuff all by hand. Here's the cross-section that they built over 50,000 miles of by hand. Lots of really hard work. These guys really worked for what they got.

Every Roman soldier would receive their pay, and the Greek word for that is opsonia. They received their pay, what they earned, and they worked hard for it, really hard. Every Roman soldier really worked hard, constantly. On special occasions, it might be a birthday or something else, but particularly when a new emperor came into power, the Roman soldiers would get extra pay. That extra pay was charisma. So they would get opsonia, their earned wages, and charisma, their extra pay, their bonus, their payment by grace from the emperor.

And so what does Paul write in Romans 6.23? For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God, charisma, is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Do you get the sense of what he's talking about? The earned, worked hard for, deserved wages of sin, just like the Roman soldiers got, was death. but the free gift that you didn't have to work for, that there's nothing you could do to work for, and was given you entirely by the grace of somebody who's in higher authority, that's charisma. That's life. That's the eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. See that? When Paul wrote that, he wrote it, by the way, to the church in Rome, where there are many Roman soldiers, they knew very well what he was talking about. See that? Key point here. Now, one of the things that's clear, we have died in relationship to the law. We've died in relationship to the sin nature. We've died in relationship to the law.

And what's interesting is, as clear as this statement is, since the time of the apostles, there have been various groups within Christendom that have gone about doing what? Telling people about this law and that law, and do this and don't do that, as if that's somehow the substance of what their Christian faith is all about. Telling them that they can earn life. And that's contrary to the message here. What this is telling us, when we have been crucified with Christ, it means that we have died in relationship to the law, just like we have died in relationship to the sin nature. And there's something we need to make real clear here, something to clarify here. When we talk about law, we're not talking about something foggy or wispy or uncertain, as this makes clear. They're requirements, not goals. The law is absolute. The law had absolute requirements, not just a target or a hopeful objective. So, we ask you, how do you like this ministry? Let me describe this ministry and see if you want to volunteer. Paul says that the law is a ministry of death. How do you like that?

Any volunteers? The law is a ministry of condemnation. Of course we love that, right? Any volunteers yet? Still nobody. The law is a curse. Oh boy, I'd just love to sign up for that. How do you like that one? No one will be justified by the works of the law. Do you get the picture here? Wow! Guess what, folks?

When he writes here, we have been crucified with Christ, we have died in relationship to the law. Law that seeks to find life through what I earn. Law that seeks to find approval from God by what I do. That ended. when we were crucified with Christ. And it is not spoken of as any sort of a partial deal. That's why we pointed out it's in perfect tense, completed past action, ongoing result. That means right now. All right, now, we've died in relationship to the world.

One of the things that we say the world, and sometimes we kind of scratch our heads, what exactly does that mean? If you can substitute the word culture, That may help clarify it. The word culture oftentimes gets it across. It's interesting, I was reading one anthropologist and he said, culture is what we do without thinking. You think about that? Culture is what we do without thinking. My brother at one point in time some years back was in a little skit and we told him he was sitting on a table with several other guys and they were having a meal and he was supposed to act like a savage. and he acted outrageously. He did a great job acting like a savage, but he displayed this truth, that the culture is what we do without thinking. Our culture just goes along like a machine, and there is a number of assumptions and viewpoints that are built into the way our culture thinks. All the assumptions, viewpoints, values, and perspectives that our society has around us.

And that's described for us in Ephesians chapter 2, the first few verses, what's interesting is the way this describes it, it becomes very clear that those who are of the world, those who are not separated from the sin nature, those who have not died to the law, those who have not died to the world, feel very comfortable in this world. This is the composite of all the sin natures that are out there. And so this is the relationship that we have to the world. We are certainly here on this planet, but the whole set of values and assumptions that are built into the culture around us, we have been separated from by Christ's crucifixion because we were crucified with him. We have died to the world, therefore the world to us.

So where does that leave us? Are we in this sort of a A limbo? Now, okay, now I've died to several things, where does that leave me? Stuck? It leaves you in a sort of limbo place, but in fact, as we go through the scripture, what we find is, no, we're not stuck. We're not in a limbo place. The Lord didn't leave us there, okay?

It says that we've been crucified with Him. It also says that we've been buried with Him. Let's take a look at that. Romans 6, 1-11 is one of those passages that conveys that truth, as well as in Colossians 2. We have been buried with Christ as well. Now, you might say, buried, isn't that a bad thing? Well, okay. In this case, it's different. It's very much not a bad thing.

Romans 6, verse 4 says, Therefore we have been buried with him through baptism into death. Into death? And to death, as a matter of fact, he reiterates it in Colossians 2.12, having been buried with him in baptism. Now, when we hear baptism, we think of water, and we think of getting under the water, and that's what comes to mind.

The thing to remember is that this word here, the Greek word baptizo, that's behind this, just means to be placed into. When the Romans were preparing the swords that they would use for battle, They would heat up the sword to a very high temperature and then suddenly take that sword and shove it into the water and when they placed it into the water, they would say, I am bapitzo, bapitzoing the sword. What are they doing? They're not doing anything ritual to it, they're just placing it into the water. The point being here, We have been placed into His death. It's God's doing. We have been placed into His death.

It's God's accomplishment just as we've been crucified with Him, we've also been buried with Him. When we were crucified with Christ, it puts the focus on our having died with Him, the process of death and what we have been separated from. The burial, our burial, our having been buried with Christ, has a different emphasis there. It switches from the process of dying to placing the focus on confirmation of that death, recognizing, yes, we indeed have died. There's one more thing, which you'll see here in just a minute.

With Christ, we have been crucified and buried and raised, and that's the next purpose. The one more reason for having been buried with him is that we are raised from that place of burial to new life. We have been raised with Him. Raised from dead through the glory of the Father.

Same message comes through in Colossians 2.12. By the working of God who raised Him from the dead, we have been buried with Him and also raised with Him. And these two passages make that clear.

So as we look at Galatians 2.20, it says it's no longer I who live.

Do you see that? The I that has been crucified is my old man. That's the I that he's referring to. Who I was before faith has been crucified. Made real clear here. It is the old man, the I, that no longer lives. Do you see that? Oh good, I died. I no longer live. It's not I that live.

This next part of this chart that you see on your handout there comes out this way. We've been crucified, buried, and raised with Christ. Now, here we've got a switch coming on. Something's changing. We need to take a look at it. But Christ lives in me. So wait a minute, I've been crucified with Him, died to sin, died to the world, died to the law, I've been buried with Him, now I've been raised with Him, but a switch is taking place. It's no longer my life. His life. His life instead.

So there's something going on in here we've got to take a look at. What's going on in there? Here. What's happening? What's going on? Let's get some light on this subject. We better take a look at it, don't you think? Find out what's going on inside. Here's what's happening here.

The old man is crucified. By means of that death, I've been separated from the sin nature. The old man, having been identified with Christ's death, separated me from that sin nature. Rather than simply being identified with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection, His resurrected life is the life in me. I no longer live. The old man who I was is no longer around. I've been separated from the sin nature, but Christ lives in me.

So if we look at the first half of that verse, what do we see? I've been crucified with Christ and there's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So the first half of that verse describes what is true of every believer. Done deal. If you're here this morning and you're a believer in Jesus Christ, this is true of you. You are crucified with Christ and you no longer live.

And that's good news. That's good news. The second half describes the moment by moment, you see the word now there? The right now basis for living. Right now. I've been crucified with Christ and that is the provision for right now Him living in me. Right now. This very moment. Let's look at this diagram here and we'll kind of step our way through it. You've got something like it in completed form on your handout. But I want to step through it just to make sure it's clear to us. We came to believe in Christ.

Before we came to put our trust in Him as Savior, we were unbelievers. We were entirely enslaved to the sin nature. That point for me, as I said, was when I was four and a half. And my mom could tell you all sorts of things about my sin nature before four and a half, but anyway, I won't go into that. The unbeliever is entirely enslaved to the sin nature. Entirely enslaved to the sin nature. The unbeliever in that state is separated from Christ. Separated from Christ.

At that point of faith, the old man is crucified and that sin nature then, as you see, is separated. Do you see the sin nature there at the bottom? The sin nature is separated positionally now from the believer and Christ is that person's identity. It is Christ's life. then that is in the believer. When the old man was crucified, I died to the sin nature, the law, and the world. Those relationships were cut off. But the believer is indwelt by the resurrected Christ. It is no longer I who live. The old man, who I was before, has been crucified. But Christ's life is now in me as a believer.

Let's look at Galatians 2.20, expanded and explained. Folks who are with us know what I mean by that. It has nothing to do with me being expanded, it's the verse.

By God's doing, who I was prior to believing in Christ has been positionally and irreversibly crucified with Christ. By the way, I put positionally and irreversibly Because something very interesting, while Scripture repeatedly talks about my having been crucified with Christ, buried with Christ, raised with Christ, ascended with Christ, seated with Christ, I cannot find any verses that show the reverse, that say you got uncrucified, that say you got unburied, that say you got unraised. I can't find any verses that say that. I can't find any verses that say you got unascended and unseated with Christ.

But you see this lesson repeatedly. Alright, now. What did that do so as to separate me positionally from the sin nature and who I was prior to that point is no longer the me who lives. But ever since that point in time, the resurrected person of Jesus Christ is resident in me. and the living which I am now doing each moment in this human body is by means of faith in the Son of God. His life, who loved me regardless of my prior state and identity, and gave himself up for my eternal benefit.

That's what's going on here. When we have this resurrection day morning, that we not just say, boy, isn't this an uplifting time? Aren't those encouraging hymns to sing? They sure sound uplifting. Or, I walk out feeling uplifted. That's not the point.

The resurrection is not just a nice religious story. Oh, isn't that cute? It's not just a nice religious story. It isn't just an inspiring legend. There are those who will say the Bible is inspiring if you're inspired. It is inspired because God inspired it.

It has no meaning with how I feel. It isn't just a good reason to believe because we can be resurrected someday too. You see, it's easy to say, well that's great, Christ was resurrected, therefore I know I can be resurrected too. Is that true? Yes it is, but it's not enough. The message that we have here is, I died, yes, but the purpose is so that Christ lives in me.

That's what the resurrection is about right now. Christ in me. Christ in me. His life, not mine. Instead of a nice story, instead of merely a legend, it's a real historical event in which Christ was indeed raised to life, but it's also a real spiritual event, and as all spiritual events, it's only revealed in Scripture. in which we are identified with Him in His resurrection and thereby given life, His life. You see, I'm not just waiting to die for the resurrection of Christ to impact me and my life. I'm not saying, boy, someday I'm going to fly away. That's not the message here.

The message here in Galatians 2.20 is right now, It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The life I live now, I live by faith in the Son of God. Right now, every moment, Christ is not just some sort of a nice idea, an uplifting thought, not sort of a symbol of spring. It has nothing to do with bunnies. This is a reality for every believer, every day, from here to the time when we see them face-to-face. Right now. That's what we're celebrating. It's not just, boy, isn't it a nice spring day. And aren't we glad it's not snowing right now.

Now, this is right in line with the way in which God is determined to work in the lives of those who believe in Him. God's working is entirely by His power, love, resources, completely through Him. God is not asking us, boy, since I went and resurrected, now you've got to get working. That's not what He's asking. He's saying instead, He says, I want you to do one thing, believe. I don't earn anything. I don't work harder or contribute anything to the process. It's His doing.

John 10.28 says this, I give eternal life to them and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. And that's a present active indicative. It has this sense. I am constantly giving them eternal life. Constantly. It doesn't mean, boy, when I die I'll have eternal life. I am constantly giving them eternal life, he says.

Right now, present tense. This very moment, his life in exchange for ours. The same message comes across as we'll see in weeks and months ahead in Colossians 3, 1-4. What does he say in verse 3? You've died. Where did we just read that? You've died. Your life is hidden with Christ in God when Christ who is our life is revealed. Same message, Christ who is right now our life. It's not my life, it's not, boy, Lord, I'm going to try really hard. It's His life. His life. Let's pray. Lord, as we look at this passage, thank you. Thank you that we have died. Who we were is gone. Our history is gone. And Lord, we have your history instead.

What a marvelous miracle you've done. And Lord, as we look at this, this Resurrection Day morning and we look back on what you've accomplished there, the marvelous thing is that it's not just encouraging for our lives. It is entirely replacement for our lives. And Lord, that's great, because it's your life completely. Thank you for that, for your marvelous grace. In Jesus' name, amen.