The Exchanged Life

Does anyone know what the "Exchanged Life" is? To me, this is the keynote of everything, the way that the Lord Jesus lived His life: ". . . I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me" (John 8:28) and the more explicit: "The words that I say to you I do not speak on My own initiative, but the Father abiding in Me does His works" (John 14:10). And the writer of Hebrews reveals: "For the one who has entered His rest has himself also rested from his works, as God did from His" (4:10).

Watchman Nee, in The Normal Christian Life, begins by turning the key in the lock when he asks, "What is the normal Christian life? We do well at the outset to ponder this question . . . It is something very different from the life of the average Christian. Indeed a consideration of the written Word of God--of the Sermon on the Mount for example--should lead us to ask whether such a life has ever in fact been lived upon the earth, save only by the Son of God Himself. But in that last saving clause lies immediately the answer to our question."

I remember reading those words as a young man and being intrigued by them but knowing no way to live them out. The revelation that I had died with Christ encouraged me but the other part--Him living my life--was something that I didn't see as necessary or understand (Gal. 2:20).

Over the past three years or so it's all become very real to me. Being reduced into a complete collapse by my sins into the arms of my Savior (like the man in the painting called "Forgiven by Richard Blackshear) has led through a gateway into a life I never believed was possible. Not that it all happened at once. The collapse occurred six years ago, the revelation of Christ living my life only in the past two and a half years--but what a revelation! When God got a hold of me in that grand collapse I became so focused on doing His will that the air practically crackled around me with the tension! I didn't realize that I was His business and that He could be trusted to take good care of His business! I thought that there was some way that I could mess it up.

When I first read the life of C.T. Studd many years ago he became my hero. When God got a hold of me in that grand collapse he revived as my hero and I wanted to learn all that I could about him and the mission that he started called the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade (now called Worldwide Evangelization for Christ, a sad taming of the more aggressive "Crusade" metaphor). That led me to all of the books that his son-in-law, Norman Grubb, had written.

I could have never realized what God was preparing me for. He has enabled me to see and grasp truths that could never find a home in me before. It is continual revelation and Him in action. And Jesus is always for others.

What a rest comes when we realize that we are only expressers of Him, that we are the lamps out of which He shines (cp. Matt. 5:14 with John 8:12)! We are the branches that bear His fruit (cp. John 15:5 and Gal. 5:22-23)! He is the treasure in the earthen vessel (2 Cor. 4:7)! He is our life (Col. 3:4)! Why, then all the burdens come off. When we realize that we are expressers then we realize that we were never our own. Before we belonged to Christ we were expressers of Satan, doing his desires (although we thought they were our own, John 8:44 and Eph. 2:2). Now, having been joined to Another, we express His desires. Our responsibility is simply to continually remain turned to the One who has bought us with His own blood and to ignore the demands of the evil one who wants us to give our bodies to him for his expression. It's humbling--to realize that we were never anything in and of ourselves--that Satan used us! But it's also liberating now that we realize that the responsibility is His, and that He will keep His own property. It's as simple as that--yet so profound! Its effect on my life was (and is) as great as the difference between life and death.

And entering His rest is no less a life of inactivity and indolence than it was for Christ, who learned obedience through the things that He suffered and did nothing on His own initiative but simply expressed His Father. He was showing us the key: "Just as I am in union with My Father you are in union with Me." I'm more active now than I've ever been but it's all His activity (it always was but I never realized it before). Now I follow Him into street preaching and wherever else He leads (and I don't have to be consciously aware of His leading--I just walk into what He has prepared; He sees to it). As I learn to see Him in all things (after all, "All things are His servants," Psalm 119:91) life becomes a grand adventure with all its adversities. I find myself looking for Him in every place, like a little child clapping his hands in delight looking for what his Father will do next. And I'm not disappointed.

What I've learned is that the exchanged life is not really an exchange of our life for Christ's life but an inward exchange of who we allow to be expressed through our bodies, either Satan or the Lord Jesus, i.e., we refuse to express Satan moment by moment and we instead surrender to Christ in that same moment by moment existence. Our self is the vehicle through which either Satan or the Lord Jesus express themselves. When Satan cannot find the vehicle for his expression available to him he finds himself "out of a job"; the body of sin has been rendered inactive (Rom. 6:6) and our human body becomes continually available to Christ as the vehicle for His expression. It is a question of who we yield the members of our body to (Rom. 6:13). Our body cannot be neutral nor is it evil in and of itself but "no good thing" dwells in it (Rom. 7:18) if Satan hasn't been replaced by Christ as the indwelling "god." Not that we are doing any of this "in and of ourselves" but this continual liberation is made possible by Christ's death on the cross, where we were brought into historical union with Him (1 Cor. 1:30). What we humans have is capacity, no innate tendencies: God is the One who fills and flows out of us when we contain Him and that false god has been replaced in our hearts.

There's much more to explore here and I've only touched the surface in my own experience. But what I have experienced is deeply satisfying beyond anything I could have imagined and I'm looking forward to experiencing more of the depths and riches of His grace. If the heavens cannot contain Him then even the sky is not the limit when it comes to knowing Him. We have come into union with God who is Unlimited. Hallelujah!