☠️ Galatians 2:20 | We Die Too

Happy Wednesday, everyone!

Fair warning, things are going to get a bit intense today as we break open the profound meaning of the phrase “I have been crucified.”

In today’s email…

• ✝️ A look into crucifixion

• 🫴 The call to radical surrender

• 📚️ A few resources to go even deeper in study

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MEMORIZE 🧠 

I have been ________ ____ ______. It is __ _______ _ ___ ____, but Christ ___ ____ __ __.

And the life I now live __ ___ ______ I live by faith in the ___ __ ___, who loved me and ____ _______ for me.

Galatians 2:20

CONTEXT 📕 

In Greek, “I have been crucified with” is just one word:

Synestaurōmai (pronounced soos-tow-ro'-o)

It’s rarely used in the New Testament, but when it shows up, it brings a lot of important theology in just a few syllables.

To be “crucified with” someone can mean two things:

First, literally — like the two criminals hanging on either side of Jesus (Matthew 27:44).

Second, spiritually — which is what Paul means here in Galatians 2:20.

Romans 6:6 echoes the same word, saying that believers are crucified with Christ so that our old, sin-infected selves might be destroyed.

But to fully feel that, we have to understand what crucifixion actually meant in Paul’s world. In the Greco-Roman empire, crucifixion wasn’t just about death.

It was about shame.

It was the most degrading, public, and prolonged way to die.

Stripped, nailed, and hung out for mockery and finger-pointing. Iron spikes were driven through ankles and wrists, with most dying by exhaustion, exposure, or suffocation.

Nothing about it was noble.

That was the point.

So when Paul says “I have been crucified with Christ,” he’s not being poetic or metaphorical. He’s saying the old Paul (the rule-enforcer, the status-climber, the Law-clinger) has been publicly executed.

And not just by Christ…

But with Him.

We share in that death.

Paul doesn’t want us to pick up the Christian faith like a new hobby.

He wants us to completely get rid of the old way. It needs to die.

Our crucifixion means total surrender.

Then, we are resurrected with Christ to a new life shaped by Jesus (not our own feelings or inclinations).

Crucifixion with Christ means we no longer need to earn anything. But it also means we surrender everything.

Both legalism and license get nailed to the wood.

What’s left is a life shaped by Jesus — not by our impulses, image, or our achievements.

Our old selves have died a definitive death.

And now, we get to live a new life.

There’s a reason Scripture talks of being “crucified with Christ” and being “born again.”

When you give your life to Christ, his death and resurrection become your death and resurrection (new birth).

APPLY AND RESPOND 🏃‍♂️ 

Crucifixion with Christ is a call to radical surrender.

The old version of you (the one carrying fear, self-centered desires, and prideful ambition) doesn’t need a makeover.

It needs a funeral.

As the German pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in The Cost of Discipleship:

“When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”

He wasn’t just talking about martyrdom (though Bonhoeffer himself would face it at the hands of the Nazis in 1945).

He was describing something better: a daily death to control, ego, and performance.

It’s not just about suffering for Jesus. It’s about surrendering to Him. Letting Him live where your old self once ruled.

🧠 Reflect: What part of your life keeps crawling off the cross? Where are you still trying to prove, control, or impress, when Jesus has already said, “It is finished”?

🙏 Pray:

Lord, kill what needs killing in me. Raise what needs raising. Live through me today. Amen.

RESOURCES 📚️ 

Here are a few resources to help you dig deeper into the verse and its themes:

• 📚️ The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer (link)

• 📚️ Galatians (The NIV Application Commentary) by Scot McKnight (link)

• 📚️ Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians by Ben Witherington III (link)

• 💻️ “What Does It Mean to Be Crucified with Christ?”, GotQuestions (link)

• 🎥 BibleProject Overview on the Book of Galatians (link)

• 🎵 Galatians 2:20 by The Corner Room (Spotify | Apple)

• 🎵 Yesterday is Dead by Josiah Queen (Spotify | Apple)

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ANSWER KEY ✅ 

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.

And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20