The Divine Exchange

My pastor, Steve Dixon, preached on "the divine exchange" last Sunday. This was the exchange that took place when Jesus Christ took my sins in His body on the cross and in exchange gave me His innocence. Anyone can see that's not a very equal exchange but that's how God is. God is not about giving what is deserved. God is about mercy and grace. His mercy doesn't give us what we deserve and His grace gives us much more than what we deserve.

Pastor Dixon gave in his sermon some other exchanges that took place on that cross 2000 years ago:
*Jesus took our despair away and filled us up with His joy.
*Jesus removed all of our guilt and shame and clothed us with His glory.
*Jesus suffered all the pains of hell so that we could enjoy the bliss of eternal life in heaven.
*Jesus removed the anxiety of living in a sin-filled world and replaced it with the assurance that there is a good God in control of all things.
*Jesus showed us that what was impossible could be made possible by His shed blood on the cross.

And what does this mean in my life? It means that Jesus took that sick, messed up, shame-ridden little girl that I was, bathed me in His grace, and transformed me into a new creation, shiny and clean. It means that I
no longer have to go through life wanting to be invisible, wishing I was dead;  I can now hold my head up high because I know that my true identity is in Jesus. It means that I know that I can never be good enough;  but I know that my sacrifice, Jesus Christ, was perfectly good and blameless in every way, and because of Him, that is how God sees me. Now that's a divine exchange!!!

"But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed. All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God's path to follow our own. Yet the Lord laid on Him the sins of us all", Isaiah 53:5-6. NLT