Friday, April 27, 2012

The Exchanged Life - Part 2

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.

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