The Exchanged Life Part 3 of 3

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.