God…was well-pleased to reveal His Son in me.
— Galatians 1:15-16

In this verse Paul is speaking of his new birth in Christ, which took place when the Lord appeared to him on the road to Damascus, so that Christ was revealed in him (Acts 9:3-7). The new birth, of course, is a once-for-all experience. How we receive it will be very different from the manner in which Paul did (each case is unique, after all), but we must be born anew in Christ to begin the Christian life (John 3:3-7); that is, we must all have this experience of Christ being revealed in us.

But, the Christian life does not end with the new birth; that is only the beginning. Thus, in the next chapter of his letter to the Galatians, Paul declares,

I am crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me! And the life I now live in the flesh, I live in faith, the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
— Galatians 2:20

Here Christ is not just revealed in Paul, as wonderful as that is; now Christ is actually living again in and through Paul. Unlike the new birth, this is not a once-for-all experience, but rather, a daily, life-long experience. Moreover, as Paul tells us in this verse, to enter into such a living required him to pass through the cross in his daily living. This is just what the Lord said to the disciples while He was with them on the earth:

If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me!
— Luke 9:23

Even this is not the end of the Christian life, however, for the result of such a living is that eventually Christ is not only living within us, but is even formed in us, which is something much more solid; it is the experience not just of growth, but of transformation. Paul speaks of this later in Galatians when he declares, to the believers in that province,

My children, with whom I again travail in birth until Christ is formed in you!
— Galatians 4:19

Paul further describes transformation and its result in another of his letters:

But we all, with unveiled face beholding and reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord Spirit.
— 2 Corinthians 3:18; cf. Romans 12:2

As we see in the verse in Galatians, to enter into the real experience of transformation, of Christ being formed in us, requires not only a living, but a real struggle; quite often, it even involves the servants of the Lord struggling on our behalf that we could grow in this way.

And what is the ultimate result of all this? Paul tells us at the end of Galatians:

For neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation.
— Galatians 6:15

When the believers have entered into the experience of Christ being formed in them, then even in this age we will experience something of God’s new creation.

Praise the Lord for such a meaningful life as this!

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—  10 May 2025 —