Crucified With Christ

Most of us can say this verse from memory: "I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Fewer of us remember where Paul says it.

He is finishing his account of a public quarrel. At Antioch, Peter had been eating with Gentile believers. Then some men came from James in Jerusalem, and Peter "withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision." The other Jewish believers followed him, and even Barnabas "was carried away." Paul says they "walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel," and he says he confronted Peter "before them all." So this great verse about being crucified with Christ is the closing argument in a quarrel about who is welcome at the table.

That quarrel is ours too, and we should own it. We keep this sentence in the devotional part of our lives, where it costs us nothing. Then we decide who sits with us by a completely different rule. We think about who we are comfortable being seen with, and whose good opinion we might lose. We think about which room we would rather not be in when a certain family walks through the door. Peter's problem at Antioch was never his theology, because he knew the teaching perfectly well. He simply moved his chair.

Lord Jesus, we have been telling You that we no longer live, and yet we choose our company like people who very much do. We are afraid of the same thing Peter feared, and we hide it better than he did.

You loved us and gave Yourself for us. That is how the verse ends, and we have not earned a word of it. Do this work in us, slowly if slowly is what it takes. Move us before our next meal with others, and make our table a place where the one who is left out notices that we came to sit beside them. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 54 is In His Name (John 14:13).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna, Year Two