In a nut shell, the exchanged life is Christ living His life through us, in us and as us, and we living in Him, rather than us trying to make life work through our own efforts and resources.
It is made possible by our union with Christ in His death, burial and resurrection.(Romans 6-8).
All men were in Christ at the cross and the resurrection,
2 Corinthians 5:19
...namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation.
There is the Good News, this is the Gospel, not what is being preached.
God created man with certain essential, or basic, needs. Among them are the need to be loved and accepted and to have value and worth. The moment Adam quit trusting God he was on his own, to try to obtain these, Adam chose to quit trusting and start trying, thus all men are driven to get these needs met. The unique ways in which you try to meet your basic God-given needs for love, acceptance, value and worth is your "flesh."
The reason you often live and think this way, is because from the day you were born into this earth, you have followed the patterns of this world, because you were taught to obtain these things by your own selfish means.
Your particular versions of flesh are the unique ways that you have lived by and depended on to meet your needs.
Your flesh "patterns" were developed based on the messages that you received about yourself as you were growing up. These messages helped form your "identity." Your identity was formulated by the same concepts Adam had after the fall, that “whatever his behavior was that was what his identity was.”
He could no longer see God’s love, mercy and compassion, and even imagine God, as pure love and holiness, one to simply trust again, Adam could only see as all men usually see is God and himself in terms of good or evil, and even though he desired to do good, he could not.
His nature had changed, he now had a “sin nature”. He could do no righteousness. He could not be righteous. His mind was blinded in darkness.
The “flesh” and the” sin nature” are two different things.
The sin nature is that which made us incapable of holiness, trust, love, righteousness, knowing peace, so on.
The flesh, is those things that have been habitually used by us to form our identity.
To obtain these God given needs, found only in His hand of grace.
Christ came and crucified the sin nature for all men! He reconciled the world unto the Father.
This is what I refer to Universal Reconciliation or Justification.
Man was no longer under the law, Christ fulfilled the law, and with the law gone, there is no sin, or it’s penalty based on the Mosaic Law.
Can you sin? Well yes, sin is no longer based on the breaking of the law, but the mistrust of this new exchanged life given to us by the Father by the Spirit through the accomplished work of Jesus Christ.
Romans 14:23
23 But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because his eating is not from faith; and whatever is not from faith is sin.
So, you ask why do men, still sin? If all men have been reconciled and given this deliverance from the sin nature?
They aren’t sinning in the sense of breaking the law, they are living out of their old identity, doing good, doing evil, the flesh, moving from one end of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, to the other, but it's fruit is still all the same- poison, we all still have that ability and are the only choices he can make, man cannot by human will choose to be saved, man must be chosen to be saved. Previously he was chained in darkness, in capable of seeing the light. Now when the God chooses He chooses them by the hearing of the Gospel which gives birth to that seed which has been planted in the heart of all men in this new creation. This seed then brings forth life, what we often have called being born again. It is by the incorruptible seed of God that a man is born again, and God does the illumination, God does the choosing, God does the saving, and the Father alas bears His fruit into the life of one, who He enlightened with the Gospel, thereby making that person a partaker of divine nature. Spirit life. Man could not hear, or see, unless the Father had already made this New Creation for we would be yet like Adam unable to see or hear. Prior to Christ, death on the cross, the Pharisees could not hear or see, but Father by His divine grace chose those who He chose to do come into the Light of His Son.
No man can choose God, God has chosen us, through the reconciliation of the world unto Himself in Jesus Christ, and it is this message when spoken to a man, when told in the truth of the TRUE GOSPEL that brings forth this new birth. How shall they hear, unless someone preach THIS GOOD NEWS TO THEM. That all men have been reconciled to the Father in Jesus Christ, and that God has poured out His grace among men, making them New Creations in Christ, and poured out His Spirit upon ALL MEN.
The sin nature was destroyed in Christ at the Cross of Calvary for all of us., it holds no more power, over us, you or me or anyone.
Mankind has been freed, into liberty. They no longer have to sin.
The true Good News of Jesus Christ will reveal that to anyone when presented to them, this is what shall give birth to that incorruptible seed of God who waters it by the washing of the water of the Word, and brings the seed to germinate and break forth from the ground producing a tree of righteousness that bears fruit to God of God which results in holiness!
For far too long the church has taught that a man still has that Old Nature.
He does not, but how shall a man be saved if He is not to hear the GOOD NEWS?
All that all man have is the leftovers of the fall, before hearing the Good News and after hearing the Good News, it is called the flesh.
So thus those that have come into the knowledge of Christ can still live fleshly as any other man, but in so doing, he is being "faithless" to the very work that Christ accomplished in his life, death, resurrection, ascension and pouring out of the Spirit unto all flesh.
We have believed the lie, too long, and often because we don’t understand the difference between the two. The Sin Nature and the Flesh.
This has resulted in ineffective body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who more rely on sin consciousness then Christ consciousness.
You will always struggle with the flesh, God will have you on a journey until you breathe your last breath here, to learn to trust in Him versus the old way of doing things.
You will be on a planned journey by Him to discover life is not in that which was born from the sin nature- the flesh, but life is found only in the Spirit. He that is spiritual is he that is born of the Spirit.
‘The wages of sin is death.”
Complete and absolute separation from the Father is the wage of sin.
No man prior to Christ experienced this death of separation from the Father, nor will any man, because Christ was slain before the foundations of the world. Man merely died prior to the cross and the breath of life, returned unto God whom gave it.
The Old Testament people were in hades " sheol," the grave awaiting the resurrection of life that would come through Christ resurrection. In death, they had no remembrance, they were asleep yet. With the close of Christ work, they were awakened to glory to ascend to the Father to be forever with the Lord.
Psalm 115:17
The dead do not praise the LORD,Nor do any who go down into silence;
Proverbs 9:18
But he does not know that the dead are there,That her guests are in the depths of Sheol.
Ecclesiastes 9:5
For the living know they will die; but the dead do not know anything, nor have they any longer a reward, for their memory is forgotten.
BUT WAIT THERE WAS THE PROMISE THAT JESUS CHRIST BROUGHT FORTH
Isaiah 26:19
Your dead will live;Their corpses will rise You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy,For your dew is as the dew of the dawn,And the earth will give birth to the departed spirits.
Jeremiah 31:40
"And the whole valley of the dead bodies and of the ashes, and all the fields as far as the brook Kidron, to the corner of the Horse Gate toward the east, shall be holy to the LORD; it will not be plucked up or overthrown anymore forever."
This entire passage in Jeremiah speaks of the day of consummation, not just Israel of the flesh, but ALL ISRAEL, the Israel of the Spirit, the chosen sons of God now ( Gentile and Jew who are presently walking in the Light of Jesus Christ, and ALL MEN then the ISRAEL OF THE FLESH.
Thus ALL ISRAEL SHALL BE SAVED.
Less we forget that we are all HIS CREATION.
Perhaps then you can grasp the significance of why the ETERNAL ONE- Jesus struggled with knowing what He was about to undergo, for which no man ever had or ever will have to undergo, because He did for all of mankind. He suffered the wages of sin - DEATH real DEATH. Separated from His own divine self.
Jesus experienced what the Old Testament people righteous or unrighteous did not.
For you see they had never known holiness. Some had been positionally granted righteousness because of their faith, but none had known holiness, and no man can see God without holiness for God is holy.
Jesus purchased Holiness for the entirety of humanity.
Those in trust know it now, but there is coming a time, "when no man will say to another man, know the Lord for ALL SHALL KNOW HIM!"
The glorious day, when all flesh shall come to God. Did you know that all flesh will?
- Psalm 145:21
My mouth will speak the praise of the LORD,And all flesh will bless His holy name forever and ever.
- Isaiah 40:5
Then the glory of the LORD will be revealed,And all flesh will see it together;For the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
Socrates didn't fear death, because he believed that matter was evil and this is what kept men in bondage, he believed that by dying he would be spirit and then be released from evil for spirit was good.
Jesus knew and most men have never comprehended why He struggled with his coming death.
I mean He was the Son of God, right? Surely he knew it was only for three days, He tells the disciples this.
Why was Jesus death so difficult for Him in comparison to that of Socrates, who gladly chose to die even by his own hand?
I tell you why, because in that death, HE would truly die and experience absolute, total darkness, no presence of love, separation from the Father, separation from that which was within Him.
Until you really grasp this you will hold to false teachings about hell and other matters that have nothing to do with the wages of sin or God's love expressed fully in the Son.
We know He did not die separated from the Father forever as some like to say the Second Death is in Revelation.
If this Death and eternal one is the penalty of sin, then Christ would still be there in death, or in hell, but He is not!
For God never intended nor does He intend to destroy or torture His creation forever and ever, as the false teachers have proclaimed.
We know He did not enter some burning torturous place of damnation called Hell that is eternal,
No, the wages of sin is DEATH but He would undergo not just any death.
He would experience total absolute separation from the Father. Thereby experiencing the plight of men, because of the sin nature, incapable of seeing God, incapable of experiencing God, incapable of fellowship with God because of the Old Adamic nature-- the sin nature.
We were in Christ, and Christ at that moment was in us.
He experienced every bit of our darkness outside of fellowship with the Father, Our Creator. But not just our experience but imagine this, that of the WHOLE WORLD! What a burden, what a terrible thing to undergo, just so that the world be reconciled unto the Father, what love, that He would identify Himself completely with His creation.
Complete and Absolute absence from the Father. Think about it, that my friend is the wage He took upon Himself, when He cried out, "My God, My God, why has thou forsaken me?"
What Jesus accomplished in the death and resurrection, was eternal, meaning it had no beginning nor an end.
He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. God speaks clearly in the last Chapters of Revelation on this matter, and John repeats, Christ words here, “IT IS FINISHED, as “IT IS DONE”
Christ has died in time and space for you and I, He became flesh for you and I, he lived, and suffered, for you and I, and all along what drove Him to the cross wasn’t God's need for someone to punish for our sins/ The church has falsely proclaimed this as well in error. We still mistakenly think that today in “church circles”, but what drove Jesus to the cross was the His love and the Father’s love to remove the curtain of separation for us from entering the Holy of Holies so we could once more all of mankind be in fellowship with Him and the Father again, to erase the old nature, the sin nature, the life of Adam. He brought forth a New Creation as the LAST ADAM.
Man no longer is under the power of that sin nature, an exchange took place that day at the cross, we were in Him, all of mankind - the old man, the old Adamic bloodline, that old sin nature whereby man could never be holy, was crucified and killed there at Calvary.
But it wasn’t enough to just kill or remove that which was against us, the Father still desired children, so Christ was raised from the grave, as a NEW CREATION- and we all of mankind were in Him.
Christ not only took away and removed the old man out of the way, he birthed a brand new creation to which all men were in Him.
Do you know that all men are brand new creations in Him?
I did not say, that all men know this or experience this, or live it out. Even yet many who claim to be Christian do not know this, for their way of life says different.
What any of us do, is not our identity, Christ forever settled our identity at the cross and the resurrection, yes HE REDEEMED US!
If you and others are still “trying” to meet your needs independent of Christ with the only resources you have available to you: your mind, will, emotions and your physical body that is called “the flesh”.
The reason so, Christ did not change our minds, he changed that which put us into bondage, the reason no man could ever see God’s love and acceptance since the Fall.
He wiped out forever, that sin nature, for which held us in bondage to the flesh.
The flesh is the primary thing that hinders us from knowing and experiencing the victorious Christian life.
Living in the flesh is also known as the self-life.
It is not the sin nature, but all those things that have formed your identity in this world of sin. That is FLESH.
Striving to meet those God given needs by trying versus just trusting.
Because we were all born in Adam as well , we initially were born without this knowledge of the work of Christ.
Thus our spiritual faculties, our mind which influences all our actions were dead to to this knowledge of the Good News and our Father who the Bible says, God is love.
For some it seems still so.We however are not to judge but to look at all others through the eyes of God.
Paul said this, that he preached all men complete in Christ.
Those that do not yet see the Father as God is love still will persist with the whole Adamic view that God is wrath. But, we have been given the mind of Christ. Our thoughts will effect our behavior.
So we are given an admonishment by Paul.
- Romans 12:2
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect
They forget the verse is balanced with:
Philippians 2:13
for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
So they keep the people returning to the same tree to eat from as Adam, rather then resting in Christ and seeing that it is GOD AT WORK IN YOU both to WILL AND WORK for HIS GOOD PLEASURE!
There is little taught about that GOD accomplishes all that He has set out to do in you, versus what YOU CAN DO, NEED TO DO, and MUST DO.... that gets pretty tiresome, for it is no different then going to a job and a boss demanding the same of you. When shall they rest, where shall they find sanctuary from the world, when the very place they attend is proclaiming the same message as they are? Is Christ not our rest from the efforts of the FLESH?
Since we did not yet know this truth, and many yet do not, we were forced to live out of our own resources. Many Christians today still suffer under this burden of the flesh, and have not come to know the rest there is, in the Spirit of resting in Jesus Christ alone as our TRUE SABBATH.
As a result of dealing with the impossibility of getting our needs met, we are driven to make up for this deficiency.
The desire to have our needs met is so great that it consumes our energy; we become solely focused on that longing.
We become thoroughly and intensely self-centered in our quest for love, acceptance, value and significance.
The main result of this is the loss of our true identity. We were created to have the life of God within us, (in our human spirit) and us in Him, yet we don’t know this.
Therefore, our very reason for existence is not apparent to us.
We are born in a condition of not knowing who we are, but being driven to find out.
There are only two kinds of inner life, Adam-life (trying- by good and evil) or Christ-life (trusting- receiving this Grace from God) (Romans 5:14-19).
But the nature that held us all in chains- the sin nature has been not only brokem but destroyed through the Victory of Jesus Christ.
All of us are born in a world that teaches us and acts out of the old Adamic-life (thought life effects our lived life) ; an identity of ourselves without the life of God.
It was the identity of himself and God that Adam lost in the garden for all men.
Therefore, our behavior is not our only problem, but rather our minds effecting our hearts and our actions. Which in turn our behavior arises. It is from our very center of being, the heart that the old Adamic life attempts to arise again from the dead, but it cannot, IT HAS BEEN CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST, it can only make us believe that we still ARE that old Adam, and when we trust that, then our flesh, our old habits then begin to rule and cause our behaviors that are contrary to the Spirit, this is because we lack trust...and whatever is not of faith, is SIN.
Our identity is the problem that keeps us from living godly. It is when we fail to identify ourselves with the New Creation that Christ made us all, and that He has given us a new heart, and wrote his law upon hearts of flesh instead of upon stone. (Old Covenant law) that we can be carnal Christians, in other words living as if Christ had no effect to change the inner man.
It is the bondage to this lie, this illusion, this disregard for God’s work of love and grace that we yet wrestle with, not the old sin nature, but the old sin, stain, Who Am I?
The blood of Christ washed away our sin, it destroyed the sin nature, but the identity for which we have been taught not only in growing up, but in much of religion and even “christian religion” has kept us blind to the truth, of the completed work of Jesus Christ, so we often find we live out of that old identity until God by His grace reveals to us, by the TRUE GOSPEL, our new identity. This continually revealing, Christ coming, Christ appearing to us, is a lifetime Journey in which we learn to overcome the flesh, and the lie that we are that old man. WE ARE NOT- HE IS DEAD- CRUCIFIED WITH CHRIST AT CALVARY.
THERE IS A NEW MAN THAT GOD HAS CREATED OF ALL OF US. SAINT AND SINNER ALIKE. IT is He- Jesus Christ within, wherein lies the Kingdom of God, that desires to remain on the throne of our heart, and HE will, HE shall not give up that which is rightfully His, Your will or a Devils will shall not thwart His will!
The Universal Exchanged Life that took place then becomes our new identity, and we now see ourselves as God has made us, New Creations, not just forgiven, but the old nature, that old identity ERASED in Christ at the cross. We begin to experience life, the abundant life, the godly life, the redeemed life, this new life, no longer based on what I do, but who I am.
A walk of trust in God and no longer trying.
I am the beloved of God my Creator, who has never quit loving me, but loved me so much, he removed out of the way that thing which kept me from knowing Him, and knowing He is love. I am not that old sin nature but a New Creation in Christ, quite capable of living in His righteousness, not my own, but His, given to me freely by His love and Grace! I am capable because He is capable, I live now because He lives!
This is how the inner life is changed? It has been exchanged. Trust it, rely on it, God is now the center of your life, He is your Father, Jesus is your brother, the Spirit is YOUR LIFE!
Galatians 2:20 states, "I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and delivered Himself up for me."
The reason people don’t come to understand this, is they have been taught wrongly that salvation is about escaping something you deserve after death. Hell! and Jesus went through all He went through just to get us to heaven if we will just believe that! Then we are saved!
Thus many of God's sheep are left there to hang in oblivion asking but what can I about this flesh, this way of life, all this I have grown to hate about myself. They are told, only to TRY HARDER, PRAY HARDER, READ HARDER, ATTEND CHURCH HARDER.....and they DIE!
THE LIE!
God did not send Jesus to go to hell for us, but to drag us out of the hell that we were already in! Remember the Wages of Sin is death- not hell, as pagan and catholic tradition have twisted the whole Good News to be.
This is what happens when a person comes to know this fact, to know this new identity given to us freely by His grace. Then he is saved, from his old identity, his old thought process, his old trying tree, rather than trusting tree for this life here and now- this is salvation.
It has nothing to do with after we die, and everything to do with while we are alive!
Jesus reminded the Pharisees of this.. they wanted to talk about the afterlife.
He blows them away with this statement.
Matthew 22:32
" I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB"
He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
Mark 12:27
" He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken."
Luke 20:38
" Now He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to Him."
Salvation (keep the heaven and hell thing out of it) is when a man realizes he is no longer the same type of human, possessing the sin nature of the Adam life, but is a child of God, that He has the life of Christ, and thus is a new creation, and one with a brand new identity. He is a Child of the living God.
This is salvation, this is the delivery of this new spiritual faculty understanding of who we are, because of Christ, and that we are not that old Adam, but we are in the last Adam, Jesus Christ - the life giving spirit.
We come to understand, salvation isn’t about getting to go somewhere when you die, but being somewhere while you are alive.
Thus heaven comes to earth. Thus His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
Not the heaven of I get everything I want or could imagine, like some have distorted it to be, that’s no more than the first identity trying to squeeze the work of Christ into selfishness and foolish imaginations of men.
No that is not it at all!
What we obtain is freedom of the fellowship of the Father and the Son, again, and to relax in that presence, and live by simple trust every minute of our lives, in His love for us.
This is not just for us, but His love IS FOR ALL MEN!
We quit trying and start trusting.
We quit defining ourselves in what we do, but now define ourselves in WHO WE REALLY ARE!
We believe the Scriptures that Christ was crucified for us. Do we not also believe the same Scriptures that teach we were crucified with Christ? God has created something completely new inside of you.
This is a spiritual reality, not just positional truth. This NEW CREATION is your true identity.
This son of God is who you are in Christ, and because He is in YOU!
"If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake, he is the one who will save it."
Jesus says the way to life is through death, and if anyone is to follow Him, they must deny self.
I hope you understand with much more clarity.
To really understand, you must understand, that going to hell was never the problem God had to overcome.
Man was in hell the moment, Adam turned from trusting to trying. Christ did not come to deliver us from some punishment of a cruel God of men’s imaginations and fallen carnal mind, but He came that we, all men, might have life, and that life was in Him and is still in Him. He is the light of the world.
WE WERE DEAD AND WITHOUT HOPE. BUT LIFE HAS COME! HE IS HERE!
Men still don’t come to Him, they turn to religion, they turn to good works, some give up and just do evil.
They do not know who they are yet, they don’t know and have never heard the true GOOD NEWS, they are still trapped in their old identity but they don’t have too be.
Thus Paul said again above in Scripture at the end of the first verse I provided here.
He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. 2 Corinthians 5:19..... This is the GOOD NEWS not the false gospel that men have been presenting of Christ.
Let us present the true Good News of the work of Jesus Christ for all mankind, that He is the Victor, the Triumphant One, who has purchased this for us, which belongs to ALL MEN.
Watch your life, and the life of others change. I mean REALLY CHANGE
PREACH the GOSPEL not religious tradition. LIVE the GOSPEL, not religious tradition.
LOVE GOD and OTHERS because He first loved all of us....from the very beginning, God wasn’t mad at us, man just couldn’t see it, and sad to say, there are folks today who still do not see that “God is love.”
Christ Victorious, this is the GOOD NEWS. Thus the angels said on His incarnation into this world our world, the earth- PEACE and GOODWILL TO ALL MEN on EARTH.
Men today are like all the pagans, asking but what of death?
What then?
I say to you, What of Life?
What of now?
Jesus destroyed sin and (spiritual death) so that all men may be with the Father forever.
How God reveals His love to those that didn’t get it here, is His business, but no matter what, you didn’t get it here, either on your own, that was the Sovereign will and act of God, if you have come to understand reconciliation and salvation like I have just explained here, God gave you the light by His grace, and the faith of Jesus Christ. Nothing that you have obtained from God or in God, came because you willed it so.
Let no man boast but in the Lord. God has not chosen some men for hell and others for heaven, he has only chosen some to understand and have life here and some to understand and recieve life over there, so that His plan can be worked out for all of us.
Ephesians 1:11
also we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will,
Note: WORKS ALL THINGS... not just some things and leaves the rest up to mankind to mess up.
He does so AFTER THE COUNSEL OF HIS WILL.... not ours.
So, that “every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess, Jesus Christ is LORD!
I pray that in reading this, if you are not a Christian by your identification, that you will see that Jesus has given all you will ever need to accept what I have told you here, he has removed that sin nature that would keep you blind to this knowledge.
I pray if your identity is that of a Christian, that you would come to understand what that really means, outside of what you do, and see who you REALLY are.
To both, the mercies, compassion and love of the Father has been given freely to us, in Jesus Christ, King of Kings, Lord of ALL!
Joseph Black D.D.
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