Verse explainer
Paul doesn't mean he physically died — he means the self that sought standing before God through law-keeping died, and something entirely new took its place.
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.
BSBI have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
The plain meaning
Paul has just argued that justification comes through faith in Christ, not through works of the law (v. 16). Verse 20 is the personal testimony behind that argument. When Christ was crucified, Paul understands himself to have been crucified with him — his old existence as a law-striving Pharisee, his attempt to earn God's favor by performance, died there. "Nevertheless I live" — but the one now living is not the same self. Christ inhabits him; Christ is, as Luther put it, the life beneath the apparent life. The present bodily existence Paul still calls "life in the flesh" is real but secondary — it is animated and defined by trust in the Son of God. And the anchor of all of this is not Paul's effort but Christ's prior act: he loved Paul and gave himself specifically for him. That personal note — "who loved me, and gave himself for me" — is not theological abstraction. It is the ground Paul stands on.
The common misreading
What the commentators say
Gill stresses that being crucified with Christ is mystical, not literal: Christ stood as the representative head of his people, so what he bore they bore in him. The old self — with its sins, its claim on the law, its striving — received its fatal wound at the cross. The life that remains is not self-generated; Christ is not merely its helper but its very source and substance, formed within the believer and sustaining every vital motion of faith.
Clarke reads the crucifixion language as Paul's death to every expectation of justification by law. The law cannot animate — it kills. Christ, by contrast, becomes 'the soul of the soul,' and the life now lived is entirely dependent on faith in him as a sacrifice. Clarke highlights the personal warmth of the closing clause: Christ loved Paul and gave himself for him — not mankind in the abstract, but this man, in this moment of writing.
JFB draws attention to the tense: 'I have been crucified' — a completed past act with ongoing effect. They note the plain antithesis: crucified yet alive, the old self gone yet a new life real. Life 'in the flesh' is, as they put it, merely the mask; the true life underneath is Christ. They also observe that 'Son of God' is not incidental — his divine Sonship is precisely the source of the life-giving power faith lays hold of.
The word behind it
"I have been crucified with" — a perfect passive from syn (with) + stauroō (to crucify). The perfect tense is decisive: this is not a repeated act or a vague metaphor but a completed event whose effects are still fully in force. Paul did not crucify himself; he was co-crucified in Christ as representative head. Strong's and Thayer both note the compound emphasizes genuine participation in Christ's death, not mere imitation of it. This single word carries the whole argument: if Paul truly died with Christ, the law has no further claim on him.
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