“I am crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20).

What is salvation? It’s actually coming into oneness with the Lord Jesus Christ and thus partaking of all the blessings of His cross.

“The wages of sin is death” and “the soul that sinneth it shall die,” but we know that Jesus Christ was not a sinner. Even Pontius Pilate, after having examined Him carefully, said: “I find no fault in Him” and “I find no cause of death in Him.” Yet, Jesus became our scapegoat (cf., Leviticus 16).

It was therefore not His death that He died at Calvary. It Was Ours. He had come from heaven to be born into the human race as one of us in order to die our death in a human body.

It is when we view that death at Calvary and say: “This is not His death He is dying. It is mine;” that, by an act of faith, we become one with Him. As a former Catholic now saved by grace through faith in Christ alone, I now see the cross is now empty since He died and rose from the dead. I then was for a time annoyed by the Catholic cross with Jesus still hung on it as it seems to deny Him in His present resurrection state of being. But now, realizing my oneness with Him, I view the Catholic cross realizing ‘that is me on the cross… in Him.’ That is where my old life ended… and by His resurrection with me in union with Him, my new life began with my resurrection to new life as a new creature with and “in Him.”

His death was ours; as the penalty for our sins, and His resurrection is ours as well, but it is not applied to us until by faith we accept His death as our death and His life… as our Life. This is the basis of the Christian life.

Thus the Apostle Paul declares by divine inspiration: Galatians 2:20 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 (faithfulness) of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.