Info on the Exchanged Life

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I would like get some (name removed by moderator)uts regarding the topic of “Exchanged Life” in regards to the below excerpt mailed to me by a friend. How does it square with Catholicism?

**What the Exchanged Life Is!

The Great Exchange is simply the pure gospel. It is exchanging **my oldrotten life for Christ’s pure, holy, righteous life. The exchanged life truths are foundinRomans 5-8 which sets forth a practical application of the believer’s identification with Christ in His death, burial, resurrection and ascension.

The term “exchanged life” is related to the believer’s discovery of his identity in Christ: that is he is a new creation, one born of God, that he is not what he was before. J. Hudson Taylor made the English term “exchanged life” popular through his testimony of how God made him a new man. (Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, page 154.) The word “exchanged” is used to signify that God has made it possible for us to exchange our total insufficiency to live the Christian life for Christ’s total sufficiency to live it through us. He did this by exchanging our old identity in Adam for our new identity in Christ and by uniting our newborn spirit with His (I Corinthians 6:17; Galatians2:20).

The Great Exchange is the simple, profound secret of drawing forevery need, temporal or spiritual, upon the fathomless wealth of Christ.
 
This is interesting. Is the idea of “Exchanged Life” a specific Apostolate or Movement in the Church today or are you asking about people’s personal conversion or re-conversion stories?
 
The Great Exchange is the simple, profound secret of drawing forevery need,** temporal** or spiritual, upon the fathomless wealth of Christ.
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This sounds suspiciously like the “Health-and-Wealth Gospel” to me…maybe it’s just me…but it sort of gives me the theological willies at first glace.

I found a few Protestant ministries when Googling “Great Exchange,” but nothing that really said what it is. Perhaps you could provide us with a link, good sir, so we could better understand this?

-ACEGC
 
Well, I don’t know how folks may be using it now, but Taylor was no proponent of the health-and-wealth Gospel. He was a very self-sacrificial and dedicated missionary to China.

I think on the whole the “Great exchange” idea is a healthy one, as long as it doesn’t resolve itself into a purely forensic exchange (i.e., the idea that God counts us as righteous irrespective of who we are). On the other hand, even the forensic concept has historically meant that because God counts us as righteous, that can begin to be a reality in our lives. I should know better than to expect Catholics to ever understand that . . . .

Edwin
 
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Contarini:
Well, I don’t know how folks may be using it now, but Taylor was no proponent of the health-and-wealth Gospel. He was a very self-sacrificial and dedicated missionary to China.

I think on the whole the “Great exchange” idea is a healthy one, as long as it doesn’t resolve itself into a purely forensic exchange (i.e., the idea that God counts us as righteous irrespective of who we are). On the other hand, even the forensic concept has historically meant that because God counts us as righteous, that can begin to be a reality in our lives. **I should know better than to expect Catholics to ever understand that ** . . . .

Edwin
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That doesn’t sound righteous. Its downright rude!!
 
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Contarini:
Well, I don’t know how folks may be using it now, but Taylor was no proponent of the health-and-wealth Gospel. He was a very self-sacrificial and dedicated missionary to China.

I think on the whole the “Great exchange” idea is a healthy one, as long as it doesn’t resolve itself into a purely forensic exchange (i.e., the idea that God counts us as righteous irrespective of who we are). On the other hand, even the forensic concept has historically meant that because God counts us as righteous, that can begin to be a reality in our lives. I should know better than to expect Catholics to ever understand that . . . .

Edwin
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Explain a little further and you may be suprised.
 

Here is more information on the Exchanged Life. It did not fit completly. I can mail it to anyone who is interested. This is something I encountered thru an Evangelical friend. Is it just simply put ‘let go and let Christ’, it sounds good but are the implications not trying to extinguish sin from one’s life?​

J. Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret
" . . . God made me a new man! God has made me a new man!"

I now think that this striving, longing, hoping for better days to come is not the true way to holiness, happiness or usefulness… I have been struck with a passage from a book. . Entitled Christ is All. It says, "The Lord Jesus received is holiness begun; the Lord Jesus cherished is holiness advancing; the LordJesus counted upon as never absent would be holiness complete . . . .

“He is most holy who has most of Christ within, and joys mostfully in the finished work . . .” . . . . To let my loving Savior workin me His will, my sanctification, is what I would live for by His grace. Abiding, not striving nor struggling; looking off unto Him;trusting Him for present power; . . . resting in the love of an almighty Savior, in the joy of a complete salvation, “from all sin”–this is not new, and yet 'tis new to me . . . .

How then to have our faith increased? Only by thinking of all that Jesus is and all He is for us: His life, His death, His work, HeHimself as revealed to us in the Word, to be the subject of our constantthoughts. Not a striving to have faith . . . . . .

It was the exchanged life that had come to him–the life that is indeed “No longer I.” . . . --instead of bondage, liberty; instead of failure, quiet victories within; instead of fear and weakness, a restful sense of sufficiency in Another. . . . I prayed, agonized, fasted, strove, made resolutions, read the Word more diligently, --but all without avail. Every day, the consciousness sin oppressed me.

. . . . Instead of growing stronger, I seemed to be getting weaker and to have less power against sin; and no longer, for faith and even hope were getting low. I hated myself; I hated my sin, yet gained no strength against it. . . . I knew I was powerless. I told the Lord so, and asked Him to give me help and strength. Sometimes I almost believed that He would keep and uphold me; but on looking back in the evening–alas! There was but sin and failure to confess and mourn before God.

.
 
It is typical vague reflections that can be interpreted in any way that you find in more recent protestant literature as opposed to stuff written during and shortly after the reformation. From what you posted it doesn’t sound wrong but it is incomplete if one is to live the life of faith given in the Gospels. It seems to focus around the choice to accept Jesus in a real way in your heart. This is truly a very important thing for without surrendering to the Lord we toil alone. However, it seems to stop there. It seems to lend toward the idea that once tha decision is made then Jesus will do the rest. Yet, this is where this type of “theology” falls down because by implication it denies true freedom. In true freedom the choice for Christ must be constantly made in every decision we make. True, as the practice of virtue increases it is easier to make the choice of virtue against vice but it is still a true choice that we and an individual make and not Christ guiding our hand albeit with His Grace. It misses (as most protestant theologies miss) is personal responsibility apart from presumption. The life of Grace in us is not a giving up of our freedom to the Lord but it is rather actualizing our freedom in the Lord.
 
Thanks and God Bless to Mosher and everyone else who has contributed to this thread! 👍
 
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