Explaining the Exchanged Life

John Whittle (a former missionary with the Worldwide Evangelization Crusade) did a fine job of explaining the exchanged life in a letter to his brother--a minister in England--after a visit there:

"I was very happy to have the opportunity of sharing some thoughts with your people on that Sunday morning in your pulpit. The response of one of your members that what he had heard constituted for him 'a new dimension of Christianity' was especially gratifying. Many accept such ministry at face value as being what they have always heard and read through the years. But here and there, there are those, like your friend, who suddenly see the implications of the spirit dimension, and begin to enter the expanding realm and perspective into which it can bring us.

"Ray, from the time I was a young man I could not be satisfied with just the historical concept of Christianity. I knew there was something of an inward union of the Spirit which existed and which alone could satisfy man and God. Yet I also learned early to distrust the tendency of many to rely unduly on subjective experiences with God. The element I sought had its roots in a living relationship which lay behind and beyond mere experiences. For me it had to be part of the revelation of God in Scripture, otherwise I was unable to build upon it or teach it to others.

"To be more explicit, I was increasingly troubled that our evangelical preaching, teaching, praying, as well as our hymnology, centered solely around justification, and failed to deal effectively with the fact of union. I had personally begun to see union through the indwelling Christ as the real goal of the gospel for the individual. But in the main, we were left with a limited concept of man-cleansed, forgiven, reconciled, justified, and readied for service (as aided by the Spirit), but still having a fundamental sense of separation instead of union.

"Gradually I came to see that there was a much deeper note sounded throughout the New Testament. Jesus, John and Paul all speak in terms of a union of Spirit in which duality is transcended by unity. See Colossians 1:27, Galatians 2:20, 1 Corinthians 6:17, and especially Jesus' words in His 'I in them and Thou in Me' passages. Then there are the statements of Jesus about the Son doing nothing of Himself, but the Father being THE ALL. These illuminated for me the sort of relationship that the redeemed have in God. I concluded that the heart of the gospel is God IN people--not merely God FOR people, great though the latter is.

"From that I began to see the error of putting people under pressure to become something, when what they really needed was the recognition that, they contained Someone! That Someone was their living, their loving, their being. In this emphasis lay the true release and liberation and rest of which the gospel speaks. Here is the rest promised by Jesus, in contrast to all the struggling and striving which is so much a part of most teachings on spiritual development and growth. Any attempt to grow is, at best, a phase in which I learn that change does not come that way.

"I also saw clearly that this was not an attainment, but the pure recognition of what IS--a matter for moment by moment acceptance by faith, just as justification is by faith. 'Whom He justifies, them He also glorifies.' Jesus describes this glorification as a present experience 'I in them and Thou in Me' (Jn. 17:22, 23). I also saw that this was the fact for all redeemed ones and only awaited our recognition and acceptance, as in justification.

"I do not approach this from the viewpoint of it producing 'super saints', but of it being the purely necessary groundwork for effective daily living. So-called Christian service is the spontaneous result of this joyful recognition. Since such service is the fruit of the Spirit, its form is God's affair. It is not to be understood as 'my work for God'.

"Here I will leave it. I have never moved aside from or underestimate the immense value of the foundational truths of the evangelical church. But the church's message often seems to be somewhat incomplete in the minds, experiences and inner knowings of many believers. True release, freedom, rest and joy seems to escape so many, just as it escaped me as a young minister. We are 'reconciled by His death--saved by HIS LIVING IN US' (Rom. 5:10-Phillips)."