Verse of the Day for April 17

Paul writes this in the middle of an argument about whether Gentile believers must keep the law, and it is the most personal sentence in the letter.

I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.

The sentence contradicts itself three times in a row, and the contradictions are the point. Crucified, nevertheless living. Living, yet not I.

He is describing a self that has been ended and a self that continues, and refusing to resolve the tension in either direction.

Then it becomes concrete: the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God. In the flesh — an actual ordinary life, with a body and a diary and opponents in Galatia.

And the reason given at the end is personal rather than doctrinal: who loved me, and gave himself for me. Not loved us. Me.

A renewed life in Paul's account is not a better person. It is a different occupant.

This is the verse people quote when they mean self-improvement, and it is describing something closer to a change of tenancy.

Loved me, and gave himself for me. Paul narrowed it deliberately.