Crucified with Christ

Peter knew better. He’d already seen the vision of the sheet full of unclean animals, already declared before the Jerusalem church, “who was I that I could withstand God?” and already shaken hands with Paul in agreement over the grace gospel. And yet, when certain men arrived from James, Peter quietly withdrew from eating with Gentile believers — not from conviction, but from fear of what the circumcision party would think. It wasn’t a doctrinal failure; it was hypocrisy, acting contrary to what he actually believed. And it was contagious — even Barnabas, Paul’s own partner in preaching grace to the Gentiles, got swept along by the peer pressure. So Paul confronted Peter publicly, “before them all,” because a private correction wouldn’t undo public damage.

Out of that confrontation comes one of the most personal verses Paul ever wrote. Justification, he insists, has never come by works of the law — not for Jews, not for anyone — but by faith in Jesus Christ alone. And then he makes it intensely his own: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” When Christ died, Paul died with Him — his old identity, his old debt, settled at the cross. And the life he now lives, he lives by faith in the Son of God who loved him personally and “gave Himself for me” — not a vague, general love for humanity, but a love with Paul’s own name on it. Paul closes with the stakes laid bare: “if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain.” There is no alternate route. Grace alone, or the cross accomplished nothing.