Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 54 · February 23
Crucified With Christ
“I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”
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. Here is where Paul says it.
He is finishing his account of a public row. At Antioch, Peter had been eating with Gentile believers until certain men arrived from James, and then he withdrew and separated himself, fearing them which were of the circumcision. Barnabas went with him. Paul says they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the gospel, and that he said so to Peter's face in front of everybody. The great verse about being crucified with Christ is the closing argument in a row about who is welcome at your table.
Which is the confession, and it belongs to us. We keep this sentence in the devotional part of our lives, where it costs nothing, and we run our seating arrangements out of an entirely different drawer: who we are comfortable being seen with, whose good opinion would be withdrawn, which room we would rather not be in when a particular family walks through the door. The trouble at Antioch was never Peter's theology. He knew the doctrine perfectly. He moved his chair.
Lord Jesus, we have been telling you we no longer live, and choosing our company like people who very much do. We are afraid of the same thing Peter was afraid of and we dress it up better than he did.
You loved us and gave yourself for us. That is the last clause of the verse and we have not earned a syllable of it. Do this in us slowly if slowly is what it takes. Move us before the next meal, and make it a table where somebody notices that we came. Amen.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 54 is In His Name (John 14:13).