I Am Crucified With CHRIST!

Hi! and happy holy and family day to all of us, GUYS.  For our first-thing-first this Sunday:

THE GOOD NEWS (12 June 2016)

"Yet we know that a person is justified not by practicing the law but by faith in CHRIST JESUS.  So we have believed in CHRIST JESUS that we may receive true righteousness from faith in CHRIST JESUS, and not from the practices of the Law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.

Now, if in our own effort to be justified in CHRIST we ourselves have been found to be sinners, then CHRIST would be at the service of sin.  Not so!  But look: if we do away with something and then restore it, we admit we did wrong.

As for me, the very Law brought me to die to the Law, that I may live for GOD.  I am crucified with CHRIST.  Do I live?  It is no longer me; CHRIST lives in me.  My life in this body is life through faith in the Son of GOD who loved me and gave HIMSELF for me.  In this way I don't ignore the gift of GOD, for, if justification comes through the practice of the Law, CHRIST would have died for nothing." - Galatians 2:16-21  

(Paul develops here what his reply to Peter contained: when you welcomed Christian faith, you gave up any hope of being rewarded for fulfilling the commandments; you put instead all your trust in JESUS as a Savior.  This challenge has made Christian faith very strong.  If now, for fear of scandalizing the Jews you decline from eating with non-Jews, all will understand that you have gone too far and that in fact the Law is still valid.

If we do away with something and then restore it.  This is exactly what the Galatians are doing in  their turn.  Paul taught them to be free of the prejudices of their pagan religion just as of the practices of the Old Testament.  Now without these practices they feel naked: was faith in CHRIST sufficient when all around them each one had religion and practices?  It was not pleasant to be circumcised, but at least, it gave you an identity.

We have here a summary of what Paul will develop four years later in chapters 2-8 in his letter to the Romans.  We must not let the defense  of Christian freedom, something that was so new and had not finished cracking cultural and social molds, hide from us what Paul would most like to transmit: "CHRIST lives in me."  Paul is not a theoretician; what makes him write today and tomorrow urges him to cross seas and traverse mountains in a passionate love of  JESUS-GOD.  It would need audacity to comment on this dwelling of CHRIST in those HE loves and who love HIM.  It has taken nothing less than this love without reserve, to bring about the greatest achievement of Christian faith and yet the least noticed: pardon and humility among others: I am crucified with CHRIST.)  

On-Track