20 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. 21 I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose.
The statement in 20 is a massive one, from any point of view. It says so much about the Christian life, and it can stand alone in its own right, apart altogether from its present context, although we best think of it in relation to, and as an exposition of, 19, 'I through the law have died to the law'. Indeed, the Reformers used to maintain that the true meaning of the words was this: 'That I may live unto God. I have been crucified with Christ'. And since 'living unto God' is but another way of speaking of the life of liberty that is in Christ through the gospel, it is clear that this statement about being crucified with Christ is the doorway into the Christian liberty. The glory of the verse lies in the double paradox which lies at its heart: 'I have been crucified/I live' and 'I live/yet not I'. As to the first of these, this is what we must say: Sin has ruined man as made in the image of God, and made him a twisted, tainted, perverse creature. Since this is so, God, in redeeming fallen man, must do a new thing, and make him over again. He must destroy this tainted, twisted thing, and it is this destroying act that Paul refers to in the words 'I have been crucified with Christ'. He means that Christ, by His death on the cross, has done to the death the old, twisted, perverse life that has caused us so much trouble, and that in entering into this relationship with Christ by faith, he finds deliverance from the past. As he puts it in Romans 6:6, 'Our old man - the man we once were, has been crucified with Christ'. What we once were - by the grace of God, and in fellowship with Christ - we are no longer that! And here is the wonderful, paradoxical mystery: 'I' have been crucified with Christ, but a new 'I' appears to take the place of the old. We die to live; we find ourselves when we lose ourselves. We become our real selves when we are in Christ and Christ is in us.