1-30-21 The Exchanged Life

Ok, last week, Autumn talked about baptism in the Holy Spirit. I do want to say quickly that Holy Spirit baptism is a definite experience in the life of a believer. But it is more than just an experience - it is supposed to become a way of life for us. One experience won’t do us much good if it doesn’t have long-term and long-lasting effects on us and how we operate, if it doesn’t transform our life. In other words, baptism with the Holy Spirit should lead us into the development of a consistent, Spirit-filled life. Paul says in Ephesians 5:18 NKJV “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit.” In the Greek, this literally says, “be being filled with the Holy Spirit.” That’s a strange way to say it in english, but it’s saying that there is one baptism, but then multiple, consistent, daily available in-fillings of the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts shows a lot of these additional infillings, but a few examples of the Holy Spirit bringing this in a fresh way include Peter defending the faith (Acts 4), Paul rebuking the demonic (Acts 13), boldness and power, and the ability to withstand persecution (Acts 13).1 And Holy Spirit baptism kind of leads me into my message today. I want to talk about the Great Exchange, Christ in us, or living the exchanged life. The exchanged life has to do with our identity, with who we are at the core of our being, our new, alive spirit in God. To say that in a different way, I want to talk about how we need to come to terms with our new identity in Christ, and how the life of Jesus is now our life now because we are in Christ. But let’s pray before we get started; Father in Heaven, You are holy, righteous, loving, and kind, and we come before you to do in humility and reverence. Thank You for your great love towards us, that You gave Jesus so that we could live a new life in You, by Your Holy Spirit. 1 Duffield, Guy P. Foundations of Pentecostal Theology (Revised & Updated) Volume 1, P304-306. Foursquare Media, 2016. The Great Exchange | 1 I ask that You would bless this time, that You would speak to every heart, and that You would grow in us an awareness and better understanding of our new life in You. Thank you for your grace, thank you for Your word, and move in our midst we ask, in Jesus’ Name, amen. First off, I want to say that the “exchanged life,” as it is called, is supposed to be experiential. In other words, living the Christian life, or living a “Jesus life” is something that becomes a reality in our daily lives. It’s something tangible; it’s not just theories, intellect, and ideas. It’s life on earth as we know it, just different. And it’s different in a Jesus-way. I forgot who said it, but the quote is that you can’t actually live the Christian life. It’s impossible because you’re not perfect. Only Jesus can live the Christian life, and He lives it through us. Or you could think of it in terms of how we live our lives, we are in control of ourselves, but then we willingly surrender to Jesus so that He can work through us. I’m attempting to say the same thing in different ways, but basically our life has been exchanged for the life of Jesus. Galatians 2:20 AMP “I have been crucified with Christ [that is, in Him I have shared His crucifixion]; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body I live by faith [by adhering to, relying on, and completely trusting] in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.” Paul is saying that because we’re united to Jesus by our faith, our belief, and our trust in Him, we’ve died to our old life and our old sinful nature and we now have a new life in Christ. That sounds great! So why don’t we see more people really moving into a life like Jesus had, ministering grace, life, peace, healing, and love to all the people they interact with? Well, because it involves an active yielding, or surrender to God, His will, and His ways. That’s the tough part. The Great Exchange | 2 It’s difficult to lay down our wants, our desires, and our ways and instead focus on what Jesus wants and do His will instead. 1 Peter 4:1 ESV “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin.” You see, our suffering in the flesh often means we don’t get what we want. Now, please understand when I say that, I’m talking about the fleshly desires of our old sin nature, not God-given desires. There are good desires, you know. God wants to redeem our desires just like He redeemed the rest of us. And He wants to give us good things. Jesus said Luke 12:32 NKJV “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” You don’t have to worry that in your surrender to God, He will take away all of the good things in life that you love and care about and just replace them with misery and suffering. God is a good Father, He loves His kids, and He wants us to have good things. He just doesn’t want anything of the world, the flesh, or the devil attached to it; He doesn’t want it to cause us any harm later on or turn into an idol. Which, humans tend to struggle with. But my point is that Jesus wants to live His life through us. And that only comes as we learn to surrender to Him more and more each day. Another way we could say it is that He wants us to live the Spirit-formed life, responding to the promptings of God as He leads. And when we start to think about our Christian walk this way, it helps lead us into more freedom, grace, and maturity. A guy named Howard Hendricks said it this way (I’ll put it up on the screen): The Great Exchange | 3 Life in Christ, or walking out life with Jesus: IS IS NOT a process a crisis based on obedience based on knowledge internal external cultivated automatic made by divine made by human empowerment energy discipline dream a normal rare or unusual experience experience life relationship a list of rules endured/suffered enjoyed through practical theoretical And the definition he has of the Christian life is really good; he says that the Christian life is “the life of Christ reproduced in the life of the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit in obedient response to the word of God.” I’ll say it again: the Christian life is “the life of Christ reproduced in the life of the believer by the power of the Holy Spirit in obedient response to the word of God.” Depending on what books you read, you might hear people call this the exchanged life, the abiding life, the victorious life, the highest life, the normal Christian life, the joyful life, or, to quote Neil Anderson, “victory over the darkness.” No matter what you call it, this new type, or quality of life is focused on the truth and reality of our new identity because we now live in Christ.2 And there are some main principles within this exchanged life idea that are important to grasp; one is the fact that in Christ, you now have traded your old life in for His. 2 Boa, Kenneth. Conformed to His Image: Biblical and Practical Approaches to Spiritual Formation, P101-104. Zondervan, 2001. The Great Exchange | 4 Colossians 3:9 MSG “You’re done with that old life. It’s like a filthy set of ill-fitting clothes you’ve stripped off and put in the fire. Now you’re dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item of your new way of life is custom-made by the Creator, with his label on it. All the old fashions are now obsolete.” That’s another biblical metaphor I like - we’re taking off the old clothes that the world created, made it it’s image and with it’s ‘fashions,’ and we’re putting on Christ, (if you can think of Jesus like a garment), so that we are dressed in His ways and His light, and His love. It looks different. You can tell by your fashion that you belong to Jesus! Next, because we’ve put on Christ, or we’ve traded in our lives for His, we participate in His crucifixion, burial, resurrection, and ascension. Romans 6:3-11 NLT “Or have you forgotten that when we were joined with Christ Jesus in baptism, we joined him in his death? 4 For we died and were buried with Christ by baptism. And just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glorious power of the Father, now we also may live new lives. 5 Since we have been united with him in his death, we will also be raised to life as he was. 6 We know that our old sinful selves were crucified with Christ so that sin might lose its power in our lives. We are no longer slaves to sin. 7 For when we died with Christ we were set free from the power of sin. 8 And since we died with Christ, we know we will also live with him. 9 We are sure of this because Christ was raised from the dead, and he will never die again. Death no longer has any power over him. 10 When he died, he died once to break the power of sin. But now that he lives, he lives for the glory of God. 11 So you also should consider yourselves to be dead to the power of sin and alive to God through Christ Jesus.” Paul is saying that freedom from the rules, freedom from the law and the old covenant doesn’t mean freedom to sin. He teaches us that the Holy Spirit unites us with Jesus in a real, spiritual way. The Great Exchange | 5 And because we’re united with Jesus, we are one with Him, and that means, by faith, we have been crucified, buried, and resurrected with Christ.3 And so the key to our freedom from the power of sin in our lives is our co-crucifixion with Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit within us. We’re not under the law, we’re under grace. Many of us know this as head-knowledge, but sometimes it’s hard to acknowledge it when we don’t feel like we’re in Christ. But even when we don’t feel like we’re in Christ, we still are. Even when we feel like we’ve messed everything up and God doesn’t love us anymore, we can know that that’s not true. Because you have chosen to accept Jesus, God says you’re a child of light, you’re a citizen of heaven, and you’re a saint. You’re not a sinner. You’re a saint who sometimes struggles with sin. There’s a big difference in the way we think about ourselves in those two statements. Philippians 3:20 AMP But [we are different, because] our citizenship is in heaven. And from there we eagerly await [the coming of] the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.” We’re different from everyone else in the world because we’re in Christ! We’re citizens of heaven and saints, we’re God’s kids now! And so only Jesus Christ Himself can live the Christian life. But He lives His life through you and me. John 15:3-4 NKJV “You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” Jesus is saying that as branches of the vine, or a part of the tree, we don’t create life, but we receive it from our connection with God. And then it flows in us and through us and shows up as fruit of the Spirit (love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control). 3 Hayford, Jack W. The Hayford Bible Handbook, P349. Edited by Jack W. Hayford, Thomas Nelson Incorporated, 2004. The Great Exchange | 6 And this is something we really need the Holy Spirit’s help to grasp and to internalize. We need the Spirit of wisdom and revelation to move us from an intellectual or a behavior modification mentality to a personal and experiential knowledge of these spiritual truths. Ephesians 1:17-21 NKJV “that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, 18 the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the exceeding greatness of His power toward us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power 20 which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come.” The eyes of our hearts have to be opened in order to grasp our new nature of our calling, inheritance, and power in Christ. This is all an inside- out process, by the way, not an outside-in process. In other words, the exchanged life isn’t a matter of trying harder or working more. It’s not about following more rules for Jesus, it’s about claiming and resting in what Christ has already done for us! The new life and nature we have in Jesus is now our deepest identity, and sin is incompatible with who we are now as children of God. While we live this life, we will experience the pull of the world, the flesh, old attitudes, and beliefs, but we need to start thinking of ourselves as new people, adopted into God’s family, who no longer have to give in to fleshly desires. As Christians, we now have the power to overcome the world, because Jesus overcame the world. John 16:33 AMP “I have told you these things, so that in Me you may have [perfect] peace. In the world you have tribulation and distress and The Great Exchange | 7 suffering, but be courageous [be confident, be undaunted, be filled with joy]; I have overcome the world.” [My conquest is accomplished, My victory abiding.]” Now, we are going to have a little difficulty understanding and fully grasping these things unless we hold on to and cling to the truth of who God is, His character. Especially the fact that God is love and He is good. Psalm 145:8-9 NKJV The Lord is gracious and full of compassion, Slow to anger and great in mercy. 9 The Lord is good to all, And His tender mercies are over all His works. Let’s just take a second and try something; Take a moment and try a simple exercise. The results will tell you a lot about where you are as far as internalizing your identity in Christ. Imagine God thinking about you. What do you assume God feels when you come to mind? Often when people do this, a surprising number say that the first thing they assume God feels is disappointment. Others assume that God feels anger. In both cases, these people are convinced that it is their sin that first catches God’s attention. I think they are wrong—and I think the consequences of such a view of God are enormous. Regardless of what you have come to think about God based on your life experience, the truth is that when God thinks of you, love swells in his heart and a smile comes to his face. God bursts with love for humans. He is far from being emotionally uninvolved with his creation. God’s bias toward us is strong, persistent and positive. The Christian God chooses to be known as Love, and that love pervades every aspect of God’s relationship with us.4 1 John 4:8 NKJV “He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.” Knowing how God sees us is very important for our spiritual journey. Think for a mo- ment about how Christ-following develops if you just assume God is looking at you with disgust, disappointment, frustration or anger. The main response to a God like that will be an effort to earn his approval. 4 Benner, David G. Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, P16. InterVarsity Press, 2015. Accessed 29 January 2022. The Great Exchange | 8 Far from daring to relax, rest, or pour out your heart in his presence, you will be trying to perform as well as you possibly can. The motive for obedience becomes fear instead of love, and there will be little genuine surrender. In other words, we won’t be able to allow Christ to live through us; we close the door for His Holy Spirit to speak to us and to flow through us. Surrender, at some level, involves relaxing, or letting go of self, and you must feel safe before you can relax and let go. How could anyone ever expect to feel safe enough to relax in the presence of a God who is preoccupied with their shortcomings and failures?5 And I want to close the message out today with the story of the prodigal father. And I want you to see the deep love God has for you so that you will begin to internalize how loved, accepted, and forgiven you are. And once you internalize that, you’ll be better able to surrender to love, to lay down your wants and desires for His, to live more fully in His love, in His life, and in His ways out of a motivation that isn’t afraid, but is a loving response to love itself. Now we can say this story is about the prodigal father, because the word prodigal means either wasteful or recklessly extravagant. The father in this story is recklessly extravagant in His love for both of His sons. He pours out His love regardless of what they do. Let’s look at the story: Luke 15:11-32 NKJV Then He said: “A certain man had two sons. 12 And the younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the portion of goods that falls to me.’ So he divided to them his livelihood. 13 And not many days after, the younger son gathered all together, journeyed to a far country, and there wasted his possessions with prodigal living. 14 But when he had spent all, there arose a severe famine in that land, and he began to be in want. 15 Then he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country, and he sent him into his fields to feed swine. 16 And he would gladly have filled his stomach with the pods that the 5 Benner, David G. Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, P18. InterVarsity Press, 2015. Accessed 29 January 2022. The Great Exchange | 9 swine ate, and no one gave him anything. 17 “But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! 18 I will arise and go to my father, and will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you, 19 and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired servants.” ’ 20 “And he arose and came to his father. But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. 21 And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and in your sight, and am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ 22 “But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring out the best robe and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. 23 And bring the fatted calf here and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; 24 for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’ And they began to be merry. 25 “Now his older son was in the field. And as he came and drew near to the house, he heard music and dancing. 26 So he called one of the servants and asked what these things meant. 27 And he said to him, ‘Your brother has come, and because he has received him safe and sound, your father has killed the fatted calf.’ 28 “But he was angry and would not go in. Therefore his father came out and pleaded with him. 29 So he answered and said to his father, ‘Lo, these many years I have been serving you; I never transgressed your commandment at any time; and yet you never gave me a young goat, that I might make merry with my friends. 30 But as soon as this son of yours came, who has devoured your livelihood with harlots, you killed the fatted calf for him.’ 31 “And he said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that I have is yours. 32 It was right that we should make merry and be glad, for your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost and is found.’ ” The Great Exchange | 10 Let this story remind you that far from seeing our sins, God always sees us through the eyes of deep, extravagant love. All of our fears about how God will respond to me in my sin wash away as I see the Father running out to meet me as soon as I come back. Why did I stay away from Him for so long? How could I have ever thought he would let me come back to Him as a slave? We never need to fear returning to Jesus or running to Him—no matter what we have done or not done—because God’s love has nothing to do with our behavior. Now, while we might identify with the younger son, sometimes we might feel an even stronger connection with his older brother. We can probably identify with his dutiful, plodding obedience. And with his self-righteous resentment of the Father’s generosity. He longs to relax in the Father’s love, to be free to feast with the family, but He can’t. The story ends at a key moment; we do not know if the older son will be able to give up his effort to earn love and accept the father’s invitation to take his place at the feast. Part of me—and I suspect part of all of us—wants to earn the Father’s love. That’s how we tend to operate as human beings. In the story both sons actually fall into this trap, and both have to learn the same lesson. The Father’s love reflects the Father’s character, not the children’s behavior.6 Listen, God loves you and me. He gave His only Son for us so that we could participate in a life that works, a life characterized by love from God and a love for God. And He calls us to simply come and surrender to His love. To believe in Him and in His care for us, have faith in His character and in His grace, mercy, and kindness. Romans 13:14 NKJV “But put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill its lusts.” C.S. Lewis said, “what I want to make clear is that [putting on Jesus Christ] is not one of the many jobs a Christian has to do. 6 Benner, David G. Surrender to Love: Discovering the Heart of Christian Spirituality, P22. InterVarsity Press, 2015. Accessed 29 January 2022. The Great Exchange | 11 It’s also not just an exercise for the elite or the top of the class - it is the whole of Christianity.” What he’s saying is that it’s not about trying harder to earn love, or trying harder to get God to like you, bless you, or ‘give you the kingdom.’ Instead, we’re called to give Him all, to die to self, to become weak (for in our weakness, He is strong), or to surrender to the truth and reality of Christ in us, and us in Christ. And I’ll end with this; Romans 8:38-39 NKJV For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, 39 nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. The Great Exchange | 12