Union with Jesus Christ
"For through the law I died to the law, that I might live for God. I have been crucified with Christ; yet I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me; insofar as I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who has loved me and given himself up for me." (Galatians 2:19–20) In this deeply personal and doctrinally rich passage, Saint Paul expresses the essence of Christian identity as a radical participation in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul contrasts the life "under the law" with the life of grace, revealing that it is only through death to the law—that is, renouncing reliance on legal observance as the means of righteousness—that he truly begins to live “for God.” His statement, “I have been crucified with Christ,” encapsulates the believer’s mystical union with the crucified Lord, a reality made present through baptism, where one dies to sin and rises to new life in Christ (cf. Romans 6:3–4). This union with Christ is not met...