The phrase “The Great Exchange” is often attributed to Martin Luther. Whether or not the phrase originated with him, the concept is simply the Biblical teaching that salvation hinges upon the placing of our guilt for sin on Christ at the cross, and the imputation of His righteousness to Believers through faith. In R. C. Sproul’s “How Can I Be Right With God” he summarizes the Scripture teaching as: “We are blessed because our sin is not counted to us but imputed to Christ, and His righteousness is imputed to us by God’s forensic decree.” _{Sproul, R. C. 2017. How Can I Be Right with God?. First edition. Vol. 26. The Crucial Questions Series. Orlando, FL: Reformation Trust: A Division of Ligonier Ministries.}

Now that has been the core of Biblical theology on the subject from the very beginning. Praise God for it!

But in our day, in 21^st century America, the Great Exchange above has been supplanted by many for a different, and not-so-great-exchange. It is the exchange of lives consumed with spreading the Gospel of the saving grace of Jesus Christ and being transformed into His image by the power of the Spirit, to being consumed with preserving Western Culture and American Constitutionalism.

And it’s a raw deal.

The idea of praying “Your kingdom come” has been reshaped from seeking the fullness of Christ’s Kingship in our lives and His return to rule and reign on earth, to Christ helping us preserve the American way of life, and that, in material prosperity. We are no longer preoccupied with prosecuting the battle against the remnants of indwelling sin in ourselves and defending the faith once for all delivered to the saints, but battling the sin we perceive in others trying to encroach on an idealized and romantic notion of Americanism. It is Leave-it-to-Beaverism; as though the corruption of humankind hidden beneath the veneer of imagined external Pollyanna days was less deadly than the corruption we are increasingly seeing lived out in the culture. The dread disease was always there and just as fatal – it was just kept out of sight. Some.

When growing in Christ’s image no longer takes precedence, then other’s sins and other causes do.

The prayer closet has been exchanged for the voting booth.

Don’t get me wrong, Christians have civic responsibilities. We should carry them out as conscientiously as we can. But there is no policy, even legislated from the most godly body that can actually deal with sin, only certain of its manifestations. Is that good? Sure. But does it change anyone? Does it bring them into right standing with God? Does it produce actual righteousness? No. Only the Gospel can do that. It is not an ultimate answer. That doesn’t mean we ignore it, only that we do not see it as an end. We want to, we are commanded to – do good to our neighbors. But good that does not address the soul is only wallpapering a gaping hole in the wall.

Man’s problem is a sin problem, not a policy problem. Not a political system problem. Not a cultural problem. And we cannot win a spiritual war with earthly weapons or tactics “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph. 6:12) To which Paul by The Spirit adds His “therefore”. Therefore what? Sue? Vote? Become activists? Campaign? Hold rallies? Finance pacs? Decry conspiracies? March? No – take up the whole armor of God.

Now hear me – I’m not saying we can’t do all those other things. I’m not saying they are not useful to some degree. If my basement is flooding, I need to be about the business of bailing. Such bailing is needed to stave off further damage. But if I do not attack the broken pipe, if I do not stem the source of the flood – no matter how heroically I bail – in the end, the flood will overtake me and all will be lost. When Jesus was asleep in the boat in Mark 4, the Disciples tried to rouse Him to help. Help them what? Help manage the boat in the storm. And if that is what He did, how tragic the result would have been. They needed supernatural aid to their very real, existential peril. They needed Him to stand up and rebuke the wind and the waves, even though they weren’t aware He could even do that.

The Church, the nation, doesn’t need a revival of Americanism and/or patriotism, it needs a revival of souls through the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Until the people of God are more interested in God’s plans and purposes than our own, for His cosmic and eternal causes and not for our temporary and temporal ones, we will be distracted by an exchange that damns men’s souls while attempting to recover human institutions.