Crucified with Christ: a gold cross outline on deep green

Crucified with Christ: What It Means and What It Doesn't

We quote Galatians 2:20, but many of us were never shown how to live it. Here is what it says, what it does not say, and why it changes everything.

The Verse We Quote and Struggle to Live

Almost every believer knows the words "I have been crucified with Christ." We put them on plaques and quote them in sermons. But what does it actually mean to be crucified with Christ, and why does it so rarely feel true?

We have questions we are afraid to ask. Do we have to die to ourselves every morning? Do we disappear? Why do we still feel like the same person with the same struggles?

"I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me."
Galatians 2:20, NKJV

The confusion matters. If we misunderstand this verse, we turn a finished fact into a daily performance, and that drops us straight back into the cycle we looked at in why sin keeps returning.

The Short Answer

To be crucified with Christ means that when Jesus died, our old man died with Him. It is a finished fact, not a daily effort. What died was the old man and sin's rule over us. What did not die is you: you now live by faith in the Son of God, with Christ living in you.

The Confusion: Is This Something We Do?

Ask most believers and they will say being crucified with Christ is something we do. We take up our cross. We die to self. We crucify the flesh. Then we try, we fail, and we feel like we have failed at being crucified.

Much of this comes from one verse:

"If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me."
Luke 9:23, NKJV

Jesus said this to disciples who were following Him toward the cross, before it had happened. Paul writes after the cross, and he says something different. He does not say, "I am trying to be crucified." He says, "I have been crucified with Christ." In the Greek that is the perfect tense: a completed action with a lasting result. Something happened, and it stays true.

The same language runs through his other letters. Our old man "was crucified with Him" (Romans 6:6). We "died with Christ" (Colossians 2:20). These are things done, not things to do.

That is good news, because none of us could ever do it. Nobody can crucify themselves. Jesus did it for us, and we were in Him when He did.

Paul even asks why people who died with Christ still put themselves under religious rules and regulations (Colossians 2:20). When we treat this as a self-improvement project, we end up with rules, self-punishment and shame, the same performance trap we keep falling into.

What Was Crucified: The Old Man

So what died? Paul is specific:

"Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin."
Romans 6:6, NKJV

Two things are named. The old man, the person we were in Adam, and the body of sin, which is sin's rule over us. The phrase "done away with" translates a Greek word that means to make powerless. Sin is still in the world and temptation still comes, but its hold on us was broken.

Paul uses a second picture in Colossians, the language of circumcision:

"In Him you were also circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the sins of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ."
Colossians 2:11, NKJV

Circumcision is a cutting off. That is what happened to our old nature at the cross: it was cut away, not by our hands, but by Christ's. Paul then speaks as if it is already finished:

"Since you have put off the old man with his deeds, and have put on the new man who is renewed in knowledge according to the image of Him who created him."
Colossians 3:9-10, NKJV

What Did Not Die: You

Here is where people get nervous. If we were crucified, do we just vanish? No. Look at the rest of Galatians 2:20: "it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God."

Paul is still here. He is still living, still making decisions, still in a body. What changed is who is living in him and by what power. To be crucified with Christ is not the loss of who we are. It is the end of who we were, and the start of who we are.

"For you died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory."
Colossians 3:3-4, NKJV

Our real life is hidden with Christ. The person God sees is not the old man. It is the new one, alive to Him. We go deeper on that in Identity in Christ.

What About "Crucifying the Flesh" in Galatians 5:24?

This is the verse that sounds like a task:

"And those who are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires."
Galatians 5:24, NKJV

But look at the tense. Paul says "have crucified," a completed action, and he says it about "those who are Christ's," not about those who try the hardest. Belonging to Christ is what makes it true. Then he builds on it:

"If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit."
Galatians 5:25, NKJV

The order matters. First what happened at the cross, then walking it out by the Spirit. We do not crucify the flesh in order to become free. We walk by the Spirit because the flesh has already lost its claim on us.

Why It Still Does Not Feel True

If we were crucified with Christ, why do we still feel temptation? Why do we still feel like the old us? Because faith and feelings are two different things.

Think of a prisoner whose sentence has been served and whose release has been signed. He can still sit in the cell for a while, because it feels like that is where he belongs. Nothing has changed about his freedom. Only his belief about it has to catch up.

Paul says the life he now lives, he lives "by faith in the Son of God." We live as those who are crucified with Christ by faith, not by feeling. Temptation does not disprove the cross. It is where we decide whether we believe what the cross says about us.

In Romans 6:11, Paul tells us to "reckon" ourselves dead to sin and alive to God. Reckoning is agreeing with what is already true. We walk through that step by step in our teaching on freedom from sin.

How to Live Crucified with Christ

So what do we do with this? Not what we usually try. Here is a simple pattern:

Five Ways to Live It

Believe it is finished. Say Galatians 2:20 as a fact, not a goal: "I have been crucified with Christ."
Stop trying to crucify yourself. No penance, no self-punishment, no rules to prove it. Those things "are of no value against the indulgence of the flesh" (Colossians 2:23).
Live from His love. Paul finishes the verse with "who loved me and gave Himself for me." He also says "the love of Christ compels us" (2 Corinthians 5:14). Our motive is love, not fear.
Yield and walk. "Present yourselves to God" (Romans 6:13) and "walk in the Spirit" (Galatians 5:25).
Come back to faith when we fail. A failure does not undo the cross. Run to God (1 John 1:9), agree with what He says, and get back up.

Crucified, Raised, and Seated

The cross is not where the story ends. Paul says we were joined to Christ in everything He did:

"Even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus."
Ephesians 2:5-6, NKJV

"If then you were raised with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God."
Colossians 3:1, NKJV

Crucified with Him means the old is finished. Raised with Him means the new has begun. We do not live from the grave. We live from the throne.

See What the Cross Did to Sin's Power

To be crucified with Christ is the foundation. Now see how it breaks sin's hold and how to walk in it every day.

Read: Freedom from Sin Read: Identity in Christ