Our Sin Crucified

Death crucified.

Galatians 2:20
²⁰ I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (NIV)

Paul teaches us that we have been crucified with Christ. That is our self, the self that was full of sin has been symbolically crucified in Christ. Just as God made Jesus to be sin so that it might be put to death in His body, so too, has our sinful flesh been crucified in His death.

Before Jesus was crucified, He was whipped with a flagellum resembling the British cat of nine tails. The Roman flagellum had from three to nine strands weighted with lead balls and pieces of bone. The lead balls would cause deep bruising and could easily break the skin. The bone would catch the skin and rip it off the bone. The pain would be beyond words. Then He was crucified, nailed to a cross which would cause blood to fill the lungs and eventually to drown the person. It was a slow, incredibly painful drowning that could last for days.

His body represented the sinful flesh. The punishment brought upon His body reflects God’s hatred for sin. It also lets us know that the power of sin was put to death so that if by faith in Christ, we trust His punishment was for our sin, we can be assured that our sin has been put to death in the most violent way.

But we also live in the resurrected Christ in the power over death. We have the Spirit who gives us the ability to love better, resist temptation, and change our world.

We feel, and rightly so, that we are not Godly enough to live in this power. We doubt ourselves. We act as if the spirit of death can still kill us forgetting death has been conquered for those who have put their faith in Christ. We are not filled with power because of how righteous we are. Everything that would prohibit you from living in the fullness of God’s grace and power was crucified. It no longer has the power to keep you from all God has for you.

Our old self is dead to God, and we have now risen as a new creation in the power that raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

Lord, help me to operate daily in the assurance that You killed sin in me so that it no longer has mastery. Now I am free to live for you. Amen.