The Exchanged Life

“If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
Sometimes it is fun to have no where to go and all day to get there. But on the things that matter in life, it is essential to know where you are going and how to get there.
The evangelist that is intent on leading people to the saving knowledge of Jesus is fond of asking, “If you were to die tonight do you know where you are going?” If you were to ask a Christian, “Where are you going” the most popular answer would be, “Heaven.” However, as a pastor I am fond of asking my flock, “If you wake up in the morning do you know what you are going to do to build for the Kingdom of God?” The point is that it is vitally important for the Christian to be as secure in God’s will for them in this life as it is to be secure in your hope of eternal life.
God’s intended destination for the Christian is that we would be transformed to become like Jesus. That is, in our daily life, our words, our actions, our thoughts and our deeds would be the same as if Jesus were in our place. Most Christians when they hear this dismiss it as a pie in the sky silly ambition because they fully appreciate that there is positively no way they can achieve such a lofty goal. Exactly. That is the conclusion God wants you to reach. Then you are ready to consider what Jesus had in mind when he said, “Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But not with God. Everything is possible with God.” (Mark 10:27 New Living Translation)
If it is possible for God to transform your life to be like Jesus, how do you get there? The answer is, “The Exchanged Life.”
I believe The Exchanged Life is the pure gospel message. It is a way of understanding that God calls me to exchange my old sinful life for Christ's pure, holy, righteous life. The exchanged life truths are throughout the New Testament; however, the foundation for the exchanged life is found in Romans 5-8, which sets forth a practical application of the Christian’s identification with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection and ascension.
"The term 'exchanged life' refers to the Christian’s core identity in Christ. The Christian is a new creation, born of God. They are not what they were before – all things are new.
The missionary J. Hudson Taylor made the term 'exchanged life' popular through his testimony of how God made him a new man.( Hudson Taylor's Spiritual Secret, page 154) " The word "exchanged" means that God has made it possible for us to exchange our complete inability to live the Christian life for Christ's total sufficiency to live His life through us. He did this by exchanging our old life apart from God for our new identity in Christ and by uniting our newborn spirit with His (I Corinthians 6:17; Galatians 2:20).
Simply put, The Great Exchange is the way God has provided for every need, temporal or spiritual, to be fulfilled in Christ. We all have core needs to be loved, to be accepted and to have worth – a sense that it matters we are alive. All of our efforts to meet these needs out of our own strength and resources will never satisfy those needs. The Good News is that God has met all of our needs through His riches and glory in Christ Jesus.
You will not experience the riches of your New Life in Christ until you experience the Exchanged Life. In Christian bookstores there are as many “self help” books encouraging you to change your life as there are in the secular bookstores. God does not call us to change our life. He calls us to Exchange our life. God’s will for you is not a self-improvement program – it is a Resurrection Program. It is NEW LIFE! It is expressed in the terms of a total change in identity. The Christians in the Middle Ages understood this. When a person came for baptism, they were given a new name – usually from the Bible – and thus came the tradition of referring to your first name as your Christian Name. Their new name signified their new identity as the beloved child of God.

Jesus Christ identified Himself with us in our spiritual death to self in order that we might be identified with Him in His resurrection; and thus, an Exchange takes place. We give God all that we are, -- spiritually dead, guilty sinners and Christ gives us all that He is, -- Resurrected life, forgiveness, righteousness, acceptance.

In this new identity Christ becomes our life. Because Christ is our life, God, our Father, declares that we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. He further attests that this righteousness, since it was given to us as a gift, is not based on our behavior. We are not his righteousness or new creation because of what we did, or we are doing, or what we have refrained from doing. Rather, it is because of what He has done in uniting us to Christ in death, burial, resurrection, and enthronement.

While the foundation for the Exchanged Life is found in Romans 5-8, Paul points to it and gives examples of this new life in Christ through out the Book of Romans.

My personal mission statement is to “Seek the Life in Christ as my Way of Life.” This statement is inspired by the New English Bible’s translation of Philippians 2: 5, “Let your bearings for one another arise out of your life in Christ.”

That is what I want for my life.