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3/19 Reading Portions: Exodus 30; John 9; Proverbs 6; Galatians 5
Galatians 5:24
And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
CRUCIFIED
When challenged with this verse of Scripture, several Christians I’ve encountered over the years tend to see crucifying the flesh as something akin to self-denial: a willful, and sometimes reluctant, yet dutiful, abstinence of something they would rather be doing. Self-denial is not the same thing as denying self (Luke 9:23). Today’s devotional thought is something of a continuation from yesterday’s devotional.
So, what does it mean to have crucified the flesh with its passions and lusts? When we have been saved by grace, by faith we have gone to Christ’s cross. With the spiritual eye, we have seen God’s holy wrath poured out upon the Lord Jesus Christ. The holy Son received God’s unbridled anger for sins He did not commit— for sins of the flesh we committed, do commit, and sorry to say, will commit because of the weakness of our flesh. He bore our sins and never once denied them— being holy and perfect, innocent and knew intimacy with the Father like no other man, yet Jesus bore the immense weight of our sin, guilt, and shame as if they were His, though He was sinless. He expired upon the tree— alone, destitute, devastated, and destroyed— dying in our stead. Christ’s precious blood was shed from His pierced side so we might own and possess His forgiveness of sin (Heb 9:22).
Since we’ve been carried by the Spirit to receive a true glimpse of the cost of the cross, we may continue crucify the corruptions of mortal flesh remaining in our lives. Because Christ suffered God’s fiery judgment for our sins in the flesh, we must judge those fleshly lusts with holy anger. These are those idolatrous passions which sent our Lord to the tree to suffer so cursedly. As Jesus bore the weight of our sins, we must cast them off and be loosed from them. As Jesus paid the penalty for our sins with His life, we must treat those fleshly desires as dead to us because they killed our Lord and shed His blood. Jesus endured the cross and despised the shame for the joy set before Him (Heb 12:2). Likewise, when we crucify the flesh (Rom 8:13), God’s joy and gladness await us (Isa 51:3). Hallelujah! What a Savior!
