14.3 A Complete Exchange
© 2016 Christ Revealed Bible Institute
Redemption is Jesus offering us His Self as our very own self-story, our psuche, our consciousness in return for our old pretending self gone. It is to be a complete exchange. Unless we know the Personal absoluteness of Redemption inside of us, we cannot know what Salvation IS. And the Personal absoluteness of Redemption is the living Lamb-Slain, the living Lord Jesus, alive inside of us as the very Heart of our Father beating in our chest.
What was it that won my heart? It was when Jesus Himself in Person came to me and said to me, “Daniel, I would like to be all that you are.”
The Necessity of Being Lost
You see, only someone who has lived inside this horrific lie of “Daniel, there is an evil self in you.” And the obligation placed upon this frightened little boy or girl, running back and forth between good and evil for years and years, wanting with all our hearts to be with Jesus, yet convinced by the preachers that we are in trouble with God.
Only someone who has known the wretched lostness of our complete inability ever to please God can know the meaning of these words Jesus speaks to me. “Let Me be all that you are, let yourself be all that I am. It’s no longer you, Daniel. All of you, including all of your foolish mistakes, you are now utterly Me. Daniel, I am willing to be your only Self.”
The Certainty of Redemption
Now that Jesus has won my heart entirely for Himself, the Holy Spirit engages in the final task of redemption. That task is to change my mind, my consciousness, my entire self-story, how I think about everything. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind (Romans 12:2).
And it is the certainty of the Living Lamb-Slain, the absolute certainty of Blood, Cross, and Resurrection alive inside of me, that is the foundation of my ability to accept every Word Jesus speaks inside of me as the only story I know. Redemption places me entirely into the Love of God; and there, rooted and grounded in that love, I know that God has given me all of Himself through Christ Jesus, my only life.
Every Word God Speaks
Thy people shall be willing in the day of Thy power (Psalm 110 - KJV).
Consider the diagram carefully; it conveys to us the reality of our present Christian lives.Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God (Mathew 4:4). Jesus comes to us as every word God speaks to be that word in us.
Salvation Is Symmorphy
All who have received Christ into their hearts by faith belong to Jesus, and He carries each all the way through death and into life.
Yet there is only one life, and that is Jesus as every Word God speaks entering into us to be all that He is in us. Salvation IS being connected with the Father as one person together through every Word that is Jesus.
This is also symmorphy. Full symmorphy with God is salvation; salvation is full symmorphy with God. And yet, has our Christian life not been as the diagram shows?
Everything Is Jesus in Our Hearts
Human faith is the receptor inside of us into which every word God speaks enters into us to become our life. And yet, for most of our brethren, only one Word from God has actually entered into them – Jesus lives in my heart. This Word is everything, of course, but we can hardly know what it means without every other word that is Jesus also entering into us through faith.
Let me enlarge that. Inside of “Jesus lives in my heart” is found every Word that God speaks, all the fullness of God. But we have not known any of it as our story of self. You see, once Jesus has won the heart of a Christian, after that He changes our minds, our thinking, our self-story.
Blocking the Word
Notice the receptors inside a Christian into which a specific word must enter; notice the question mark. Faith with a question mark is called unbelief.
But what is the question mark? My own story of self, my own staked ground, my own ability to “do what God says,” my own sin!
Those who look at themselves and see “me” cannot be filled with God.
What Fills the Receptor?There is only one reason why a Christian would not be filled with all the fullness of God, and that is because they believe they are not. The Word has come to them, but they hold that word away from themselves. They will not allow Jesus to be that Word in them. Why not? Because Jesus has not yet won their hearts.
So what fills that faith receptor meant for Ephesians 3:19 if it is not Jesus being what He is? “I must obey God, and since I am always falling short, this word cannot be referring to me-sin, me-sin, me-sin.”
Making Use of Sin
Life is found ONLY by living right now inside the knowledge of life alone, John 14:20, you in Me and I in you, Person inside of person, Jesus as the only life we are.
Yet most of our brethren take one look at a present action of personal sin and use that sin to reject living in life, in Jesus as them, and to continue in their own false story of accusation and falling short. They reject Word, they reject Jesus, because they see sin. Most Christians, especially “deeper truth,” use their own sin as an excuse to keep Word from entering into them.
Thus redemption CANNOT work for us unless we allow it to give a full and final answer to all present sin and sinfulness.
Allow Jesus to Be Your Sin
One of the words the preachers use to beat God’s people is this. Jesus lives in your heart, fine and good. But you know that you have not “let” Him enter every room inside of you. And we know that you have not done so because you sin, you do not obey Him. You see, there is truth in this line, the lie cannot exist except it twist the truth into its own purposes.
But how does Jesus enter into us? By works or by faith? And having begun in the Spirit, are we now made perfect by the works of the flesh? The problem is not that we “do not obey Him,” the problem is that we do not allow Him to be our sin, entirely by faith.
Ask and BelieveSo, how do I get that Word, hovering out there, just beyond my faith, to pierce my bubble, to enter into me as Jesus Himself, to be all that I am?
This is so hilariously easy and so wondrously cool. – I ask. Look at me, God, I belong to you, let it be to me according to Your word as Jesus my only life.
And then we believe we have already received what we asked.
Speak Christ and Give Thanks
Asking is OUR PERMISSION to Jesus to enter us by that Word.
Then, having believed that we have received all that we have asked, we continue in two things. We speak Christ with our mouth and we give thanks in our hearts. I am filled with all the fullness of God; rivers of living water flow out of my belly, setting all creation free.
Asking is our permission for Jesus to enter us; speaking Christ is what changes our minds. But the real power is found in giving thanks in and for all. Giving thanks, accepting that God IS revealing Himself through our weakness and speaking good grace into all is how we walk with God.
A Complete Exchange
If you love your own story, you will lose it. But if you forsake your story for My Story, you will find your true story of self (the real meaning of psuche). It is a complete exchange.
By our born-of-God spirits we are aware of ourselves, and by speaking Jesus as our only story of self, we walk with NO consciousness of sins. And in the absence of any consciousness of sins, we walk in all the love of God, in every Word that is Jesus. And walking inside all the love of God, we love one another.
Our redemption is entirely by faith, that God is true even when we do not see – the judgment against all that is Adam.
Rooted and Grounded in Love
Walking through darkness, stumbling every moment by weakness, and seeing all of it, all that we are right now and every present circumstance of our lives AS God through us, reconciling the world to Himself, can happen for us by one reality alone. The Father Loves ME! Rooted and grounded in Love.
The absolute certainty of being carried, every single step, every single thought, in every single circumstance, in all the bumbling foolishness of our humanity, utterly IN Love, IN the immediate, present, utterly thoughtful and caring attention of a God who not only fills us full, but who looks out for us.
Only One Way
And I tell you what, there is only one possible way you and I, as representatives of all created beings, could ever dare to walk in such certainty. A Man, a real human being, exchanging Himself for ourselves with all the willingness of His heart inside of the total agony of Gethsemane. And then that same Man, speaking with all the Joy of us inside His Heart, “Here I AM, I and all the children whom You have given Me,” carrying us inside Himself all the way through death and into life. And then, this same Man, whom we love, upon whose Breast we always lean our heads, having become us, living now as us.
Our Shared Heart
There is no other way God could have won all the desire of His heart, to make Himself known, to be seen and touched and handled by all He has or will ever create. There is no other way by which God could win symmorphy with man.
Because you see, at the center of every step God and us will take together through all the ages to come, is a living Lamb-Slain, the Lord Jesus Christ in Person, beating as our shared Heart. By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us, and we also ought to be just like Jesus, Jesus as us.
We are redeemed.