Today, we continue our series entitled “Living the Grace Life,” where we will learn to embrace and walk in God’s unmerited, unearned, and often undeserved favor throughout 2025.
As part of this series, I am teaching a verse-by-verse exposition of the book of Galatians. We continue down this road today.
Key scriptures for this year:
2 Corinthians 9:8 TPT
“Yes, God is more than ready to overwhelm you with every form of grace, so that you will have more than enough of everything—every moment and in every way. He will make you overflow with abundance in every good thing you do.”
Galatians 5:4 TPT
“If you want to be made right with God by fulfilling the obligations of the law, you have cut off more than your flesh—you have cut yourselves off from Christ and have fallen away from the revelation of grace!”
Romans 6:14 ERV
“Sin will not be your master, because you are not under law. You now live under God’s grace.”
1 Corinthians 15:10 NIV
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
Scripture(s) we will study today:
Galatians 2:20 TPT
“My old identity has been crucified with Christ and no longer lives. And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives his life through me—we live in union with him! My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God, who loves me so much that he gave himself for me, dispensing his life into mine!”
Galatians 2:20 NIV
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”
Romans 12:2 TPT
“Stop imitating the ideals and opinions of the culture around you, but be inwardly transformed by the Holy Spirit through a total reformation of how you think. This will empower you to discern God’s will as you live a beautiful life, satisfying and perfect in his eyes.”
Setting the Stage:
Today is my 53rd birthday. In a few weeks, I will have my 30th birthday of being Born-Again. For 30 years now, I’ve been walking with God. Early in my ministry journey, I preached a message from the verse we are looking at today, Galatians 2:20. The title of that sermon was “When Loving You is Killing Me.”
At the time, I was a young minister who didn’t fully understand the depth of what I was teaching, but the Holy Spirit was revealing something profound through me. Now, 30 years later, I can see exactly what God was showing me through that message title. Although I don’t have my sermon notes from back then, the concept of the message will be the foundation for what I will share with you today.
Here’s what I’ve learned: loving God is literally killing me—and that’s exactly what’s supposed to happen!
The first 23 years of my life, I was one person. I had my ways, my thoughts, my methods, my personality, etc., and most of it was shaped by growing up as a Dominican kid in Brooklyn. But when I got Born-Again, something supernatural happened. My spirit was made new instantly. However, my soul (my mind, my emotions, my will) had to be renewed progressively.
For the past 30 years, the more I love God, the more I study His Word, the more I learn to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit, the more the “Rick Piña” I used to know is literally dying. This isn’t symbolic. This is the actual process of transformation that every believer must go through. At this point, the old Rick Pina is long gone. Let’s talk about it.
So, what does this mean to you today? A few things.
1. The More You Love God, the More Your Old Identity Dies.
The message I preached years ago, “When Loving You is Killing Me,” captures a beautiful paradox. The more we love God, the more our old nature dies. This death is not just necessary; it’s the pathway to the most abundant life you could ever imagine.
Paul declares: “My old identity has been crucified with Christ and no longer lives.”
How this applies to you:
— Every time you choose to love God more deeply, something in your old nature has to die. This is why spiritual growth can feel painful at times. You’re literally saying goodbye to aspects of yourself that you’ve known your entire life. Old thought patterns, old reactions, old priorities. They all have to go to make room for Christ’s nature to arise in you.
— The death of your old identity isn’t punishment; it’s promotion. God isn’t killing your old self to hurt you. He’s killing your old self to upgrade you. Everything that dies in you through this process was actually holding you back from your divine destiny. You’re not losing anything good. You are only losing what was keeping you from God’s best.
— This death process explains why some people resist growing in God. They sense that loving God more will require them to change, and change feels like death. But what they don’t realize is that what’s dying in them was never the real them anyway. Your true identity is who you are in Christ, not who you were before Christ.
— The deeper your love for God grows, the more foreign your old lifestyle becomes to you. Things you used to enjoy lose their appeal. People you used to relate to seem to speak a different language. This isn’t you becoming religious. What it is, is you becoming the man/woman you are destined to be.
— You’ll find yourself thinking, “I don’t recognize myself anymore,” and that’s a good thing! The person you’re becoming is the person God always intended you to be. The person who’s dying is the person you became through sin, culture, worldly influence, and wrong thinking.
— This process of dying to your old identity is evidence that you’re growing spiritually. If your old nature isn’t being challenged by your relationship with God, you’re probably not growing in your relationship with God. Spiritual growth and comfort with your old self cannot coexist. You cannot grow without changing.
— Understanding this process helps you embrace the discomfort of Godly change rather than resist it. When you feel like “loving God is killing you,” you can celebrate because you know you’re being conformed into the image of Christ.
2. Christ’s Life in You Becomes Your New Operating System.
Paul reveals the positive side: “And now the essence of this new life is no longer mine, for the Anointed One lives his life through me—we live in union with him!”
How this applies to you:
— You’re not just trying to be a better version of your old self; you’re becoming a completely new person with Christ’s nature. This means your responses to life circumstances start changing supernaturally. Being raised in Brooklyn, I was raised to respond to many situations with violence, anger, cursing, and every other form of defense mechanisms I learned in the ghetto. But the Holy Spirit taught me to respond to evil with good, to anger with peace, and to yelling with a soft answer. Without question, loving God was KILLING ME!
— Christ’s life in you means you have access to His wisdom, His peace, His power, and His perspective in every situation. You don’t have to figure out how to be Christ-like through willpower. Christ Himself is living through you, providing both the desire and the power to live according to God’s will.
— This union with Christ explains why you can do things now that you could never do before. Your capacity for forgiveness, love, patience, and faith isn’t based on your natural personality. It’s based on Christ’s character being expressed through you as you learn to yield to Him.
— The life of Christ in you is not just for spiritual matters; it transforms how you handle work, relationships, finances, and every area of life. When Christ lives through you, your job becomes ministry, your interactions become opportunities to demonstrate God’s love, and your challenges become platforms for God’s power. This is #TheGraceLife.
— This new operating system means you’re no longer limited by your background, your education, your natural abilities, or your past failures. Christ’s unlimited nature is now your nature. His impossibilities become your possibilities.
— You start surprising yourself with the wisdom, strength, and love that flow out of you in difficult situations. People who knew you before will notice the change because they’re no longer dealing with just you; they are encountering Christ through you.
— Eventually, your natural response becomes the Christ response. You don’t have to try to be loving, patient, or wise. These qualities become your default settings because Christ’s nature has become your nature.
3. Faith Becomes Your New Way of Living, Not Just Believing.
Paul explains: “My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God.” This reveals that we’re not just living by our faith in Christ—we’re living by Christ’s own faith working through us.
How this applies to you:
— You’re not depending on your ability to believe God; you’re depending on Christ’s perfect faith that now operates through you. His faith never fails, and His faith is now your faith.
— This explains why you can have peace in situations that used to terrify you. It’s not because you’ve become naturally braver. It’s because Christ’s faith in God’s goodness and power is now operating through your life.
— Faith stops being something you try to work up and becomes something that naturally flows from your union with Christ. You don’t have to convince yourself to believe God anymore. Over time, living by faith becomes natural.
— Instead of operating from human logic and natural fear, you operate from Christ’s perspective of what’s possible through God’s grace.
— Living by Christ’s faith means you can take risks that your old nature would never have attempted. Starting businesses, changing careers, ending toxic relationships, pursuing God-sized dreams, etc., become possible because you’re no longer limited to your own courage and confidence.
— Over time, you change so much that people can’t understand your peace, your generosity, your optimism, or your resilience because they don’t understand that Christ’s own faith is the source of your strength.
4. God’s Personal Love for You Becomes the Foundation of Everything.
Paul concludes with the most powerful truth: “Who loves me so much that he gave himself for me, dispensing his life into mine!” This personal revelation of God’s love changes everything about how you live.
Here’s the key to understanding the New Testament and the grace of God: Under the Old Testament, the focus was on you and what you do for God. But under the New Covenant, ushered in by Jesus Himself, the focus is on God and what He has already done for us. So the foundation is not your love for God, but His love for you.
How this applies to you:
— When you truly understand that Christ gave Himself specifically for you, it eliminates every insecurity and fear about your worth. You’re not trying to earn God’s love or prove your value. You’re living from the unshakeable foundation of knowing you are completely loved, accepted, and valued by the God who created everything.
— God’s personal love for you means He’s not trying to make you into a generic Christian. He’s crafting you into the unique expression of Christ that only you can be.
— God’s love becomes the motivation for your obedience and growth. When you know how much you’re loved, you want to become everything that love is calling you to be.
— Understanding God’s personal love for you changes how you see your failures and setbacks. They become opportunities for God to demonstrate His grace rather than evidence of your unworthiness.
— The security of knowing you are personally loved by Christ gives you supernatural boldness in every area of life. You can take risks, speak truth, and live as your authentic self because your identity and value are anchored in Christ and His love for you! You did nothing to cause God to start loving you, and nothing you will ever do will make Him stop! This revelation changes everything!
Declaration of Faith:
Father, I thank You for helping me to realize that my old identity has been crucified with Christ and no longer lives!
I declare that Christ lives His life through me, and I live in union with Him.
The more I love You, the more my old nature dies, and I love it!
I am not trying to be a better version of my old self; I am becoming a completely new person with Christ’s nature.
My new life is empowered by the faith of the Son of God, and His perfect faith operates through me.
I am personally loved by Christ, who gave Himself specifically for me, and this love is the foundation of my identity and security.
As my old nature dies, my capacity to receive and express God’s love increases.
I am living #TheGraceLife, and GREATER IS COMING FOR ME!
I declare this by faith. In Jesus’ name. Amen!
This is Today’s Word! Apply it and Prosper!
