συσταυρόω

G4957 means to crucify with or to be crucified with. Three of its five governed forms describe people physically crucified alongside Jesus in the Gospel passion narratives. Romans 6:6 says the old self was crucified with him, and Galatians 2:20 says Paul has been crucified with Christ. The historical victims and Paul's theological claims share a verb, but they are not the same event, subject, or kind of participation.

Matthew and Mark report that the men crucified with Jesus reviled him, while John refers to the two whose legs the soldiers broke. These people must not be reduced to sermon props, treated as morally identical across every Gospel detail, or used to romanticize execution. Roman crucifixion was state violence involving public degradation, bodily trauma, and death. Reading union-with-Christ theology from the later Pauline uses must not erase the actual victims or sanitize the cross.

Romans 6 places the old self's co-crucifixion within baptism into Christ's death, release from slavery to sin, and new life to God. The verse does not say a believer's body, personality, ethnicity, disability, emotions, memories, or capacity for agency should be destroyed. It does not remove ongoing temptation or accountability. It locates a decisive break with sin's rule in union with Christ and supports embodied obedience under grace.

Galatians 2:20 belongs to Paul's defense of justification through faith in Christ rather than works of law. Christ now lives in Paul, and Paul's embodied life is lived by faith in the Son who loved him and gave himself for him. This union cannot be turned into leader possession, erased personhood, passive submission to abuse, pain as proof of holiness, self-harm, or a demand that sufferers remain in danger. Christ's self-giving love, not another human's control, governs the passage.

Five forms distinguish three passion-narrative references to people physically crucified alongside Jesus from Paul's claims that the old self and Paul are crucified with Christ.