David Ord's Testimony of the Exchanged Life

In an article written in 1979 called "A Damascus Road Experience," David Ord describes his experience of seeing that Christ is his life:

"Each of us probably finds someone in the Bible with whom to identify in a special way. For me, that biblical character is Joseph.

"It was 13 long years from the time Joseph first received a glimpse of the intercessory role his life was to fulfill until the dream was fulfilled. That is a large chunk out of anyone's life, especially in his prime years from age 17 to 30.

"Joseph was dragged from his homeland to become a slave in a far off country. It seemed impossible that he should ever see his father and mother again. He would probably never know freedom again. And yet, there were these dreams: what could they have meant?

"No doubt his hopes rose when he found favour with his master, Potiphar. He rose to lofty heights in that household. Were the dreams about to come to pass? He must have been expectant.

"But suddenly, his world fell apart for the second time. His situation was far worse than before. He found himself in the dungeons, a common criminal. It seemed he would rot in that prison. There was no way to escape, despite his favour with the keeper.

"Then came the two servants of Pharaoh, thrown into Joseph's company for a few days. When he rightly interpreted their dreams, his hopes for release must have soared.

"Two years went by. Each time things looked as though they were on the mend in Joseph's life, they deteriorated. What was God doing? Had he deserted his servant? Were the dreams meaningless? Was he mistaken in interpreting them as God's calling to a great task?

"Suddenly, the doors of the prison opened. He was hurriedly cleaned up to be presented before Pharaoh. In a flash, he realised what his Creator had been about. Each piece of the jigsaw fell into place. God had been with him every step of the way; each incident had been according to his perfect plan!

"When his brothers feared for their future some years later, he explained, 'And as for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive.'

"God meant it for good! What a glorious truth. And it is as true for each one of us as it was for Joseph.

"In 1962 I prayed earnestly for light on a particular matter. Not until 1975, some 13 years later, did that light dawn.

"I had heard a radio broadcast by one Herbert W. Armstrong, and his son Garner Ted Armstrong. At that time, as a keen (but very young) evangelical, I was in the habit of tuning to various religious programmes, particularly those of Dr. Billy Graham, Dr. DeHahn, and others like them. I had a great interest in the Bible, an interest which had been awakened in an evangelical Sunday school within the Anglican church in the north of England.

"This broadcast offered a free magazine by the name of Plain Truth. I wrote for copies. Suddenly, I was in confusion.

"The magazine claimed that mainstream evangelical Christianity watered down the Word of God. It presented what was to me at the time a convincing biblical case for keeping the law of Moses, excepting for the sacrificial and temple elements. We were forgiven past sins by grace, it explained; but that did not mean we should continue to sin. We were cleansed in order to begin obeying--and that meant keeping the law.

"I came to believe that I had not in fact been living by 'every word of God' as Jesus admonished men to do. Indeed He had warned about those who would water down the law, relegating some of its commandments to a position of non-essentiality. Men should observe the whole law--every last jot and tittle, right down to the least commandment--not only the letter, but even the intent (Matt. 5:17-20).

"Evangelical friends assured me that I was the victim of a false prophet. I was terrified! If they were right, it could mean I would burn in hell eternally! So I pleaded with God to open my eyes to the truth.

"And in I went to what my friends described as a 'cult'. Old ties were severed, and soon the Worldwide Church of God and its Ambassador College had become my life.

"After four years of training, I graduated and was sent to the New Zealand office of Plain Truth. Then in 1973 I was transferred back to England to take up duties as personal assistant to the vice president for Europe and the Middle East, one of the Worldwide Church's highest ranking ministers and executives.

"In this post I began writing extensively for the Plain Truth and other Worldwide Church publications. There were also administrative duties, and a fairly extensive speaking schedule. I wrote articles upholding observance of the law, showing how those who claimed to be Christians in other churches had a hazy notion of the whole question of sin and righteousness. I had a zeal for the law akin to that of Saul the Pharisee.

"But in 1975 I was reading the letter of Paul to the Galatians in personal Bible study when several statements in the letter began to hit me in a way they had not done before. I had always viewed Galatians as addressing the problem of trying to earn forgiveness. Of course, no amount of law-keeping could undo past sins. Jesus had to die because we cannot put right the past by our own efforts. It seemed to me that this was what Paul was saying in his letter to the Galatians.

"Now I saw that Paul was combating something far more subtle. The Galatians would not have imagined that they could earn forgiveness. Paul agreed that they had started out right, receiving forgiveness by grace. It was how they had gone on that was the problem. And not even Judaism taught men that they could earn forgiveness! That is why the old covenant had a built-in sacrificial system, to take care of men's failures. No, the Galatians knew better than to imagine they could wipe out past sins by their own law-keeping.

"What they had fallen for was the concept that Christ's work on the cross was not in itself sufficient: it only netted forgiveness; but this forgiveness must be followed up by obedience to God in the form of lawkeeping.

"The Galatians had been told by Jewish Christians, who were keeping the law in Jerusalem, that the law was binding on them. Christ had indeed become the true sacrifice for sins; but that did not mean people could continue sinning by breaking the law. Christ was only the means of forgiveness, and we must actually perform righteousness to continue on toward perfection.

"After all, these Jewish Christians no doubt continued, what was wrong with the law? Who could fault the ten commandments, the annual holy days, the food laws, the laws about tithing increase, the agricultural laws such as the seventh-year land rest, and a host of other commandments?

"I had learned to meditate upon the law like king David of Israel. There were some beautiful laws when it came to how to run a community of human beings. Laws about taking a straying ox back to its owner, not taking the mother bird and her chicks at the same time, leaving the corners of fields unharvested so that the poor might glean them, and building a parapet on a flat-roofed house so that no one could fall off. Paul rightly called the old covenant and its laws 'glorious'. It was 'holy, just, and good'. It was 'spiritual', too, for it reflected something of the character of God.

"So the Galatians had been persuaded to take up with these old covenant observances. Not the sacrificial laws--they couldn't offer sacrifices in Galatia, only in Jerusalem. Besides, Christ was their sacrifice. But they had begun to keep much of the rest of the law.

"How clever! And similar arguments have fooled millions since.

"The Christian church never really got free of the problem of Galatianism. After the death of Paul, they quickly began returning to old covenant practices. Priests were introduced. Church buildings were erected, with altars, like simplified forms of the temple. Ritual multiplied. Before long the Christian church looked little different from the old covenant church of Israel, and the life of Christ was largely crushed by a burden of legalism.

"We have some lovely church buildings here in England. I can understand why people cling to them. Men must have some 'thing' to help them worship--a building, the administrations of a priest, robes, altars, a set pattern of service with beautiful oratorical language. These things are considered 'aids' to worship, yet in reality they create the illusion of a God who is separate.

"Jesus died to break down the mediatorial barriers of old covenantstyle religion. He revealed God as 'Abba, Father'--the God within us, who welcomes us as part of his intimate family. Now we no longer need 'things' to assist our worship; we are the building of God, indwelt by his Spirit. Stiff, formal prayers addressed to an 'Almighty God' belonged to old covenant times--they have no place in God's new covenant family.

"I had been in an extreme form of Galatianism. When I severed my links with the organization I had been locked into for those 13 years, after trying to bring as much light as possible to those within, I imagined that my battle with legalism was over. Little did I know that I would leave behind one form of bondage only to discover that the majority of Christians are themselves trapped in a neo-Galatianism!

"They may be in a watered-down form, but the ten commandments still play a prominent role in the Christian church, together with a whole array of other laws that are not actually in the Bible. These range from rules about dress (particularly for women, because many have never faced their sexual hang-ups), to rules about not drinking alcohol, not playing cards, the importance of a 'quiet time' of prayer and Bible study each day, fasting, and an endless variety of similar rules depending on your group's particular bent. Milder than I was in, perhaps, but legalism all the same.

"I discovered that the church is more often like a hospital than a barracks. We seem to be God's sick soldiers much more than his victorious soldiers. We try, but fail; the Christian life is more downs than ups. Repentance and confession of failure, together with a deep longing for something better, figure largely in evangelical Christianity when people are really honest with themselves. (The system is supposed to work, so it isn't too often that people will admit that it really doesn't work for them.)

"For the next 18 months I was somewhat disillusioned with the church. I could not find a church that was at all into the new covenant. Until one evening we heard a minister speak who at least seemed to be relevant in the 20th century.

"We learned that his church had begun in a redundant church building, with eight or nine people in attendance. Over about twelve years it had grown into a sizeable congregation in the centre of York, just across the road from the city's famed Minister. Now there were some 300-400 at a morning family service, and around 800 at the evening service of worship.

"The service was very gentle, with the Anglican liturgy, but much more 'alive' than my wife and I had ever seen before. It was modern. A singing group had replaced the usual choir, and the strumming of guitars together with the organ enlivened many beautiful songs of worship.

"Before long the opportunity arose to begin to play a fuller role in the life of this church. My wife became secretary to the minister, and I assisted him with the final editing of a couple of books. The way opened for me to lead one of the house groups, and to impart a little of what I had learned from my experience of living under law and being released into new covenant freedom.

"I shared with everyone who God placed in my path the fact of 'Christ in us', the 'mystery' Paul wrote of.

"The external law God gave for Israel (it was never intended for the Gentiles) was just the ABC's of love, I explained--love expressed in a childlike form that humans without the Spirit of God can understand. This law was a 'way of life'. But it was just a shadow of the true and living way. That Way is Jesus. We walk this way as he lives within us. It is not following an external code, a written law. It is following the inner urges and impulses of the Spirit.

"The old covenant was external--a way of life spelled out in commandments, statutes, judgments. It was a written law that men tried to keep.

"The new covenant is not written, either on stones or with pen and ink. It is internalised. It is written on hearts and minds. It is not a 'thing'; it is a person, the resurrected Christ living within us. This is what Jeremiah and Ezekiel foretold, a day when men would do by nature, naturally, spontaneously, the things of God. The commandments of Jesus are not words written on paper, but the thousands of commandments he prompts us with all the time in the inner man. This is the living Word that replaces the dead letter.

"The law had said worship God. But how could carnal humans perform this? By not having other gods, not making idols, and by setting certain periods of time aside to concentrate on the things of God. That was the closest they could come, and all that God required under the terms of the first covenant.

"I explained that I now understood these things as mere shadows of the reality, for we have become 'one' with God through his dwelling within us. We have entered into continual communion with him. 'I in them, and thou in me,' was how Jesus expressed his own union with the Father, and we share in that same union.

"Eternal life, which I had previously looked for as something in the future, I now discovered is knowing the Father and the Son (John 17:3). It is to experience this life of union with God. We become partakers of the divine nature right here on earth, so that we already enjoy every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realm. We have been raised up into a new dimension through a new birth, and all has become new.

"There is nothing more thrilling than to see people grasp hold of this glorious revelation of the mystery of the gospel. I have been privileged to share it with quite a number over the past few years, and on a recent trip to Australia the Lord opened the way for me to speak in several churches and two Bible colleges, telling of our Damascus road experience.

"Leaving the law behind was like emerging from a dungeon into the glorious light of day. Everything that the external law tried to state in outline form I now find fulfilled in the fullest sense because the one who is the Way--who is Love--lives through me.

"Jesus' words in John 10:10, 'I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly,' have taken on tremendous meaning. For many years I thought Jesus was talking about a prescribed 'way of life' as revealed in the law. I thought that I should try to follow this way, asking God to forgive whenever I failed. But I found myself trapped in the Romans 7 syndrome--'Wretched man that I am.' Now I know real 'life', flowing spontaneously from within; not the shadow, but the reality.

"God desires to free many from the bondage of legalism, and he is moving to do this all around the world. Here and there are prominent church leaders who are beginning to grasp the Mystery. At the same time, the Lord has been moving to soften hearts all over the world. Long-dead churches in all denominations are being renewed, breaking with old patterns and tasting the new wine of the Spirit. I believe that the renewal we have seen in recent years is only preparatory for what our Father plans for his church.

"The charismatic experience has made tens of thousands aware of the difference between religion and life. But most have not yet found what they are seeking. Operation of the gifts of the Spirit is only the first rung of the ladder when it comes to claiming our full inheritance in Christ. Many are still thirsting, not realising that they have the capacity for rivers of living water dwelling within! They are seeking, but don't know where to look.

"This then is no time for withdrawing from those who have not as yet entered into these glorious truths. It is no time for aloofness. It is time to be among our brothers and sisters, and as opportunity presents itself we must point them in the right direction. As the charismatic renewal wanes as a 'thing in itself', the need for those who know the way increases.

"God's ways of preparing us for service--for none of us has been called at this time for our own benefit alone--are mysterious indeed. Why did God let me become enmeshed in Galatianism for all those years? Why did he allow Joseph thirteen years of darkness before fulfilling his dreams? Few of us understand at the time. Yet as we trust in every circumstance, the good and the bad, that everything is according to his perfect will, we find that nothing was without purpose.

"Why didn't the Lord open the eyes of Saul the Pharisee before he martyred Stephen, and perhaps many others? His Damascus road could have come earlier. But God knew that these seeming tragedies were all a necessary part of preparing Paul for his life's work, when hundreds of thousands would come to understand 'Christ in you'.

"When the light went on, Paul saw vividly. There were no grey areas where the law was concerned. He had been so deeply entrenched in legalism that when God opened his eyes he really 'got the message'. And he was able to labour far more abundantly than other apostles for whom the contrast between the old and new covenants was more blurred.

"What a tremendous thing it is to realise that our Father is forming each one of us as a unique expression of himself, that we might feed a hungry world. That he cares so much as to tailor circumstances in all of our lives to fit our needs with precision! And that what he has begun, he will perform to the glorious end.

"Let us lift our minds out of the negativism and bewilderment that has so long beset us, and be about our Father's business!"