“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.” (v. 20)

Get the picture:

It’s an entirely different life now.

When Paul concludes, “I no longer live and yet I live,” he’s telling us that the life lived by grace through faith in Christ is something “other.” He might have lived for the Law; now he’s dead to it. He might have lived for religious rules; now he’s dead to them. He might have lived for elitism and favoritism; now he is dead to those things, too.

In Christ—and only in Christ—there is justification, freedom, and life. Such faith tears down every former way. Because He now lives in the believer, we are alive to community and invitation and proclamation, while remaining dead to legalism and its empty promise of justification.

That’s an entirely different life—compared to the old, and compared to basically every other religion.

Thanks be to God.

— Tyler