CRUCIFIED TO THE WORLD

“But God forbid that I should boast about anything except Jesus Christ and his cross. The world has been crucified to me through that cross, and I have been crucified to the world” (Galatians 6:14).

Paul spoke a lot about being crucified with Christ. It was a metaphor, referring to what Jesus said when he told his disciples to take up their crosses and follow him. It means simply that the things of the world are not to be what matters to us. What matters to us is Jesus.

Notice that Paul said he had been crucified to the world. And the world had been crucified to him. He was saying that when he chose to follow Jesus, he ceased to matter to the world. You will as well. The world system does not honor and respect those who follow Jesus.

You know what kind of things the world honors. They honor prestige and fame and riches. Jesus honors love and sacrifice and putting God first. So Paul knew that he meant nothing to the world.

But he also said that the world had been crucified to him. To the world, Paul might as well have been dead. He did not matter to Agrippa and Felix and Caesar. And he was not seeking the praise and honor of the world. The reason was because he felt the same way about the world that the world felt about him.

He loved the world as God loves the world. He lived a life of sacrifice for the people of the world. But he did not care about worldly attainments. He did not care about his worldly reputation. The world was dead to him, just as he was dead to the world.

You cannot serve two masters. James chapter 4 tells us that if anyone seeks to be a friend of the world, they will be an enemy of God. Because the world is against God. The world is against all of the ways of God. Remember that when you are tempted to try to be “important” in this world.

You must decide if you are going to seek to be well-thought of by God or well-thought of by the world. This is why Jesus said, “Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you” (Luke 6:26). Focus on pleasing God and let the world think whatever it wants to think.

Dewayne Dunaway