 Throughout my life I've increasingly found that reading Scripture in public is not just about feeding our own spirits and minds, but about rehearsing the mighty acts of God for God's glory. So let's think together about Galatians 2.20. And first we're going to need some tea. I have been crucified with the Messiah. I am, however, alive, but it isn't me any longer. That's the Messiah who lives in me, and the life I do still live in the flesh. I live within the faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. This is one of the most richly personal statements anywhere in Paul's very personal letters about the meaning, the deep heart meaning of the Gospel of Jesus for him personally. He's not just saying it though for the sake of saying, guess what, I've had this religious experience. He is drawing onto his own experience the larger argument of the passage, which is about the fact that through the death of Jesus, Jews and Gentiles who believe in Jesus are brought into a single body. It's about identity. The problem he was facing when writing this was that some Jewish believers were saying, well, we are Jewish believers. These are Gentile believers. We're happy to know them, happy to think that we're sort of on the same team. But of course, they're Gentiles. And so we can't be expected to eat with them because we Jews have been taught that Gentiles, because they are idolaters, are basically polluted, corrupt. We cannot allow that to infect us. And Paul was writing at a time when there was great social and what we would call political tension among many Jews, both in Jerusalem and in Virens and out in the Jewish diaspora, where the Roman threat was ever present and the threat of compromise with Gentile ways was regarded as a very serious issue for many Jewish people. Paul himself growing up in the diaspora in what we would call southern Turkey will have known only too well about this. But Paul's gospel insists that what happened in the death of Jesus was so dramatic that anyone who then becomes part of the people of Jesus. Anyone who in baptism and faith is enfolded into this new reality has stepped away from their old identity and has become a new person. And in particular, that when a Gentile who may have been a sinner and idolater beforehand becomes part of the Messiah's family, then that person is a sinner no longer. Paul is very clear about that in his argument to Peter, just three or four verses before the one I read. But then Paul brings it right down to himself because he himself was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He was the most zealous kind of Jew that there was. But even for Paul, that wasn't good enough to say, well, I of course don't need to go through any transition. I am automatically one of the Messiah's people when he turns up. No, I through the law, he says, died to the law that I might live to God. And that's when he says, I have been crucified with the Messiah. Israel's Messiah has been crucified. That means that even the most devout Jew when faced with the crucified Messiah has to go through this death and resurrection, which is after all what baptism means as Paul explains it in Romans six and elsewhere. So I have been crucified with the Messiah in our day when we have so much talk about identity, who I really am. This is the Christian answer. I am somebody who has lost the previous identity through being crucified with the Messiah. But that doesn't mean I become a nobody. I am alive. I am however alive, but it isn't me any longer. It's the Messiah who lives in me. The messianic life through the power of the spirit, as Paul explains later on in Galatians and elsewhere. This messianic life is the new identity of the people of God. All those who are baptized and believing in Jesus come into this new identity. And this identity isn't just a legal construct. It's not just not just a convenient fiction. It's a matter of love. The life I still do live in the flesh. I'm still the person I was. Paul can refer to himself elsewhere as, of course, I Paul am a Jew. And this follows from that. The life I do still live in the flesh. I am not defined by the flesh, either in terms of the desires of the flesh or the identity of the flesh. No, I live within the faithfulness of the Son of God, the faithfulness which Jesus exercised when he went to the cross in fulfillment of his vocation. The faithfulness of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. For Paul, the gospel is about a debt of love which only love can repay. And in that relationship of grateful love, Paul finds his whole identity. And he's saying to the people of his day, to Peter with whom he was in debate, and to us too, this is the basis for discovering who you really are. Instead of the philosopher Descartes saying cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I am. Paul would say Amor ergo sum, I am loved, therefore I am. And that love which reaches out from the cross of the Messiah is that which defines us as people characterized by the answering love, which we call faith. So may God give you faith and love and hope. And that believing you may know who you really are in the Messiah and have life in his name. Amen. How is this passage speaking to you? Let us know in the comments. Like and subscribe or check out our other videos.