Gal. ii. 20. / am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me : and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.
THE Gospel is, for the most part, plain and sim- ple : yet are there some things in it which seem dark and contradictory. In one place St. Paul brings for- ward a long list of paradoxes, which to a superficial
reader would appear absurd in the extreme a: but in all the sacred records there is not one so difficult of solution as that in our textb. The Apostle is speaking on the subject of justification by faith alone, without the works of the law : and he mentions, that he had publicly reproved Peter for sanctioning by his example the idea that the observation of the law was still necessary. He says, that the law itself sufficiently shewed us the necessity of abandoning all hopes from that, and of seeking justification by faith in Christ alone : and then adds, that, in consequence of what Christ had done and suffered to deliver us from the law as a covenant of works, he considered himself as one dead to the law, and as having all his life and all his hopes in Christ alone. This is the plain import of the passage as divested of its para- doxical appearance. But as the paradox, when ex- plained, will be very instructive, we shall enter into a fuller consideration of it ; and shew,
I. In what respect the Christian is dead —
To understand in what sense the Apostle was " crucified with Christ," we must particularly attend to the great ends for which Christ was crucified. Now Christ was crucified, in the first place, in order to satisfy all the demands of the law. The law re- quired perfect obedience, and denounced a curse against every transgression of its precepts0. Man, therefore, having transgressed the law, was utterly, and eternally, ruined. But Christ having undertaken
a 2 Cor. vi. 8—10.
b The difficulty of this passage seems needlessly increased in our translation. The second clause of the text stands thus ; £w M ovk in eytb' and it might be translated, " I am crucified with Christ; and I am alive no more." The opposite truth then comes naturally ; " I am alive no more ; but Christ liveth in me." The very position of the words in this antithesis seems to mark the propriety of this trans- lation ; £w <je ovk en kyio' £fj ?>e tv i/uol Xpuxrug. But by putting a stop after £w Se, we make a double paradox, instead of a single one. The sense, however, is much the same, whichever way the passage is translated : but one would wish rather to lessen, than increase, its un- avoidable obscurity.
c Gal. iii. 10.