Let me invite you to take your Bible and turn to Galatians chapter 2. If you’re using the – well, I have left my bulletin there. What page is that on? 973 if you’re using the Bible in the rack in front of you.
As you’re turning there, let me just add my own comments about William and Carissa being here. It is a delight to have you here. Their son, Terek, is with them. It’s a difficult thing to come to a church such as this where we are live streaming, not just to greater Jackson but to all over the world, and they want to give a sense of what it’s like to live in their country and serve the way they do, but they’re not free to do so because this is very, very public. And so I wanted you to know they met with the Mission Committee before the service and have gone into great detail. They’ll be up here at the end of the service if you’d like to meet them personally and ask them some questions. I know they’d be much freer to answer more specifics. Feel free to do that. But we’re delighted they’re here; grateful for the privilege of co-laboring with you in your part of the world.
As we’re thinking about other parts of the world, what has captivated our attention to a large degree this past week has been the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban. And we had about this many people gathered here this past Wednesday evening for a day of prayer and fasting and we’re deeply grateful for the ways the Lord has met with us and the way He is hearing our prayers and for the conviction that even now He is answering our prayers. Either He is giving us exactly what we’re asking for, or He’s giving us what we would be asking for if we knew everything Jesus knows. And so we can pray with confidence that God will never give us less than what we pray He’ll give us. Does that make sense? Let’s pray with confidence as we continue to stand with our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Galatian 2:20, I wanted to look at that with you primarily because of what’s taking place in Afghanistan, but also because of how this prepares us for the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper. We’re going to look just at one verse, and I’d encourage you if you haven’t already memorized it, to memorize it. And keep reminding yourself of the truth we’ll unpack this evening of what we know is certainly true, unchangeably true, with regard to what God has promised to His people, even when they are suffering at their very worst. Before we read or quote the text, let’s pray together.
Our Father, we come to You in the name of Jesus, claiming the power of Your Spirit to speak through Your Word. Lord Jesus, we need You. Our brothers and sisters in Christ need You. Would You make them, and us along with them, bold for the sake of the One who gave His life for us and lives His life through us, even Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.
Galatians 2:20. The ESV records it this way:
“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.”
This is God’s Word.
Again, if you’ve not memorized that I would encourage you to do so in whatever translation you choose to memorize it, because it will shape your understanding of what’s taking place in the weeks that lie ahead and maybe in the years that unfold before us personally. I’d like us to think about, “How do we respond to persecution?” Not just the persecution we hear about in Afghanistan, but we’ve been using that booklet, “The World Watch List,” published by Open Doors, which lists the 50 countries in order where it’s most dangerous to follow Jesus. Afghanistan has been the number 2 country for a long time. I suspect it’s become the number 1 most dangerous country to follow Jesus at present. But how do we think about the persecution of the Church of those who follow the Lord Jesus? How do we respond to it? And maybe most sobering for us, at least for today, “How do we prepare for our own persecution that is likely yet to come even in this country?” Unthinkable? We have yet to see, don’t we?
Josef Tson was a pastor in Romania. Served for many of his years in pastoral ministry under communist Romania, under the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who most of you will remember was executed next to his wife on public television on Christmas Day 1989. That’s how bad things were in Romania, the Romania where he was serving. Josef Tson came to faith in Christ under the ministry of Martyn Lloyd-Jones when he had escaped from Romania, ended up in Cambridge, and studied in university, came to faith, and was convinced he needed to go back to Romania as a pastor. Everyone warned him against it because it was going to be so dangerous, even life-threatening for him. But he went back because of what Jesus had said. Matthew 10:16, Jesus said, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves.” Or John 15:20, “Remember the words I spoke to you, ‘No servant is greater than his master.’ If they persecuted Me, they will persecute you also.” And he was persecuted – arrested, interrogated, imprisoned, suffered a great deal, as did his wife and daughter, because of his commitment to follow Jesus. Emily and I had the privilege of meeting him, hosting him in our home, but more importantly, I’ve had his PhD dissertation, which he wrote at Oxford, I’ve had his dissertation on my desk for most of my years in pastoral ministry. I’ve read it repeatedly. It’s a massive 500-page book titled, ready – “Suffering, Martyrdom and Rewards in Heaven.” The title itself begs debate. How can there be rewards connected to suffering? And yet, the Bible clearly connects suffering, persecution, martyrdom with unique rewards. Not by merit, but rewards nonetheless.
And I’ve gone through his dissertation over and over again because I have never read anything so clearly focused on the teaching of Scripture, the history of the Church over the last 2 millennia, and our place in history right now. One of the things he comes back to again and again is this issue – “Who are we really in union with Christ?” Now we spent a year before last with our teaching theme being, “Union with Christ.” What Dr. Tson does is he connects union with Christ with the certainty that the followers of Jesus will suffer as Jesus Himself has suffered, maybe not to the same degree, but there will be suffering in the life of those who follow the Redeemer. And so who are we really in union with Christ? That brings us to Galatians 2:20. And my plan is to make two observations about the passage, about the verse, and then draw three practical implications. Very straightforward.
In Union with Christ, You Are Dead
First observation is this – In union with Christ, you and I are dead. Sobering, isn’t it? But that’s exactly what the verse says. “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live.” In union with Christ, I’m already dead. If you go all the way back to the King James Version it translates it a little bit differently. It says, “I am crucified with Christ and I no longer live.” And the reason the King James does it is because it’s wanting to reflect the verb that we translate, “I have been crucified.” It’s really one Greek word, but that one Greek word is a verb and it comes in a perfect passive tense. It comes to us as passive, meaning something has happened to me, and it comes as a perfect tense, meaning what happened to me in the past has real and present and ongoing consequences. That’s why it says, “I am crucified,” not just, “It happened in the past,” but it did happen in real time, history, and it actually has present implications to my experience today. “I have been. I am crucified with Christ.”
Now let me try to illustrate what this looks like. This illustration breaks down, I’ll tell you up front, but I think it will help. Just over 100 years ago in 1919 in New York, there was a terrible train wreck. It was in a tunnel and as the train derailed the fuel on the train ignited, there was an explosion, and over 100 people died, most of whom were burned beyond recognition. This was before DNA identification. And so when it was discovered that that many people died, there were funerals but they weren’t sure exactly, “Who are we burying?” One other fact – several years later it was discovered that a number of the people who were believed to have died actually didn’t die. They weren’t even on the train. These were people who were either in debt or who were being sought by the law or who were in relationships that they no longer wanted to be in, and when they heard about the train and recognized that, “I have a ticket for that train,” they just disappeared. They were in union with that train by virtue of their ticket, and they claimed the status of, “I’m dead. I’m gone.” Some were later captured; others turned themselves in because they couldn’t keep up the charade.
But here’s the point. There is a picture of, because of their union with that train and what happened to the train, they chose to say, “We’re going to act as if we’re dead.” It didn’t work. Some of them – we don’t know how many people actually kept up the charade and actually took it to their later death, but some were caught and this was their experience. The rationale was, “What can the law do to a dead person?” Once you’re dead, the law has no claim on you. The obligations, the penalties, the relationships, the court orders don’t mean anything to a person who has died. This is what union with Christ points to in the context of this verse. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live,” meaning that my union with Christ in His death, in His crucifixion, in His burial and in His resurrection means that the law and all the penalties that stood against me for my being a rebel against God have no more claim over me. I am no longer indebted. I am no longer under obligation to the law and its demands. The worst that the law could ever have done to me was done to Christ and therefore it was done to me by virtue of my union with Him. There is no longer an obligation. This is what Paul is pointing to in this passage.
In Union with Christ, You Are Truly Alive and Deeply Loved
The second observation goes like this – Not only in union with Christ am I already dead, but in union with Christ you and I are truly alive, more alive than ever before, and we are deeply loved. In union with Christ I am dead. In union with Christ I am more alive than ever and I am deeply loved. This is the second part of the verse. “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live but Christ lives in me. And the life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.” Who loves me and even now gives Himself to me. That’s the primary emphasis in verse 20. Five times you find the word “live” or “life.” “The life I live, I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave Himself for me. I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live I live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave Himself for me.”
What does that mean? What does it mean to live by faith in the Son of God who loves me and gave Himself for me? Well let’s pick up our train illustration, only let’s ratchet it forward about 80 years. I’m going to tread very carefully here. Let’s say that the year is 2001 and you live in New York City and you have this tremendous debt that you could never pay back. You own hundreds of millions of dollars to your investors, to the bankers, and for reasons I’m not going to go into, we don’t have to detail, the money is gone and you can’t pay it back. A warrant for your arrest has been issued and you’re trying to figure it out – “What do I do?” It’s September 11 and on the calendar hanging on the wall in your apartment is an appointment with a specific attorney who is in the World Trade Center. Are you with me? And so you’re supposed to be there in the morning of September 11, 2001, but you oversleep. And finally you awaken and you realize what’s happened and you think, “Oh no! I’ve lost my opportunity! I’ve got to see what I can do!” And so you get dressed quickly, you run downstairs, you hail a cab and you start driving toward the address where the World Trade Center is and the cab driver says, “You’re going to where?” And you tell him and he says, “Don’t you know what’s happening there? Two airplanes have collided with the buildings; the buildings are on fire!” And he says, “I’m not going anywhere near that building!”
And you get out of the cab and your brain starts to spin. Your first thought is, “I should be dead right now! It should be me on fire! I could have been burned up!” And by this time the buildings are collapsed and you think, “I was a dead man had I gotten up on time!” And then you go to the next step and you think, “But I had an appointment. It’s on my calendar on the wall. What if this is my ticket out? What if I check out right now, I disappear and I never show up? Everyone will assume that I was in the building. It’s on the calendar and no one will ever know and I will disappear.” If that were your experience, what would the rest of your life look like?
Well of course you’d have to create a new identity. You’d never ever be able to go back to the old identity. You’d never be able to use your phone. You’d have to throw that away. You’d never be able to go back to your apartment. You’d never contact your family. You’d never use your credit card again. You’d never go back to your alma mater. You’d never be able to produce your résumé, because you’re dead. And two things would be true – you would be hustling to create a new identity completely separate from the old one and you’d be always working to make sure you kept the story straight, and you would always be in fear of being found out.
That’s where the illustration breaks down, because you see in the Gospel, you actually do have a new identity. You have a new life, not one that you created yourself but one that Christ has won for you. That’s what His declaring us righteous means. We have a new identity. We have a new family. We have a new life and it’s life as we’ve never known it before where there’s nothing to hide or fear or lose or prove because Christ has done it all for us. There is a new identity. This is what union with Christ means. One, in union with Christ we really are dead; the old life is done. There is no more legal judgment that can stand against us. The worst that we could ever fear, Christ has absorbed in Himself on the cross, for us and in our place as our substitute. And the best we could ever hope for, the perfection that God commands, Christ has won and secured on our behalf and credits to us.
That’s justification, isn’t it? That’s what this passage is pointing to. Earlier you find that word justification multiple times in Galatians chapter 2. In Christ, you are absolutely safe and secure in this new identity, in this new life that you didn’t create on your own as a fake identity, but one that is more real than anything you could have ever known because Christ has won it on your behalf and given it to you and secures it so that not even you can mess it up. Colossians 3 verse 3 puts it this way. “For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” In Christ, in union with Him, you are already dead, and in union with Christ you are more alive and more deeply loved than you could ever possibly imagine. And it will take you the rest of your life to work out all those implications.
For the Believer, Persecution is Always and Only in Union with Christ
Now here are the three implications that grow out of that as we think about the persecuted Church – how to think about it, how to respond to it, how to pray for our persecuted brothers and sisters, and even how to prepare for our own persecution. Incidentally, I should say that Dr. Tson preached in the United States quite a few times. You can find his sermons even on the Desiring God website. But one of the things he said over and over again is, “Please don’t ever believe that persecution as you see all around the world won’t come here. It will most certainly come. It’s just a matter of time.” So really the deeper question must be for us, “How do we prepare for the inevitability of our own persecution even in the Deep South, even in Jackson, Mississippi, one of two most evangelical, churched cities in the nation?” We’re number 1, tied with Montgomery, Alabama. Even here. So three implications as we prepare for the sacrament.
Number one, for the believer, persecution is always and only in union with Christ. No genuine believer has ever been persecuted alone. No genuine true follower of Jesus has ever been abandoned in their persecution. Our union with Christ secures us. Suffering and persecution is always and only in union with Christ, never alone, never abandoned. That’s the first implication.
For the Believer, Persecution is Completely, Absolutely Under the Sovereignty of God
Second implication. For the believer, persecution is completely, absolutely under the sovereignty of God. You see that in the first glimmer of persecution in the early church, Acts chapter 4. Very quickly, as Peter and John go to the temple and they see a man who has been lame for 40 years begging for silver and gold. And you’ve sung the children’s song, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have I give you. In the name of Jesus Christ, rise up and walk!” and he does. And such an uproar breaks out that Peter begins preaching and the religious leadership are furious. They arrest Peter and John, they throw them in jail the next morning, they bring them into their court and they threaten them, “Don’t you ever talk about Jesus again! Not here, not anywhere!” and they let them go. And so Peter and John go back to the followers of Jesus, the early church, and they tell them what happened. This is all in Acts chapter 4. And as they report what’s happened to their fellow Christians, verse 24 says, “When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God and said, ‘Sovereign Lord…’” Pause.
If you go to the Greek there is one word that is the, “Dear Father.” The word in Greek that we translated, “Sovereign Lord,” is “despota,” where we get the word, “despot.” Now understand, in our culture a despot is something really bad because a despot in our culture, in our experience is someone who has absolute, unchallenged, unflinching authority who can do whatever he wants but he usually does it for his own self-interest. But our sovereign God is addressed by the early believers as, “Despota – Your authority is unchallenged. It has no boundaries. Nothing” – I remember Wiley saying this on Wednesday evening – “Not one square inch, not one split second is outside the sovereign control of the Despota, the King of the universe.” And so at the very first expression of persecution for the early church when the people of God gathered together, they life up their gaze and they said, “Despota. You rule, unchallenged.” So practically for the believer, persecution is completely and always and only under the sovereignty of God.
For the Believer, Persecution is Always a Pathway to Glory
And third implication – For the believer, persecution is always a pathway to glory. There is a profound connection in the Bible between persecution and glory. Really, glory is the reward. What God said to Abraham is, “I AM your great reward. I and all My glory. More of Me to you is the great reward.” Isn’t it? And so Dr. Tson, in his dissertation, spends hundreds of pages talking about, throughout Scripture and throughout Church history, the inseparable connection between persecution and glory. So when you ask, “God, why so much persecution?” the Bible would answer very simply, “Because He wants to give you more glory.” He wants to share more of Himself with you and it only comes through suffering and even persecution. First Peter 4:12, Peter says, “Do not be surprised at the painful trial that you are suffering as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ so that” – here it is – “so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed to you and in you.” Or Romans 8:17 Paul says, “We share in His suffering in order that we may also share in His glory.” There’s so much to unpack here, but don’t have time. Let’s go to the conclusion.
What do we do with all of this? How do we wrap this up? These are hard things, especially for people like us who are accustomed to living lives free from pain, who don’t like to be under any kind of threat whatsoever, who have very little experience with being under some kind of outside threat. If you’re like me – I’ll be very honest – what I’m sharing with you, what I’m proclaiming to you from God’s Word, frightens me. I don’t want to go through what my brothers and sisters in Christ are going through in Afghanistan. I would prefer to be spared from that. Wouldn’t you? And yet, what prepares us to do what our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout Church history and throughout the world today, what emboldens us to pray for what they pray for? Brother Andrew, who started the ministry Open Doors that publishes that “World Watch List” booklet that we read, Brother Andrew says the persecuted church rarely asks for escape from their suffering, rather, they ask for prayer that they will have the courage and strength to endure and remain faithful. What emboldens God’s people to pray that way?
Elisabeth Elliot was once sharing her story talking about burying a husband who was killed by Auca Indians, killed with bows and arrows as he was trying to share the Gospel to them, and then burying a second husband. And she tells this story with all of the emotion that goes with it and when she finished a woman came up to her and said, “Oh, Elisabeth, I can’t imagine going through what you’ve been through!” And Elisabeth smiled and said to her, “My dear, God doesn’t give us imagining grace. He only gives us necessary grace at the very moment of need. Of course you can’t imagine it. God’s not given you the grace to imagine it.” Another writer, I don’t know who wrote this, put it this way – “Dying grace comes at the dying hour, never before.” “Dying grace comes at the dying hour, never before.” You could adapt it to say it this way, “Grace to endure persecution comes only at the hour of persecution, never before.”
I’ve shared this story with you before, but when my first wife, Amy, was diagnosed with a brain tumor that proved to be fatal, one of my friends from the university sent me a note that said very little. He himself had buried a child who died in infancy and the note said, “Ed, this is no time to be figuring out your theology. You do not doubt in the dark what was clear in the light.” You ought to write that one down because you’ll need it down the road. “You do not doubt in the dark what was clear in the light.” Now here’s the question. How? Do you just say, “No. No doubt. I’m not going to doubt.” That doesn’t work so well, does it? What’s the key to not doubting in the dark what was clear in the light?
I received another note during my first wife’s battle with cancer that came from Nancy Leigh DeMoss who has written a lot of different books. And she worked for a ministry at that time led by Del Fehsenfeld who had died the previous year of the same kind of cancer. And Nancy Leigh wrote this note. She said, “Del once said this to me. He said” – let me read it so I don’t misquote him – “I want to follow God so fully while I have strength that when weakness and suffering come I’ll be able to endure with confidence.” And then the key; very simple illustration. He went on to say when you come home to your house late, it’s dark, the lights are all off, you can manage to get around in the darkness. Why? Because you’ve been there so often in the light. But the only way that works is if you’re paying attention when the lights are on. And you know what it’s like. It’s dark. You’re walking from your bedroom, maybe as you get older you’re walking from the bedroom to the bathroom – it’s dark; you don’t need the lights on because you’ve been through there so many times in the light you can find the bathroom in the pitch black dark. Right? That’s his illustration. You do not doubt in the dark what was clear in the light only if you’ve really been paying attention in the light so that when it gets dark you can manage your way through because, because you’ve really paid attention.
What are you paying attention to? Primarily your union with Christ. That in Christ I’m already dead. That in Christ I am more alive than I ever could imagine and deeply loved than I ever thought possible. Are you paying attention to your union with Christ while the lights are on so that when it becomes dark you won’t doubt in the dark what was clear in the light? This is what the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper reminds us of and prepares us for because our Champion, the Lord Jesus, went through the darkest dark imaginable and He remained faithful. And He has gone before us and in union with Him, His crucifixion is ours but His resurrection, His victory, His ascension and His reign is ours as well. All of it. This is our confidence and this is what we celebrate in this sacrament. Let’s pray together.
We are reminded, O Lord, of what the apostle Paul wrote. “Therefore we do not lose heart, though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Teach us to fix our eyes on Jesus, the author, the perfector, the champion of our faith. We pray in His name, amen.