Charles Ellicott Commentary Galatians 2:20

"I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ living in me: and that [life] which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, [the faith] which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me." — Galatians 2:20 (ASV)

In the last verse, the Apostle had spoken of himself as dead to the Law, and living to God. The prominent idea in the first half of this clause had been the release from that burdensome ceremonial which the Judaizing party wished to bind on Christian consciences.

By a natural transition, the Apostle’s thought had passed from what the Law could not do to what Christianity could do. The Law could not make people righteous before God. In Christ they were made righteous.

How? Here, too, there was death. The Christian died with Christ to something else besides the Law. With his eye fixed upon the cross, he died a spiritual death and rose to a new spiritual life.

The “old man” in him, the self-seeking and sinful element in his nature, is slain, and for it is substituted a life of such close and intimate communion with Christ that it seems as if Christ Himself were dwelling in the soul. Living on the earth in a body of human flesh, as he is, he is animated by an intense faith in the Savior who has given him such proofs of self-sacrificing love.

Here we come upon the same vein of mysticism that is developed in Romans 6. One main way of conceiving of the specially Christian life is through the idea of union with Christ.

This idea, when ultimately pressed to precise logical definition, must necessarily contain a certain element of metaphor. Consciousness, rigorously examined, tells us that even in the most exalted souls there is no such thing as an actual union of the human and divine.

At the same time, an influence from above is possible for humanity, so penetrating and so powerful that it would seem as if the figure of union alone could adequately express it. Nor should this be questioned or denied because the more common order of minds do not find themselves capable of it. (See the Notes on Romans 6, and Excursus G to that Epistle.)

I am crucified. . .—The idea is something more than that of merely “dying with Christ”—that is, imitating the death of Christ in a spiritual manner: it involves, besides, a special reference to the cross. It is through the power of the cross, through contemplating the cross and all that is associated with it, that the Christian is enabled to mortify the promptings of sin within him, and reduce them to a state of passiveness like that of death.

Nevertheless I live.—This death to sin, death on one side of my nature, does not hinder me from having life on another side. The fact is that I live in a truer sense than ever before.

Yet not I.—It is, however, no longer the old natural man in me that lives: it is not that part of the human personality which has its root in matter, and is of the earth, earthy, but that part which is re-formed by the Spirit of Christ.

Now.—In my present condition as a Christian, as opposed to the old condition before the conversion.

In the flesh.—In this bodily human frame; though I am a man. The Christian is outwardly the same as other men; it is his inner life which is hid with Christ in God.

By the faith.—The article is better omitted: by faith. The Apostle does not quite go so far as to say that faith is the cause of his physical life, though we may see, by other passages, that he is at least prepared to look upon faith as the great pledge, and even cause, of the physical resurrection. Here he is speaking of faith rather as the element or atmosphere in which the Christian lives. He is, as it were, steeped in faith.

Of the Son of God—that is, faith of which the Son of God is the object; faith in the Son of God.

There is a curious variation of reading here. Some ancient authorities (including the Codex Vaticanus) instead of “faith in the Son of God,” have “faith in God and Christ.” This might appear to have some internal probability, as the less obvious expression of the two; but it may perhaps be explained satisfactorily in another way. On the whole, it seems best to abide by the Received Text, which is that of the majority of manuscripts.

Who loved me.—Christ died for the whole world, but each individual Christian has a right to appropriate His death to himself. The death of Christ was prompted by love, not for the abstraction of humanity, but for humans as individuals.