The Great Exchange: In That Day

We are Christ. Imagine the audacity of such a statement! I am Jesus, meaning if you see me, then you are witnessing Him. Wow, SO bold, no?! Yet this is the intended point of all Life. We are supposed to be HIM in our world. The exchanged Life is to live life in Him, from Him, as Him. More precisely said, it is where Jesus Christ lives His Life in me and through me. This makes my life about His Words, His Thoughts, His Actions through me, in me, as me. Can you conceive of living life in this way? Yet this is possible!

The Great Exchange

Until the resurrection Life of Christ is manifested in us, we will continually be asking for this and that. But when His Life rises in us, then we find that all our asking and questions are gone. We will seem to have nothing left to ask. We will have entered into a place of entire reliance and trust on His resurrection Life to perform and be our very life. In fact, “in that day” you will be able to say with the Apostle Paul, “for me to live is Christ.” This is the wonder of the exchanged Life and this is the Great Exchange we are all intended to experience.

Think about it. For eons man has attempted godliness, but the fruit of all this labor has only been religiosity and legalism. Even the best of us fails to produce a godly life through effort and by our own strength. Take Moses or David, for example. Both were amazing men, yet each failed to maintain the perfect walk required by God. And as we know, the Law requires perfection – not good intention or best effort. Just one sin is punishable by death. Surely if it were possible, these men would have done it! But nope, it was a task of impossibility.

Exchanged Life

Why? Why did God set it up this way? Because the Father and Creator of all accepts only One Life—Christ’s. Only the Life of Christ satisfies the requirements of the Law. So isn’t this unfair? No, on the contrary, it is supremely fair. It is amazing justice. That which man is completely incapable of doing, the Lord Himself provides within the confines of His Own Life. Now it would be cruel if we were required to perform the Law and had no ability to do it. But God says to each of us, “I am the Law as well as its fulfillment through you.”

There is nothing fairer than performing through us what we ourselves can’t do. The exchange of lives is the best solution. It means we can enter into Jesus as He lives through us. Simply fantastical! Tremendous news for sure. And this precisely is the New Covenant message—Christ performs what God requires.

“For in Him all the fullness of Deity dwells in bodily form.”
Colossians 2:9 NASB

“…and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.”
Ephesians 3:19 NASB

And you are in Him, made full and having come to fullness of life [in Christ you too are filled with the Godhead—Father, Son and Holy Spirit—and reach full spiritual stature]. And He is the Head of all rule and authority [of every angelic principality and power].
Colossians 2:10