The Life I Live

“It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal. 2: 20). Paul is saying something like this: “I no longer have a life of my own, the only life I have is the life that God puts into me through Christ.” It would be hard to imagine a text more antithetical to our contemporary culture. It is the spirit of this selfish age – moderns and post-moderns alike are obsessed with themselves – self-esteem, self-improvement, self-fulfillment, self-indulgence, whatever you want, as long as it begins with your “self.” In these self-absorbed times, the Bible announces the death of the self: “it is no longer I who live.” The world no longer revolves around me. I am no longer dominated by thoughts of my own pleasure and prestige. If I have a life at all, it is only the life that Christ lives in me. This does not mean that becoming a Christian is a kind of suicide. We still have a normal physical existence, of course, what Paul calls, “the life I now live in the flesh.” Since it is the life I live, I even have a self, but the only self I have is the one united to Christ by faith. My life is the life that Christ lives in me, the life “I live by faith in the Son of God.”