Galatians 2:20: Crucified and Still Here

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

Galatians 2:20 (NIV)

Crucified and Still Here

The neighbors are gone until the end of the month and he has the hose. Every evening around seven he walks across and waters their garden, tomatoes first, then the row of peppers that never did much. He knows where the spigot drips and how long the tomatoes want. He has never once decided what goes in this ground.

To the Galatians, Paul says he has been crucified with Christ and no longer lives, and that Christ lives in him. Then he says it from the other side. The life he now lives in the body, he lives by faith in the Son of God, “who loved me and gave himself for me.” He keeps it in the singular the whole way through. Whatever else is true about the Son of God loving the world, Paul is talking about himself here.

So two things are true about Paul at the same time. He has been crucified with Christ, and he is still walking around and writing letters to churches that are exasperating him. Both of them hold. He lives the second one on faith in the first.

Does anybody feel this on the day it happens, or only years later, looking back at who they stopped being? I’ve never had an answer for that.

The man out in the garden won’t feel any different about himself once the hose is coiled. He’ll sleep the same and get up the same and have no report to give anyone. The peppers will be a little further along by Thursday, and he won’t have seen any of it move.

By the time the light goes, the hose is on its hook and the tomatoes are heavy. He’s across the grass and in his own kitchen with the window open, and from there he can smell the wet dirt.