To impale in company with (literally or figuratively)
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' It expresses the union between the believer and Christ in his death, not as a metaphor for spiritual struggle but as a real participatory event in which the self that was under law and sin has been crucified in Christ's crucifixion. ' Paul is not describing a feeling or an aspiration; he is describing the foundational reality of his existence since union with Christ.
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Full entry for συσταυρόω (G4957) · Open the biblical lexicon
' It expresses the union between the believer and Christ in his death, not as a metaphor for spiritual struggle but as a real participatory event in which the self that was under law and sin has been crucified in Christ's crucifixion. ' Paul is not describing a feeling or an aspiration; he is describing the foundational reality of his existence since union.
The BSB source-word alignment has 5 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include were crucified (2), had been crucified with (1), I have been crucified with (1), was crucified with [Him] (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 27:44. Its strongest book concentrations include Galatians (1), John (1), Mark (1), Matthew (1).
The Greek verb sustauroomai is a compound of sun (with, together with) + stauroomai (to be crucified) — with the sense 'to be crucified together with.' It expresses the union between the believer and Christ in his death, not as a metaphor for spiritual struggle but as a real participatory event in which the self that was under law and sin has been crucified in Christ's crucifixion.
Galatians 2:20 is a theologically concentrated use of this word in the NT: 'I have been crucified with Christ (Christō sunestaurōmai).' Paul is not describing a feeling or an aspiration; he is describing the foundational reality of his existence since union with Christ. The death that Christ died, he died — and Paul has participated in that death through faith-union with the one who died.
The consequences unfold immediately: 'I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.' The 'I' that was organized around law-performance, self-justification, and flesh-confidence (Phil. 3:4-6) has been crucified. What remains is not Paul's improved self but Christ living in Paul. The life Paul now lives is 'by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me' — it is entirely grounded in another's love and gift, not in Paul's own performance.
This co-crucifixion is the experiential and existential form of what justification by faith means: not just a legal verdict pronounced over an unchanged person but a death-and-resurrection that produces a new subject of life.
The selected NT witness set contains five uses of sustauroomai: Galatians 2:20 (Paul co-crucified with Christ), Matthew 27:44 and Mark 15:32 (the robbers co-crucified with Jesus at Golgotha), John 19:32 (those crucified with him at the historical event), and Romans 6:6 (our old self was crucified with him). Of these, Galatians 2:20 and Romans 6:6 carry the theological weight as descriptions of the believer's co-crucifixion with Christ.
The historical uses (Matthew, Mark, John) and the theological uses share the same word but in entirely different registers.
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
The letter's most concentrated statement of union with Christ and the most theologically intensive use of sustauroomai. Three movements: (1) co-crucifixion — Christō sunestaurōmai, perfect tense indicating a completed act with ongoing results; (2) new subject — 'I no longer live, but Christ lives in me'; (3) present life — 'the life I now live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God.'
The perfect tense grounds everything: the co-crucifixion is not an ongoing process but an accomplished reality from which present life flows.
We know that our old self was crucified with Him so that the body of sin might be rendered powerless, that we should no longer be slaves to sin.
Romans 6:6 extends the co-crucifixion concept to 'our old self' (ho palaios hēmōn anthrōpos — the old human): it was crucified with Christ so that the sin-dominated body might be put out of commission. This explains the Galatians 2:20 'I no longer live': what no longer lives is the old self that was constituted by sin and law. The practical consequence is freedom from sin's slavery — which is the freedom from law-bondage that Galatians has argued throughout.
Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
The active-voice complement to the passive co-crucifixion: those who are Christ's have crucified (estaurōsan — active) the flesh with its desires. The co-crucifixion of Gal. 2:20 (what God did in Christ) and the active crucifixion of the flesh in Gal. 5:24 (what believers participate in doing) work together: the definitive act (2:20) grounds the ongoing mortification (5:24).
But as for me, may I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
The letter's climactic cross-statement extends the co-crucifixion concept cosmologically: through the cross, Paul has been crucified to the world (kosmos) and the world to him. The sustained-death language of Galatians — co-crucified (2:20), crucified the flesh (5:24), crucified to the world (6:14) — shows that the cross is not merely Paul's ground of boasting in the abstract but the decisive event that has restructured his entire relationship to the world's value system.
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
Philippians 3:10 names the sustauroomai experience as something Paul desires to know progressively: not just the forensic fact of co-crucifixion but the experiential koinōnia (fellowship, participation) in Christ's sufferings and morphological conformity to his death. Co-crucifixion is both a completed fact and an ongoing experience — the believer is co-crucified and also increasingly conformed to the pattern of death-and-resurrection in daily life.
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How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Union with Christ's death: crucified together with Christ in mystical, spiritual identification with His sacrifice.
Union with Christ's death: crucified together with Christ in mystical, spiritual identification with His sacrifice.
to crucify together with: pass., with dative, Jhn.19:32; id. before σύν, Mat.27:44, Mrk.15:32. Metaphorical, of the mystical death of the Christian with Christ: Rom.6:6, Gal.2:20 (Eccl.).
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
5 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I crucify together with
Read verseI crucify together with
Read verseI crucify together with
Read verseI crucify together with
Read verseI crucify together with
Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this verb appears across 5 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
Representative Scripture witnesses for this entry: passage, original form, and sense in context.
συσταυρόω is built from these roots:
Expresses the believer’s participation in Christ’s crucifixion. Romans 6:1-14
Sustauroomai in Galatians 2:20 is the letter's deepest autobiographical statement — and it functions as the experiential ground of the theological argument Paul has made. The Galatian controversy is at bottom a question of identity: on what basis does the believer stand before God, and from what source does their life flow? Paul's answer in 2:20 is: I have been co-crucified with Christ; therefore my life is no longer organized around what I can produce for God but around what Christ is producing in me.
The self that tried to earn standing through law-performance has died. What lives is a life of faith in the Son who loved me and gave himself for me — entirely on the receiving end of another's love and sacrifice. This is the gospel's most radical claim: not just that a person's sins are forgiven (enormous as that is) but that the old self that generated the sins has been crucified, and a new life is being lived that draws from the risen Christ as its source.
The pastoral application is the deepest in Galatians. Any version of Christian living that reduces to 'try harder, do better, perform more consistently' is operating from the old self that has been crucified. The believer's calling is not to resuscitate the corpse but to live from the one who lives in them. That 'living from Christ' is exactly what the Spirit's fruit (Gal.
5:22-23) Looks like — not human virtue achieved by effort but Christ's character reproduced by the Spirit in the person who has trusted the one who loved them and gave himself for them.
Gal.2.20
Sustauroomai is a perfect passive with middle meaning: I have been (and remain) co-crucified with Christ. The sun- prefix throughout Paul's vocabulary creates a cluster of co- terms: sunthanō (to die with), sunthaptō (to be buried with), sunegeirō (to be raised with), sundoxazō (to be glorified with). Together they form what New Testament scholars call the 'co-' or 'syn-' pattern in Paul: the believer participates in each major stage of Christ's journey — death, burial, resurrection, glorification.
Sustauroomai is the entry point into this co-participation pattern. The perfect tense (sunestaurōmai) is significant: it names an event in the past (the crucifixion) whose effects continue into the present. Paul is not saying 'I am being crucified' (present progressive) but 'I have been crucified and the result stands' — the co-crucifixion is complete, its effects are ongoing.
The OT contains no direct parallel to the co-crucifixion concept — crucifixion was not an OT punishment, and the specific idea of dying with the Messiah awaited christological fulfillment. However, the underlying logic of participation in the representative figure's death is deeply OT: the Passover lamb's blood on the doorpost meant the household was sheltered within the lamb's death (Exod.
12); The Day of Atonement goat bore the sins of the community into the wilderness (Lev. 16) — a kind of representative death-and-removal. Isaiah 53's Servant 'bore our griefs and carried our sorrows... he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities' — the Servant's suffering was vicarious and participatory: he bore what the people should have borne.
Paul in Galatians 3:13 reads Christ as the one who 'became a curse for us' by hanging on a tree (Deut. 21:23) — an explicit fulfillment of the representative-bearing pattern. The co-crucifixion of Galatians 2:20 is the inverse of this: not only did Christ die as the people's representative, but in his death the people participate — dying in him and rising to new life in him.
Hebrews 2:14-15 captures the same logic: Christ shared in flesh and blood 'so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death,' freeing those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death. The liberation is through participation in his death — sustauroomai.
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