The heart of our message is our union with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension.  This is often referred to as the exchanged life.  At the moment of our salvation, God took us out of spiritual death in Adam (Romans 5:12-21) and transformingly put us into union with Christ (Romans 6:1-10).  Christ exchanged our old identity as sinners in Adam for a radically new identity in Christ (2 Corinthians 5:17).  We are now not just sinners saved by grace; our essential nature and identity is that of new creation saints in Christ (Ephesians 1:1).  Our union with Christ is so real, so vital, so complete, so trans-historical that the old us (our spirit) in Adam died and was buried.  The new us (our spiritual identity) is now raised up in union with Christ.  We have been set free to live as ones who have been recreated in Christ’s resurrection (Romans 6:11).  This is all God’s doing.  He traded our old spiritual identity in Adam for a new spiritual identity in Christ.

This is the foundation of the exchanged life: God’s uniting us with Christ, whose life is eternal, victorious, and abundant.  This results in a shared life, a life of union with Christ.  However, the usual experience for us as Christians seems to be that we lose sight of our resources in Christ.  The great tendency is for us to try to get our needs met our own way and to depend upon our own human resources (the flesh) instead of trusting Christ.  Even the Apostle Paul described his own personal struggle and defeat as he strived in his own strength to fulfill the will of God (Romans 7:14-25).  

As we continue to appropriate by faith His life rather than relying on ourselves, Christ meets our inner needs and gives us His joy, peace, power, and a deeper walk with Him in the midst of life’s difficulties and problems.  The focus of our attention is shifted from ourselves to Christ and those He has put into our lives for Him to love through us (John 15:9-17; 1 Corinthians 13; Galatians 5:13-18; 1 John 3:16-4:12).  This is the result of the exchanged life.  By an ongoing trust in Christ as our life, we can trade our total insufficiency to live the life the New Testament describes for Christ’s total sufficiency to live it in and through us.  If you don’t like your life, exchange it for a new one!