Good morning.
I would like you to turn to some familiar verses in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. There are only a few we will look at. If you look in Chapter 1, we will begin in verse 15.
Paul said this. This was his testimony:
But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through His grace,
to reveal His Son in me.
That is the first verse we would like to look at. A very familiar verse is Galatians 2:20. I think all of you know it. Many of you have memorized it.
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God,
Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Then the last verse in Galatians that we would like to look at is Galatians 4:19:
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
So, let us just have a word of prayer.
Lord, we are thankful that we come to the One Who has the words of eternal life. We tell You again: we want You to speak to us this morning. We need the Holy Spirit to open our understanding, and we need the Holy Spirit to aid us in speaking.
Only You can give what is living and real. We pray, in the name of Jesus, that You will open up this word to us in a living way this morning. We have no one else to whom we can go.
We always pray it; we always sense it. Like Peter said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Speak once again to us as we wait before You, that we may hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches. For we ask this together in the precious name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.
Well, today we are continuing with the basic life series—or the basic lesson series, whichever you may prefer. The theme I have for today is the exchanged life.
Now, I am curious. How many of you in this room—and I am purposely looking around, and I want you to raise your hands, not to embarrass you, but I would like to get an idea—how many of you have never heard the phrase the exchanged life? Would you please raise your hand?
I see a few, John. Anybody else? You have never heard it? Right? Okay. Well, it is not wrong that you have not heard it. How many have heard it, if you are bold enough to raise your hands? I think most of you have heard the phrase the exchanged life.
Well, if you have not heard it, you can be comforted: it is not in the Bible. So that would be a reason, possibly, that you have not heard it. But I think it is a phrase that captures all of what is in the Bible. It captures what the New Testament expresses fully, and it adequately captures what all the Old Testament prophecies said of the Lord Jesus in God’s purpose.
For that reason, I think it is a very important phrase. I think this is one of the most important matters. I will not say the most important, because I happen to like resurrection—what was spoken about last week—but the exchanged life, if you do not know it, is tremendously important.
Now, I do not mean know it up here, because you can have knowledge of the phrase. You can say, “Oh yes, I heard Brother Stephen speak on that twenty years ago. I know exactly what it is about.” But if you do not know it deeply in your heart, you are going to live a life of deep struggle and difficulty.
You will not enter into the thought of God and the purpose of God for the Christian life. That is how important this idea—if you want me to use that word—this concept is. I do not like the word concept, because it is not a concept. It is a literal, life-changing reality, far more adequate to describe what it means to the Christian believer.
I believe it combines everything the New Testament is about.
Now, you might ask, where then did this phrase come from? When did it come that ninety-five percent of the people in this room know about it?
Bill Bright, the founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, said that the exchanged life is a term coined by Howard Taylor, the son of Hudson Taylor, the great missionary. When Howard Taylor saw the testimony of the life of the Lord Jesus in his father, he said, “That is more than just Christian living. That is the exchanged life.”
That was the testimony of J. Hudson Taylor. Howard Taylor used the phrase to describe the life-changing realization in the life of his father, the famed missionary Hudson Taylor to China.
You remember Hudson Taylor changed China forever. He went to China as a missionary and founded the China Inland Mission. There was a great move of God. But we have to understand the basis of that move of God.
It was not Hudson Taylor’s labor. As a matter of fact, when he described his labor, he described very often his toil and hardship. He expressed all the difficulty there was until he came into this life-changing revelation of what it meant to know and experience the exchanged life.
He loved the Lord. He loved the Lord with all his heart, and he gave the best to Christ—and it exhausted him. It wore him out.
He discovered a secret many believers never discover, and that secret is: you cannot live the Christian life.
The secret to the Christian life begins with an understanding of the exchanged life. Hudson Taylor was entirely devoted to Christ, but in many ways his ministry was not successful. You would hardly believe that with what you read in biographies today, but he shared how, with agony and difficulty, he lived the Christian life.
There is a precious letter—if you have never read it, you should read it. It was written to his dear sister in England, Amelia Broomhall. In that long letter, he captured both his struggle to live the Christian life and the great secret he discovered that made his Christian life a success.
He was saying to dear Amelia in this very touching letter:
I prayed, agonized, fasted, strove, made resolutions, read the Word of God more diligently, sought more time for retirement and meditation; but all was without effect.
To will indeed was present with me; but how to perform it I found not.
Then came the question: “Is there a rescue? Must it be this to the end—constant conflict instead of victory, too often defeat?”
Listen to what he said to dear Amelia: “I hated myself.”
“I hated my sin.”
That changes your view of this great man of God, does it not? These biographies are all written, and it sort of changes your viewpoint. He was very much like you and like me. He was not different.
We put these men and women of God upon a pedestal, and we think they are different than we are. They are not different than we are. They are the same as we are.
The good news is that they discovered something that changed them from the inside out.
He went on to say:
When my agony of soul was at its height, a sentence in a letter from dear McCarthy was used to remove the scales from my eyes, and the Spirit of God revealed the truth of our oneness with Jesus as I had never known it before.
Listen to what he said. This is the last of what I will share from this letter:
I saw that not only would Jesus never leave me, but that I was a member of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones.
The vine, now I see, is not the root merely, but all—root, stem, branches, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruit.
And Jesus is not only that; He is the soil and sunshine, air and showers, and ten thousand times more than we have ever dreamed, wished for, or needed.
Oh, the joy of seeing this truth! I do pray that the eyes of your understanding may be enlightened, that you may know and enjoy the riches freely given to us in Christ.
This was someone who saw and experienced—because it is more than seeing—the exchanged life. Brothers and sisters, I believe in our basic life series, our foundation series, we need to see this.
You are going to go through those same struggles. You are going to go through those same doubts. At times, you may even rise to the place where you say, like dear Hudson Taylor, “I hate myself.”
But there is something wonderful, incredibly wonderful, when we see the truth of the exchanged life.
Now, how does one live the exchanged life? How do you do it? It is wonderful to talk about it, but how do you live it?
I think the absolute first step you need to come to is that you cannot do it. If you do not come to that first step in your walk with the Lord—that you cannot live the exchanged life—you will never get to the exchanged life.
The beginning is to see the impossibility. That is where Hudson Taylor began, and that is where we need to begin.
The secret is: I cannot, but He can. That is the secret. That is the exchanged life in a nutshell.
I remember Obama’s first presidential run. I know you despise me getting into politics, so I apologize up front. It was revolutionary. I do not care what you think about it: to unseat Hillary Clinton, the destined queen—pardon me if she was who you voted for—was remarkable, to say the least.
He swept up an entire nation, this charismatic young senator. Nobody knew him. Who knew Obama? No one really knew him. You could hardly know what he voted for in the Senate, but he swept up a nation in this charismatic thought of hope and change.
If you remember, there was a motto that swept through the entire nation: “Yes, we can.” You remember? You got so sick of hearing and seeing those bumper stickers: “Yes, we can.”
Now, to the Christian, our motto is the exact opposite. We have to come to the place where we say, “No, we cannot.” If you would like to, I will join with you and get that bumper sticker and put it on my car along with you: “No, we cannot.”
But thank God, brothers and sisters, that is not the end of the story. But yes, He can. That is the exchanged life.
Hudson Taylor knew this. I thought, how do you describe the exchanged life? We have burdened ourselves with this one message, one subject, and it will be impossible. I will leave you with, I hope, just a few impressions, and I hope you go back and search the Word for yourself.
I hope you become a Berean and say, “Is it so? Is it possible? Is this kind of extraordinary life from certain defeat and struggle really possible?” Search it out for yourself. I think it is absolutely possible.
I thought about one word, and that word is inness. Did you understand me with my Southern drawl? Inness. It is actually a word. I know engineers make up words, but this is a real word: in-ness.
Now, Linda is looking it up right away, because this is the first thing she will talk to me about after the ministry. There is the proper name George Inness, and I am not talking about George Inness, the famous American landscape artist. As much as you might like George’s work, we are not going to talk about George.
But then there is this thought of inness. That is what the exchanged life is. It is an inward reality. It is an inward life. It is an inward power. It is an inward resource.
Through that inness, we can live the Christian life. Inness means a state of being. It actually means you are in a select company of people. Think about it: those of us who are in Christ—not to be proud—we are in a select company of people.
Inness is the secret. If you remember anything, remember that word: inness.
All of the verses we read are about this word in. You remember: Christ revealed in me—Galatians 1:15-16. Galatians 2:20: Christ lives in me. That is inness. Then, when you come to Galatians 4:19: Christ formed in me. It is all inness.
That, by the way, is our outline of what we will look at today:
If you understand those basic thoughts, you begin to understand what the exchanged life is all about, because it is contained in those thoughts.
Now, let me just digress a moment on Galatians. Galatians was written for a specific purpose by the apostle Paul. It was written to counter an enormous error that came into the church through the Judaizers.
Their whole point was outwardness instead of inwardness. They said believers could be saved, but then they would have to live by the law. That is outwardness.
So the conflict—just a nutshell explanation of Galatians—is over outwardness and inwardness, or what I now like to call inness. That is the whole conflict.
Paul, as David took a smooth stone and hurled it, hurled the truth into this great deception that had come into Christianity. He forever set straight, with this little record of Galatians, what the exchanged life is supposed to be.
Well, you know I like introductions. Let us look at Christ revealed in me.
In the first chapter of Galatians, we see how we have to begin to understand this exchanged life. The exchanged life has to first begin with revelation.
Now, I know some of you do not like that word. You think it is a word we use too much. But the apostle Paul gave the explanation of his whole change with this one word: it was by revelation.
It was not by any man. As a matter of fact, when he explained in the same letter that he later went up to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles, he said, “I went up by revelation.” His whole life was governed by revelation.
The secret that he discovered—that is the exchanged life—is Christ revealed in me. That was the secret.
Listen to it again:
But when it was the good pleasure of God,
Who separated me, even from my mother’s womb,
and called me through His grace,
to reveal His Son in me.
Thank God for that: “was pleased.” We think of God as some grudging, white-haired old meanie waiting for us to trip up and condemn us. But Paul knew something different. He knew God is the One Who was pleased to reveal His Son in me.
Paul had more understanding than anybody in his era, and maybe anybody since. You may disagree with me, but he made this extraordinary statement in Galatians: “I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen.”
That is an incredible thing to say. I can never say that. You could never say that. I do not think there are too many people in this room who could say that. There are better engineers than I will ever be—there are a number who work for me.
But Paul could say that he advanced in Judaism beyond his contemporaries in the nation. What knowledge this man had.
Think about Philippians 3:5-6:
Circumcised the eighth day, of the stock of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of Hebrews;
as touching the law, a Pharisee;
as touching zeal, persecuting the church;
as touching the righteousness which is in the law, found blameless.
Was there anybody better than the apostle Paul? Yet he was an enemy of God, destroying the church.
Brothers and sisters, the reason I labor at this point is that the exchanged life does not come by knowledge of the exchanged life. That is Paul’s testimony. He is telling us in his very own words, “I was the man. I was the Jew with the most understanding of any of the Jews.”
Here was this student of Gamaliel, the chief rabbi of the day, the chief teacher. He exceeded every Jew in knowledge, in behavior, in righteousness, in pedigree—in every way you can imagine.
Yet he never saw the exchanged life until one day—one day—God, by His mercy, was pleased to reveal His Son in him.
What a glory. That is the exchanged life. Knowledge is not enough. Paul said you need revelation.
Galatians 1:12 says:
For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.
What turned the apostle Paul around on the Damascus road was a living inward revelation—remember my word, inness—of Who Christ Jesus was.
From that moment, he fell from his horse, blinded, and looked up and said, “Who art Thou, Lord?” This man of extreme knowledge, whom no one in Judaism could compare with—something happened. Inward revelation changed him.
I labor at this because if you are going to understand the exchanged life, and more importantly if you are going to live the exchanged life, you need for yourself a living inward revelation of Christ revealed in you.
Just like the apostle Paul, that is the deep secret he shared.
Listen to what Oswald Chambers said:
The object of divine revelation was His Son—not just the truth about Him or His work, or His death, or His glory, but Himself. Himself, including all His person, is the sum of the gospel.
Now, I would go on to say: if you understand the letter of Galatians, you will understand what I am about to say. Anything else is a different gospel.
Anything other than Christ Himself, other than the revelation of Christ in me, other than the power to live by Someone else, other than the work of being conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus, is a wholly different gospel.
That is what the apostle Paul contended with. This is the secret: Christ revealed in me. Anything else is a different gospel.
If you look at Bible history and the history of mankind, there are millions—untold millions, tens of thousands—who have made this discovery of the exchanged life. It transformed them from what we would call ordinary, struggling Christians like you and me into people with a deeper understanding of what the Lord had done.
They entered into it not by any strength in themselves, not by any great understanding in themselves. As a matter of fact, Paul’s understanding prevented him from seeing it.
That is Christ revealed in me. May the Lord help us to have that experience.
Do not ever belittle this word revelation. We get tired of things. I know I have said it, but we get tired of things. Brothers and sisters, you should make it your prayer, and I should make it my prayer, what the apostle Paul prayed for the church in Ephesus: that you would have the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the full knowledge of Him.
That is the exchanged life.
Now, the second point I would like us to look at is: Christ lives in me.
Brothers and sisters, it is not just that God reveals something to us, and we have this jewel of revelation, and once in a while at a conference or in fellowship time we pull it out and say, “Let me share with you what I have seen of the Lord Jesus.”
In the end, it is Christ living in me.
Galatians 2:20—turn again to it. This was the secret the apostle Paul shared to counter this error, and this was the secret that was his deep experience:
I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me.
Brothers and sisters, that is the Christian life.
We struggle with this all the time. I think people are saved, and then they think they are to live the Christian life. Now, it might be with His aid. It might be as He gives grace, as He gives power, as He gives an anointing. It might be all these things.
But they nevertheless conclude somehow in their thinking that it is up to them to live the Christian life. Brothers and sisters, if you read the Bible carefully, the great relief you will come to is that it is never up to you to live the Christian life.
As a matter of fact, you get in the way of living the Christian life. God has already pronounced His judgment upon you: you are wholly incapable. He has another way, a far grander way, and it is Christ Who lives in me.
This may be breaking news to some of you. This may be a shock to some of you. But I have said it so many times, you have grown weary of it, and you know what I am going to say.
We often say the Christian life is difficult. I remember years ago, as a young believer, when I was going through these throes of struggling—failing and victory, joy and sorrow, sin and agony—I remember when the lights came on and I saw that it is not just that the Christian life is difficult.
The Christian life is impossible for you and me. You need to understand that. That is what the exchanged life is.
The added glory to it is that God has never expected you to live the Christian life. That is what the law does.
The law says, “Be ye perfect, as I am perfect, saith the Lord.” Can you imagine? What a terrible noose around the neck. Can you do that? Is that you? Are you perfect?
Ask my wife if I am perfect, and prepare for a long afternoon. Not one of us is perfect.
The difference between outwardness is a demand that is absolutely crushing, that you cannot do. The difference with the better covenant—as Hebrews says, the new covenant—is a freedom.
As Mari said at the table, the promises are, “I will.” Read that as He said in Jeremiah 31:
I will put My law in their inward parts, and in their heart will I write it.
They shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them.
For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more.
What a difference. This is the exchanged life.
The outward error being corrected in Galatians was, “You will.” The glorious revelation that comes in Galatians is, “I will.” What a difference, brothers and sisters. We need to know that. We need to know that. That is so important.
Now, let me go back, because Jim read it and I think Mari went over it again: Romans 5. I want to talk to you about a twofold salvation. You may think I am getting on thin ice here, but a twofold salvation.
Let us begin in Romans 5:8:
But God commendeth His own love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, shall we be saved from the wrath of God through Him.
Notice that is the first “saved.” Underline that in your Bible, if you will.
Then verse 10:
For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son,
much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life.
Did you notice there are two different salvations there? First of all, in His death, we are saved from death by the power of His blood. This is the good news of the gospel.
So many people, this is all they know: because He died, you will no longer die. You will never die. As a matter of fact, the Bible never speaks of a Christian as dying. It speaks of a Christian as going to sleep. And who dreads sleep?
For those of us who have trouble sleeping, like one I live with, you would love the thought of sleep.
But there is another remarkable salvation. Not only does He save us from dying, but He saves us from living. That is the second part.
We are saved by the power of His life. Do you get it? I think it is a remarkable thing. When the lights go on and you begin to see it, you say, “Lord, You never meant for me to live this life.”
Not only did You save me from death, but You save me from living. Because of Christ, I no longer need to die. Because of Christ, I need no longer live either.
Is that not beautiful? That is the exchanged life.
Paul says, “No longer live I, but Christ lives in me.” You are saved by the power of His blood from death, and you are saved by the power of His life from living.
This is the remarkable secret Hudson Taylor discovered, and many thousands have as well. May the Lord begin to open our eyes to this twofold secret.
Brother Nee said this:
As Christ is our substitute in death, so is He our substitute in life.
That is a profound statement. What good news that is.
Romans 8:1-2—you all know it. Let us go to it:
There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.
For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death.
The law of the Spirit of life—that is the secret. That is the secret.
There are three laws talked about in the Bible—at least here there are three, and I will stick with three. You may have a different view.
There is the law of Moses, which we say is impossible for us to fulfill. Although the Bible put it upon the children of Israel, Galatians pulls back the curtain and shows us the reason. It was to be a schoolmaster, a tutor, to lead us to Christ.
By the time we were done with the law, we said, “We do not want this law anymore.” It was to show us our absolute need for another source of life.
Then there is the law of sin and death. You are familiar with that law. The apostle Paul talked about it in Romans 7. He said, “I tried to do what was right. I could will to do what was right,” just like Hudson Taylor said to dear Amelia.
“But I found in me another law”—the law of sin and death—overcoming me, tripping me up every time I made a new resolution. How many resolutions have I made? I would trip up on the law of sin and death. It is in you.
But brothers and sisters, the good news of the exchanged life does not stop there. There is a third law: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.
That is the law which is so tremendous.
I remember the first time I flew internationally in a 747. I thought, “This thing is way too big to fly.” Remember, I am supposed to be a rational person. Some of you may disagree, but I am supposed to think things through with science. I thought it would never go anywhere.
There were over three hundred people, all their bags—because everybody packed like they wanted to live for a year wherever they went—all the supplies, all this stuff, and the weight of this plane. I thought, “It will never fly.”
I remember planting my head against the little Plexiglas thing, looking down the runway, hoping and hoping and praying it would take off. Finally, I saw it lumbering down, wings shaking. I thought, “Oh no, this is it. Lord, I am coming home.”
Then it got near the end of the runway, and this giant plane lifted into the air. I thought, “Oh, that is neat. How cool that was.”
There is a greater law, greater than the law of Moses and greater than the law of sin and death. It is the law of aerodynamics.
Now, I still do not quite get it all, even though I did an A in physics, by the way. I still do not quite get it all, but there is something called lift. Ask Jerry; he is the aerospace engineer. I just try to keep things from falling down.
This new law overcomes the old laws, which were onerous, to say the least. It lifts us to a new place, up into the heavens in Christ Jesus.
The first time I flew across the big pond was tremendous. I thought, “This is wonderful.” Thank God for that new law.
That is the exchanged life: the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. It is in Christ Jesus. You remember the word inness? It is not in us; it is in Christ Jesus.
If you look at the Bible, I remember when I was a young believer reading through the Bible. I began to see that phrase, in Christ, and it began to stick out to me. I started noticing it everywhere: in Christ.
Then there was another phrase I started noticing: Christ in us. I thought, “Boy, these are secrets. This must be the Christian life.”
I remember Brother Sparks. When I first read what he had to say about it, he called “in Christ” the all-inclusive in. What a beautiful thought.
Do you know 1 Corinthians 1:30?
But of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, Who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption:
that, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
You are in Christ Jesus. There is no phrase or formula which occurs with greater frequency in the New Testament than this: in Christ.
It sometimes varies in translation—by, through, with—but in the original text it is “in Christ Jesus,” “in Him.” Two hundred times it occurs. The principle is the same.
In the whole realm of Christian doctrine, there is nothing more extensive than this, and yet nothing less understood and appreciated. That is what it means to be in Christ, and the companion phrase is Christ in you.
Brothers and sisters, I do not know about you, but that overwhelms me. I can understand the speck—me, the speck—in the ocean of fullness in Christ. But it is hard for me to comprehend the ocean of fullness in the speck: Christ in you.
That is exactly what the exchanged life is all about.
We think Christ’s incarnation is some great miracle. It is. Do not get me wrong; I would never belittle it: God with us. But I think it is an extraordinary miracle that Christ comes into every one of us and lives in every one of us, so that we no longer need to live the Christian life.
What a remarkable, twofold, glorious secret. How can you explain it?
In the old days they used to have a blacksmith in every town. When we had horses—you still have horses, but you have to go to a farm or a parade to see one, I suppose—horses wore iron shoes so their hooves would be protected.
A blacksmith was in every town. He would take the iron shoe, and first of all, he would put it into the fire. Before the iron could ever be useful, it had to be put into the fire. Before too long, it would begin to glow white hot.
All of a sudden, you discovered a new mystery: not only was the iron in the fire, but the fire was in the iron. Is that not incredible?
This is exactly what happens with the exchanged life. We are in Christ Jesus by God’s own doing, but not only are we in Christ Jesus: the fire of the Lord is in us.
Incredible. Incredible.
That is what Moses saw in Exodus in the burning bush. It was this ordinary bramble bush that would grow along in the desert, a common sight. But what caught his attention was the fire in the bush. The bush was not consumed.
God’s testimony came out of that fire in that bush. That is what you are, if you are not too offended by it. You are an old bramble bush—dried up, impossible to do what God demands.
But He does not settle for that. Paul shared the secret to counter the error:
I no longer live, but Christ liveth in me.
Is that not glorious, brothers and sisters? I think that is glorious.
Well, think about it. How do we enter into this “Christ lives in me”?
First of all, you need to accept the fact. Paul said, “I am crucified with Christ.” We do not like accepting the divine fact.
Romans 6:6 says—and it is even stronger, by the way:
Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him.
It is a done deal. It is not something you have to go home and pray, “Lord, would You crucify me today?” You need to declare and stand in the fact: “I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”
That is the secret.
John Adams, the second president of the United States—a Virginian, I might add—said the famous quote, “Facts are stubborn things.” Every lawyer who has ever had a trial has repeated that at the end to close his argument: facts are stubborn things.
We live by sight so much, but we can accept the divine facts. The divine facts are more sure than what you see with your eyes.
If you do not think that is true, go to a magic show. Now, I am not suggesting you go to a magic show, but you get the point. The whole thing is that what you see is not real. They take advantage of it. It is called sleight of hand.
You thought you saw that rabbit come out of the hat that was not in the hat, but you were deceived.
Divine facts are never altered—not by our feelings, not by our circumstances, not if we will not accept them, not if we close our ears and do not listen to them. Divine facts are stubborn things. They are true.
As a matter of fact, they are truer than anything we see.
The second way we enter in is to apprehend by faith. That is what Paul said:
And that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, Who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
Brothers and sisters, did you notice how that is worded? It did not say, “I live by faith.” That is what we think. It is our failing faith.
But the glory of the exchanged life is not our failing and faltering faith. Paul shared an even deeper secret after he shared that Christ lives in me. He says the faith by which we live is not our faith alone.
Your faith is important, but it is the faith of the Son of God, Who loved me and gave Himself for me.
Faith is more powerful than sight. If you read Hebrews—and we just had a conference on Hebrews—faith is substance. You would think, “If I see it, I believe it.” We are a little bit like doubting Thomas: “If I see it, I will believe it.”
But faith, the Bible says, is literally substance. It goes further in that same verse. It says faith is evidence—more than that, unfailing evidence, irrefutable evidence. It is true.
So we need to stand, first of all, in the fact, regardless of what you feel. If in the morning you wake up and feel otherwise, stand in the facts—not your facts, the divine facts.
Secondly, live by faith—not your faith. It is His faith. That is the secret of the exchanged life.
Well, the last point: Christ formed in me. Now, that is the final secret.
We think of the power of this little book, Galatians, and the grandeur of what Paul shared in the secret of the exchanged life. I remember years ago, I read about this fellow by the name of Professor Paul Sabatier. He was a Frenchman, and he was a theologian.
He was rather famous. Not only was he a theologian, he was a five-time Nobel Prize nominee for literature—something that will never happen to me, by the way. So he knew good writing when he saw it.
He said this:
There is nothing in ancient or modern literature to be compared to this epistle.
Pretty strong words. Do not take those from me. Take those from a person who was five times nominated for the Nobel Prize in literature. He knew the power of this secret being revealed.
This is the power that will set us free.
Now look at Galatians 4:19. We are coming to a close.
My little children, of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you.
The end of the exchanged life is Christ being formed in you. That is the whole reason we live on this earth, that we were not saved and caught up to the heavens.
You are here because God’s intention is to bring you to the place where you are so conformed to the image of Christ and transformed by the glory of the Lord Jesus that Christ’s very character is formed in you.
In the end, there is to be a family resemblance. In the end, believe it or not, He will say, just as Adam said of Eve, “Bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh,” when He receives us to be His bride.
That is Christ formed in me. This is God’s purpose.
It is not one of these shadowy things where Christ is formed in us, and you look at us and sort of squint and say, “Well, yes, I think I see—well, maybe I see Christ. Well, sometimes I see Christ in them.”
In the end, it is not some small scene of Christ in us. As a matter of fact, the word means fully formed in you.
That is what the exchanged life is about. That is the reason you go through what you go through. That is the real reason for all of God’s dealings: so that Christ may be formed in you.
I have never taken one of those inkblot tests—those Rorschach tests, is that what they are called? Maybe you have. Psychologists used to love those things. I suppose they do not do them anymore. You would have to tell me, Glenn.
They hold up this thing, and if they held it up to me, I would say, “Somebody spilled the ink.” They say, “What do you see in this?”
I think sometimes we are like that with Christ formed in us. “Well, you know, if you get back and get it at the right angle, I think I see a tree, a dog, and birds.”
Brothers, it is not some shadowy inkblot that you can barely make out. You ask three people, and you get three different explanations of what it is.
In the end, God’s purpose is such that Christ will be formed in us, and everybody will say, “They are Christ.”
You remember that is what happened in Antioch. The Christians were first called Christians at Antioch. It was not the Christians who called themselves Christians. It was the world that looked at them and said, “Look how they behave. Look at how they deport themselves. Look at their life.”
“It is different. They are living by some power. I do not have any idea where this stuff comes from. The only name I can come up with for these people: they are Christians.”
That is Christ formed in us. In the end, that is what the Lord is after.
Robert Govett said:
Conversion is not enough. The quickening of life is not all. He sought the formation of the Christian character. This is a daily progress till at last Christ comes.
That is what Romans 8:28-29 means:
And we know that to them that love God all things work together for good, even to them that are called according to His purpose.
For whom He foreknew, He also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son,
that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
Brothers and sisters, this is the exchanged life. In the end, there must be a family likeness.
I remember years ago—any of you still remember? I do fondly—Margie Brewington. Dear old Margie. What a funny lady, what a great laugh. She was one of those like Paul who travailed that Christ be formed in us.
She made an impact on my life. I remember she came up to me one day after Jessica was born and grew up a little bit, and she said, “Kenny, it looks like you spit her out.”
Such a family likeness. Now, Jessica does not like to hear that. She is much prettier, by the way, in case you did not notice. She does not have a gray beard, in case you did not know.
But if you look, you see something. When people look at us, if they do not see Christ formed in us, they do not see the exchanged life. That is as simple as it is.
Well, how is this done? Let me give you three quick points, and you go meditate about it.
First, it is the work of God. Ephesians 2:10 says, “We are His workmanship.” You are on His turning table. He is making you, as the potter in Jeremiah makes the clay—forming it, transforming it, conforming it to what it is to be in all its glory.
Sometimes the clay mars in His hands, but He never gives up. He makes it into His image. That is the forming of Christ.
Secondly, it is the work of the great High Priest. You know the Lord Jesus. We just heard in Hebrews 7:25 that we have a great High Priest. Listen to what it says of Him: He ever lives.
He never takes time off. He never has a holiday. He never has a vacation. He never has PTO. He ever lives to make intercession for us, so that in the end Christ is formed in me and you.
Then, it is the ongoing, tireless work of the Holy Spirit.
If you could have made one request to God, think about it: what would you make? I do not know. I would not have had the intelligence to think of it. But the Lord knew. He knew just what was needed.
When He gave that last intimate talk in John that we have all just shared upon, He said, “It is important that I go, because if I go, I will send to you another Comforter.”
He said at least two things about that Comforter that you should remember: “He will be with you.” But then He said something even more remarkable: “He will be in you.”
Can you imagine? That is inness. Can you imagine God the Holy Spirit coming into your very being, taking up permanent residence in you?
Do you think this work of the exchanged life is possible? It is absolutely possible because God has made it His work. It is absolutely possible because our great High Priest ever lives to make intercession. It is absolutely possible because the Holy Spirit, God the Holy Spirit, has taken up in you permanent residence.
Now, brothers and sisters, we can grieve the Holy Spirit. We can ignore the Holy Spirit. We can quench the Holy Spirit.
All those things we can do. But if you listen to that still, small voice—this is the practical side—if daily that One in you, that resident expert, says, “Do not do that,” you might say, “Lord, I love that. I am going to do that. That law of sin and death—I am going to do that.”
Tell the Lord, “Lord, Your life is the only thing that can keep me from doing that.” That is the secret. That is the exchanged life.
The Holy Spirit will talk to you more than your best friend. I will not say husband, because wives always say they never talk enough.
He will, John. Just leave that one where it is, brother. Let us leave it where it is.
The Holy Spirit communicates Who Christ is, leads us into all truth, is the anointing from above, makes alive everything that Christ has said, and brings it back to our attention.
In the end, God has committed this work of forming Christ in us to the Holy Spirit. He cannot fail. It may take another generation, but He cannot fail.
Well, this is the exchanged life.
This letter was so important that Paul went against what he normally did. He mostly dictated his letters. You remember Corinthians and Gaius. But he did not do that here.
He said in Galatians 6:11, at the end of this letter:
See with how large letters I write unto you with mine own hand.
This message was so important, so vital, that the apostle Paul, who had a handicap and could not see clearly, wrote this letter in big letters, straight from his heart, from his own hand.
He wrote that the Galatian believers, and those of us who have followed them, might know the secret of the exchanged life.
This is the burden that I had to share. May the Lord help us.
Lord, give us revelation, that we may know in our experience Christ revealed in me.
Lord, do something that we may really know in our experience Christ lives in me.
Lord, continue to do something remarkable, that we will yield to You in every circumstance and every trouble, in every blessing, in every stage of life, so that in the end we will be conformed to Your image and Christ will be formed in us.
Lord, we commit these back to You. We know we cannot adequately explain this, but the Holy Spirit can. You can.
So we pray You would help us to understand it deeply and experience it even more deeply. May it be the thing that transforms our Christian living, the same way Hudson Taylor and millions of others have been transformed.
We ask this together in the precious name of Jesus. Amen.