Galatians 2:20-21 I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ lives in me… The Eternal Being gave Himself for the creature which His hands had made. He gave Himself to poverty, to toil, to humiliation, to agony, to the Cross. He gave Himself "for me," for my benefit; but also "for me," in my place. This substitution of Christ for the guilty sinner is the ground of the satisfaction which Christ has made upon the cross for human sin. But on what principle did the Sinless One thus take the place of the guilty? Was it, so to speak, an arbitrary arrangement, for which no other account can be given than the manifested will of the Father? No; the substitution of the suffering Christ for the perishing sinner arose directly out of the terms of the Incarnation. The human nature which our Lord assumed was none other than the very nature of the sinner, only without its sin. The Son of God took on Him human nature, not a human personality. He becomes the Redeemer of our several persons, because He is already the Redeemer of this our common nature, which He has made for ever His own (1 Corinthians 15:20). As human nature was present in Adam, when by his representative sin he ruined his posterity, So was human nature present in Christ our Lord, when by His voluntary offering of His Sinless Self, He "bare our sins in His own body on the tree." Christ is thus the second Head of our race. Our nature is His own. He carried it with Him through life to death. He made it do and bear that which was utterly beyond its native strength. His Eternal Person gave infinite merit to its acts and its sufferings. In Him it died, rose, ascended, and was perfectly well-pleasing to the All-Holy. Thus by no forced or artificial transaction, but in virtue of His existing representative relation to the human family, He gave Himself to be a ransom for all. (Canon Liddon.) Parallel Verses KJV: I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. |
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