What Does Galatians 2:20 Mean? — Murray on Christ Living in Me
⏱ 16 min read
You have read the sentence enough times to nearly recite it. 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. You know the words. You do not — quietly, when nobody is watching — know what they describe. The yet not I, but Christ liveth in me has been the sentence that, for years, you have suspected was true of other Christians but not really, finally, of you. The mature women at the front of the prayer meeting seem to live inside it. You have lived inside, instead, the gap between the verse and your actual life — the daily ordinary running of a household, a body, a marriage, a job, a set of fears and reflexes that do not feel, to you, like Christ living in me. They feel like me, trying. And the trying is what has worn you out.
This is the slow version. Three substantial passages from Andrew Murray’s Abide in Christ, held against Galatians 2:20, for the woman who is tired of the trying and is ready for the older language Paul actually used. The Stilling Waves Bible Study Workbook for Women carries this kind of slow reading into a daily companion if you would like a place to take the practice afterwards. (For the deeper identity question underneath the verse, who am I in Christ? — Murray on abiding identity is the closest companion. For the surrender that the crucified with Christ phrase actually describes, what does absolute surrender mean? — Andrew Murray’s plain reading sits beside this one. And for the foundational question of what believing in Christ even is, what does it mean to believe in Christ? — Edwards on true belief walks that older ground.)
For now — read slowly.
Paul wrote Galatians around AD 49, in defence of the gospel of grace against the Judaizers who had been pressing the new Gentile believers to add law-keeping to faith. The whole letter is a single long argument against the addition. And in the middle of the argument — chapter two, verse twenty — Paul drops the sentence that became, for almost every contemplative writer in the Christian tradition since, the one-line summary of the whole interior life. Not Christ saved me at a moment and now I serve Him. Something deeper, stranger, and more total. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. The old self has died. A new self — Christ Himself, living inside the believer — has taken its place. The identity sentence Paul gave the church here is the identity sentence the modern church gave us back, decades later, in less precise words.
The first passage: the hidden presence
“Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here is my Lord Jesus with me in His hidden but Divine and most real presence. My faith must in quiet rest and trust bow before the Father, of whom and by whose Mighty Grace I am in Christ: He will reveal it to me with ever-growing clearness and power. He does it as I believe, and in believing open my whole soul to receive what is implied in it: the sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust and dependence. In such faith I abide in Christ. But because it is of faith, therefore it is of the Holy Spirit. Of God are ye in Christ.”
— Andrew Murray, Holy in Christ
Read it once. Then read it again, slowly.
Notice the small phrase Murray uses for the Christ liveth in me of Galatians 2:20. He does not call it doctrine. He calls it presence. Like the air that surrounds me, like the light that shines on me, here is my Lord Jesus with me. The two images are doing the slow work the verse needs. The air is everywhere around you — invisible, easily forgotten, taken for granted, and yet the very medium in which you live. The light is upon you — falling on the face, falling on the desk, falling on the page you are reading — visible only because of what it illuminates, but actually itself, present, the reason anything else is seen. The presence of Christ in the believer, Murray says, is of this kind. Not a doctrine to be believed. A medium to be lived inside of. The air. The light.
This is the part the modern Christian woman has been missing in her reading of Galatians 2:20. She has been treating Christ liveth in me as a theological claim she needs to agree with — something to be assented to in the head, with the hope that the agreement will, somehow, produce a felt experience to match. Murray reverses the order. The presence is already real. Hidden but Divine and most real presence. The believing is not the production of the presence; the believing is the slow opening of the soul to a presence that has been there the whole time. The air has been around you. The light has been on you. The question has never been whether Christ is in you. The question has been whether you have stopped, slowed, sat still long enough to notice that He has been there.
The sense of sinfulness and unholiness must become the strength of my trust and dependence. Murray’s most counterintuitive line. The very awareness of your own unholiness — which the contemporary church often treats as the problem in the spiritual life — becomes, in Murray’s vocabulary, the strength of your trust. Because the sinfulness is what makes the indwelling Christ necessary. If you were holy on your own, you would not need Christ living in you. The fact that you are not holy on your own is the very ground on which the Christ liveth in me of Galatians 2:20 becomes the only possible answer to the life you have been trying to live. The unholiness is not the disqualification. The unholiness is the qualification. The verse is for the woman who has finally given up trying to do it herself.
What does Galatians 2:20 mean, in Murray’s first reading? It means the indwelling Christ is the medium in which your life is being lived — like the air, like the light — and the believing is the slow opening of the soul to the presence that has been hidden but utterly present the whole time.
The second passage: the living voice
“So we shall gaze on its blessedness, until desire be inflamed, and the will with all its energies be roused to claim and possess the unspeakable blessing. Come, my brethren, and let us day by day set ourselves at His feet, and meditate on this word of His, with an eye fixed on Him alone. Let us set ourselves in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice — the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks — breathing its quickening spirit within us, as He speaks: ‘Abide in me.’ The soul that truly hears Jesus Himself speak the word, receives with the word the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
This is the passage that turns the I live by the faith of the Son of God clause from intellectual position into a daily practice. Read it twice.
Murray is doing something specific with the phrase set ourselves at His feet. The posture is receptive, not productive. The disciple who sets herself at His feet is not the disciple who is busy. She is the disciple who has stopped, by deliberate decision, in order to listen. The modern Christian woman has been spending years in the productive posture — I will pray for the household, I will intercede for the children, I will study the chapter, I will memorise the verse, I will keep the calendar of devotion — and the productive posture is not bad. It is, however, not the posture in which the I live by the faith of the Son of God of Galatians 2:20 deepens. The deepening happens in the receptive posture. The small daily setting of herself at His feet, with no agenda, eye fixed on Him alone.
Waiting to hear His holy voice. The waiting is the practice. Not the producing. The waiting. The still small voice will not, almost ever, arrive on the same Tuesday that you decided to start listening for it. The voice arrives in the cumulative quiet of weeks and months of the small daily setting at His feet. The woman who has been longing to hear Him more clearly is, often, the woman who has been hearing herself more loudly because the daily quiet has not yet had room. Murray’s correction is the room. The room is the practice. The voice arrives in the room.
Breathing its quickening spirit within us, as He speaks: ‘Abide in me.’ This is the line that finally answers what Christ liveth in me feels like in lived experience. Not a constant sensation. Not a perpetual visible presence. The quickening spirit, breathed within you, as He speaks. The Lord speaks one word — Abide in me — and in the speaking of it, the quickening happens. You will not feel the quickening twenty-four hours a day. You will feel it in particular moments, in particular weeks, in the small evening hour when you have set yourself at His feet, and you will know — quietly, certainly — that something is happening inside of you that you did not produce. That is the I live by the faith of the Son of God of Galatians 2:20, lived in real time. The quickening is His. The setting yourself at His feet is yours.
The soul that truly hears Jesus Himself speak the word, receives with the word the power to accept and to hold the blessing He offers. The hearing carries the power. You do not have to summon the power separately. The very hearing of His voice — the slow, daily, receptive hearing — carries the power to live the verse you have been trying to live by your own effort for years. The trying has been backwards. The hearing comes first; the living follows; the power is in the hearing, not in the trying that preceded it.
For you, what this looks like in practice is small. The setting yourself at His feet is the morning ten minutes, or the evening ten minutes, or both. The eye fixed on Him alone is the small reading of one passage, slowly, without rushing to the next. The waiting to hear His holy voice is the silence after the reading, in which you do not produce a takeaway but simply stay. The quickening, when it comes, will come in its own time. You will know it when it comes because the life will be quietly different on the other side of it. Christ liveth in me will, slowly, stop being a verse you assent to and become a description of the air the day is breathed inside of.
A pause, mid-essay. If this kind of slow reading is the pace your soul has been quietly longing for — the verse held against the older father, the wall-art line returned to its actual paragraph — the Bible Study Workbook for Women is the daily form of it. One hundred and forty pages, each a short passage and one slow reflection, paced for the woman who is ready to let the indwelling Christ become the medium of her week.
The somatic that goes with Christ living in me
Pause here. The verse has a body, and the body has been doing the I, trying the whole time the mind has been reading about yet not I, but Christ.
Sit somewhere quiet. Let both feet rest flat on the floor. Notice, without changing anything yet, where the I, trying is held — the small effortful pull in the chest, the place behind the eyes that has been holding itself ready for the next task, the slight bracing along the spine that has been carrying the day. The trying is not only mental. The body carries it too.
Now place one hand lightly over the heart. Let one slow inhale come in. On the exhale — slower than the inhale — let the hand be the messenger of Christ liveth in me on the smallest possible physical scale. The hand on the heart is the body saying: He is here. He has been here. I do not have to carry the day alone. You are not summoning Him with the hand. He has been there. The hand is helping the body notice.
Stay there for one more slow inhale and exhale. The hand is on a chest in which His Spirit dwells. The verse is not, finally, abstract. The verse is being lived right now, in this exhale, in this softening, in this small bodily acknowledgement of the indwelling presence that has been the air your soul has breathed all along.
Take the hand away. Continue reading.
The third passage: the rest in the union
“Let this truth, accepted under the teaching of the Spirit in faith, remove every vestige of fear, as if abiding in Christ were a burden and a work. In the light of His life in the Father, let it henceforth be to you a blessed rest in the union with Him, an overflowing fountain of joy and strength. To abide in His love, His mighty, saving, keeping, satisfying love, even as He abode in the Father’s love — surely the very greatness of our calling teaches us that it never can be a work we have to perform; it must be with us as with Him, the result of the spontaneous outflowing of a life from within, and the mighty inworking of the love from above.”
— Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ
This is the most piercing of the three passages, because of what it does to the lifelong assumption that the I live, yet not I of Galatians 2:20 is something you must somehow achieve. Read it once at speed, then read it again, slowly.
It never can be a work we have to perform. Murray’s most decisive sentence. The Christ liveth in me of Paul is not a state you must reach by sufficient effort. It is — Murray’s exact phrase — the result of the spontaneous outflowing of a life from within, and the mighty inworking of the love from above. Two directions. The life flowing out from within, because Christ is already there. The love working in from above, because the Father is already pouring it in. The believer’s part is neither the producing of the inward life nor the manufacturing of the inward love. The believer’s part is the abiding — the small daily staying, the small daily setting at His feet, the small daily not-leaving of the place where the inward life and the inward love are already happening.
This is the relief the modern Christian woman has been needing. You have been treating the yet not I of Galatians 2:20 as a self-erasure you must somehow accomplish — a daily defeating of the old self by force, a perpetual self-vigilance in which the I must be kept down so the Christ can come up. Murray, gently, says this is not the picture Paul painted. The old I has already been crucified with Christ. That happened. It is done. It does not need redoing every morning by your effort. What needs doing every morning is the abiding — the staying in the place where the new life, which is His, can spontaneously outflow. The old self is not your enemy to defeat. The old self is dead. The new self is not your project to construct. The new self is His life, already inside you, outflowing of itself as you stay near.
A blessed rest in the union with Him. This is what Galatians 2:20 looks like, lived in a real Tuesday, in a real body, in a real household with real children and a real tired husband. Not a heroic yet not I you must summon. A blessed rest in the union. A staying near. A small daily abiding. A life that is His, flowing through a body that is yours, in a Tuesday that He is — invisibly, like the air, like the light — already inside of with you.
For the modern Christian woman who has spent years trying to die to self by force of will and finding that the self keeps reasserting itself, this is the part that finally lets the trying go. The dying happened. It happened at the cross. I am crucified with Christ is not a present-tense ongoing self-mortification project. It is the perfect-tense announcement of an accomplished reality. The new life — the one that began the moment you were united with Him — is the life that is now, slowly, outflowing through you. The outflowing is not your effort. The outflowing is His life finding its outlet in the body you walk around in. Your part is the staying. The blessed rest in the union. The small daily abiding that lets the life He is be the life you live.
What does Galatians 2:20 mean, in Murray’s full reading? It means the I who used to live has been crucified — that is past tense, done, finished — and the life now lived in the flesh is the spontaneous outflowing of the indwelling Christ, fed by the inworking love of the Father, sustained by the small daily abiding of the soul that has stopped trying to produce its own life and has come, at last, to rest in the union.
(The sibling articles in this verse-by-verse series sit at what does Romans 8:28 mean? — Augustine on all things working together and what does Jeremiah 29:11 mean? — Spurgeon on plans to prosper.)
What Christ living in me will actually look like over a year
The verse is not promising that next Tuesday you will feel a constant inward sense of Christ’s presence. Most of the saints who have walked Galatians 2:20 across a long obedience report that the felt sense was intermittent, the abiding was steady, and the outflowing was — usually — visible to other people before it was visible to themselves.
What you can do, across a year of small daily abiding, is move the centre. The first month, the yet not I will still feel theoretical. The third month, the small daily setting at His feet will have started feeling less like a duty and more like the only quiet hour of the day. The sixth month, you will notice — once, then again — that you have spoken to your husband, or to your child, or to the difficult colleague, with a patience that did not come from you. The patience came from the indwelling life. Christ liveth in me will have stopped being a verse you assent to and started being a description of where the patience came from. By the year, the question what does Galatians 2:20 mean will have stopped being a question and become a slow ongoing fact — He is the air. He is the light. The life I live in this flesh is, more and more, His life, flowing through me, while I stay near.
The trying will still surface in places. The blessed rest in the union will hold underneath it. That is the promise the verse has been making the whole time.
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A daily home for the practice
The slow practice we just walked has its 140-day form in Bible Study Workbook for Women. Each day a short passage, a slow reflection, room for one honest sentence — the small daily anchor that holds the soul in the union the verse has been describing all along.
The Stilling Waves Bible Study Workbook for Women carries Murray’s slow vocabulary — the hidden but most real presence, the setting at His feet, the blessed rest in the union — into a daily companion built for the woman who is ready to stop trying to produce the new life by force and let the indwelling Christ live the day through her.
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