Wednesday

Related Verses
Rom. 6:6
6 Knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with Him in order that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin as slaves;

John 15:5
5 I am the vine; you are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.

Phil. 1:19-21
19 For I know that for me this will turn out to salvation through your petition and the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ,
20 According to my earnest expectation and hope that in nothing I will be put to shame, but with all boldness, as always, even now Christ will be magnified in my body, whether through life or through death.
21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.

Gen. 1:26
26 And God said, Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of heaven and over the cattle and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.

Gen. 2:22-23
22 And Jehovah God built the rib, which He had taken from the man, into a woman and brought her to the man.
23 And the man said, This time this is bone of my bones And flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called Woman Because out of Man this one was taken.

Rom. 5:5
5 And hope does not put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.

Related Reading
Galatians 2:20 explains how through law we have died to law. When Christ was crucified, we were included in Him according to God’s economy. This is an accomplished fact. We have died in Christ through His death, but now He lives in us through His resurrection. His living in us is entirely by His being the life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). This point is fully developed in the following chapters of Galatians, where the Spirit is presented and emphasized as the very One whom we have received as life and in whom we should live. (Life-study of Galatians, p. 85) 

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Paul concludes Galatians 2:20 by referring to the Son of God as the One “who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” In writing these words, Paul was filled with appreciation of the Lord Jesus…Faith comes from such an appreciation of the Lord Jesus. 

In 2 Corinthians 5:14-15 Paul says, “The love of Christ constrains us because we have judged this, that One died for all, therefore all died; and He died for all that those who live may no longer live to themselves but to Him who died for them and has been raised.”…The more we appreciate Christ’s constraining love, the more faith we will have. This faith…is produced by the working in us of the very Christ whom we appreciate. In our appreciation for the Lord Jesus, we will say, “Lord Jesus, I love You and I treasure You.” As we speak such words to the Lord, He operates within us and becomes our faith. This faith brings about an organic union in which we and Christ are truly one. 

God’s economy is not that we try to keep the law in the strength of our flesh. His economy is to work Himself into us. The Triune God has become the processed God. Through incarnation Christ came in the flesh to fulfill the law and then to set it aside. Through His resurrection Christ has become the life-giving Spirit, ready to enter into us. God’s New Testament economy is for the processed Triune God to be wrought into us to become our life and our very being. If we see this, we will be able to proclaim that we have been crucified with Christ and that we live no longer. Nevertheless, Christ lives in us, and we live by the faith that is in Him and of Him. Our old person has been crucified, but the new person, the new “I,” still lives. Now we live by the faith in the Son of God and of the Son of God, a faith that produces an organic union in which we and Christ are one. There is no comparison between keeping the law and such an organic union. 

Galatians 2:20 is a revelation of God’s economy. In His economy God’s intention is for the processed Triune God to be wrought into our being to make us a new person, a new “I.” The old person, the old “I,” the “I” without God, is over; but the new person, the new “I,” the “I” with the Triune God in it, still lives. We live with Christ and by Christ. Furthermore, we live by faith, which is the means to bring us into oneness with Him. In this organic union we are one with the Lord, for we have one life and one living with Him. When we live, He lives. He lives in us, and we live with Him. 

I can testify that because I have seen this heavenly vision, nothing can move me. I am willing to give my whole life for such a vision of God’s economy. The old person has been crucified with Christ, and Christ now lives in me, the new person. The life that I now live, I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God and in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me. Here we have the mingling of the Triune God with the tripartite man. How wonderful! (Life-study of Galatians, pp. 87-90) 

Further Reading: Life-study of Galatians, msg. 12