Christ’s resurrection, for Paul, was not an event that happened so that we learn from it, but a reality that’s active in the soul and continual in the faithful. It was their general resurrection, but it is an extension in the life of the faithful. This permanent spiritual change in the life of the believer is what takes us from the Law of Moses to the new life.
Paul says concerning this: “For I through the Law died to the Law that I might live to God”. What Paul wanted was the Christian not to follow the ritual requirements of the Law since he is not saved through those, but to follow the law of love and get crucified with Christ. This is repeated in other occasions in the epistles. If I got crucified, i.e. I crucified all my whims then I will live with Christ who’s risen from the dead.
However, he seeks another expression so he says: “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me”. The apostle exterminates the ego; himself is not him, but Christ. This means the complete extinction of our desires, the absence of our harmful wills, and the total integration of the believer in Christ.
Finally, he says “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”. This means that through my purification from the closed and limited ego, a life descending from the heaven stays in me. This is my faith in the Son of God who loved me. This is the only time where he doesn’t say: “loved us”, i.e. using the plural or something similar. I, personally, am the objective of his salvation. I am the person that for him Lord Jesus came to this world and “gave himself for me”.
This is the mystery of the cross that Paul talked about many times. The crucifixion of the Savior and his resurrection and Gospel are for him one thing. However, all of this is poured in man, he is crucified, resurrected and a carrier of the word of God, and he perishes his soul through toil as today’s Gospel says, and all of this in order to transcend God’s word and spread it. A person cannot carry it if he didn’t accept to crucify himself to get on earth a spiritual resurrection in the purification of defects and sins. The soul in this scriptural reading, or the “self”, is better than the whole universe. This is why you cannot sell it in exchange of anything from this world.
Money, pleasure, power, influence … All of these do not equal a human soul free from sins and capable, in the fear of God, to control the issues of the world with purity and humility and without predominance on anyone.
Nevertheless, the power of a person on himself is not obtained simply by doing the will and its insistence on the issues of the person, but the Christian power in a person’s work comes from God’s power on him. With our acceptance of God we approach people and things so that the relation won’t only be healthy but also beneficial for us and for others.
Translated by Mark Najjar
Original Text: “أحيا في المسيح” – 19.9.2010-Raiati no 38
