JESUS CHRIST-DEATH-SUBSTITUTION

I gave Him a crown of thorns, He gave me a crown of righteousness. I gave Him a cross to carry, He gave me His yoke which is easy, His burden which is light. I gave Him nails through His hands, He gave me safely into His Father’s hands from which no power can pluck me. I gave Him a mock title, ‘This is the King of the Jews.’ He gave me a new name and made me a king and a priest to God. I gave Him no covering, stripping His clothes from Him, He gave me a garment of salvation. I gave Him mockery, casting the same in His teeth, He gave me Paradise. I gave Him vinegar to drink, He gave me Living Water. I crucified and slew Him on a tree, He gave me eternal life. It was my sinfulness that put Him there. It is His sinlessness that puts me here.

Derick Bingham

Encouragement – Oxygen for the Soul, Christian Focus, 1997, p. 157-158. Used by Permission.

If Christ be not the Substitute, He is nothing to the sinner. If He did not die as the Sin-bearer, He has died in vain. Let us not be deceived on this point, or misled by those who, when they announce Christ as the Deliverer, think they have preached the Gospel. If I throw a rope to a drowning man, I am a deliverer. But is Christ no more than that? If I cast myself into the sea, and risk my life to save another, I am a deliverer. But is Christ no more? Did He but risk His life? The very essence of Christ’s deliverance is the substitution of Himself for us, His life for ours. He did not come to risk His life; He came to die! He did not redeem us by a little loss, a little sacrifice, a little labor, a little suffering. “He redeemed us to God by his blood,” “the precious blood of Christ” (Rev 5:9; 1Pe 1:19). He gave all He had, even His life, for us.

Horatius Bonar

God’s Way of Peace, 1862.

Along with everybody on the face of the earth, you are constantly sinful. These thousands of sinful thoughts, words, and actions cause the perfectly holy God to judge you as deserving of hell. But Christ’s death in the place of sinful people, as a true substitute, provides the way of escape. God pardons the one who comes to Him because Jesus took the punishment in his place. In simple terms we may say that the just penalty for sins either falls on you or Christ.

Jim Elliff

Pursuing God – A Seeker’s Guide, Christian Communicators Worldwide, 2003, p. 22, www.CCWtoday.org.

Was He scourged? It was that “through His stripes we might be healed.” Was He condemned, though innocent? It was that we might be acquitted though guilty. Did He wear a crown of thorns? It was that we might wear the crown of glory. Was He stripped of His clothing? It was that we might be clothed in everlasting righteousness. Was He mocked and reviled? It was that we might be honored and blessed. Was He reckoned a malefactor, and numbered among transgressors? It was that we might be reckoned innocent, and justified from all sin. Was He declared unable to save Himself? It was that He might be able to save others to the uttermost. Did He die at last, and that the most painful and disgraceful of deaths? It was that we might live for evermore, and be exalted to the highest glory.

J.C. Ryle
Commentary, Matthew 27.

Christ’s death was substitutionary… Jesus was taking our place. That is why the charges brought against Him were blasphemy and treason, for these are the very charges we face before the judgment seat of God. We have made ourselves into gods, and thus blasphemed His holy Name; we have rebelled against His rightful rule over our lives, and we are guilty of high treason against his gracious majesty.

Sinclair Ferguson

A Heart for God, 1987, p. 68, by permission Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA.

Christ took your cup of grief, your cup of the curse, pressed it to his lips, drank it to its dregs, then filled it with His sweet, pardoning, sympathizing love, and gave it back for you to drink, and to drink forever!

Octavius Winslow

The heart of Christ became like a reservoir in the midst of the mountains. All the tributary streams of iniquity, and every drop of the sins of his people, ran down and gathered into one vast lake, deep as hell and shoreless as eternity. All these met, as it were, in Christ's heart, and he endured them all.

C.H. Spurgeon

Christian History, n. 29.

We took our sins and drove them like nails through His hands and feet. We lifted Him high up on the cross of our transgressions, and then we pierced His heart through with the spear of our unbelief.

C.H. Spurgeon

God in his infinite mercy has devised a way by which justice can be satisfied, and yet mercy can be triumphant. Jesus Christ, the only begotten of the Father, took upon himself the form of man, and offered unto Divine Justice that which was accepted as an equivalent for the punishment due to all his people.

C.H. Spurgeon

Expiation, Sermon 561, Isa. 53:10.

In Gods case, if He had said in the infinite sovereignty of His absolute will, “I will have no substitute, but each man shall suffer for himself, he who sinneth shall die,” none could have murmured. It was grace, and only grace which led the divine mind to say, “I will accept of a substitute. There shall be a vicarious suffering; and My vengeance shall be content, and My mercy shall be gratified.”

C.H. Spurgeon

Expiation, Sermon 561, Isa. 53:10.

The divine Son, one of the three persons of the one God, He through whom, from the beginning of the creation, the Father has revealed Himself to man (John 1:18), took man’s nature upon Him, and so became our representative. He offered Himself as a sacrifice in our stead, bearing our sin in His own body on the tree. He suffered, not only awful physical anguish, but also the unthinkable spiritual horror of becoming identified with the sin to which He was infinitely opposed. He thereby came under the curse of sin, so that for a time even His perfect fellowship with His Father was broken. Thus God proclaimed His infinite abhorrence of sin by being willing Himself to suffer all that, in place of the guilty ones, in order that He might justly forgive. Thus the love of God found its perfect fulfillment, because He did not hold back from even that uttermost sacrifice, in order that we might be saved form eternal death through what He endured. Thus it was possible for Him to be just, and to justify the believer, because as Lawgiver and as Substitute for the rebel race of man, He Himself had suffered the penalty of the broken law.

H.E. Guillebaud

Taken from “Why the Cross?” by H.E. Guillebaud, © 1947, p. 130, 185, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA. Used with permission of the InterVarsity Press, P.O. Box 1400, Downers Grove, IL 60515. www.ivpress.com.

Learn to know Christ and Him crucified. Learn to sing to Him, and say, “Lord Jesus, You are my righteousness, I am Your sin. You have taken upon Yourself what is mine and given me what is Yours. You have become what You were not so that I might become what I was not.

Martin Luther

The wrong that man had done to the Divine Majesty, should be expiated by none but man, and could be by none but God.

John Howe

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 30

He hideth our unrighteousness with His righteousness, He covereth our disobedience with His obedience, He shadoweth our death with His death, that the wrath of God cannot find us.

Henry Smith

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 162.

When the Lord Jesus Christ offered up Himself a sacrifice unto God the Father, and had our sins laid upon Him, He did give more perfect satisfaction unto Divine justice for our sins than if you, and I, and all of us had been damned in hell unto all eternity. For a creditor is more satisfied if his debt be paid him all down at once, than if it be paid by the week.

William Bridge

A Puritan Golden Treasury, compiled by I.D.E. Thomas, by permission of Banner of Truth, Carlisle, PA. 2000, p. 29.

Think of it. In order for God to atone for man's sin, someone had to subject Himself to death. Yet only one who had unlimited ability to atone for sin could do that, only a perfect man. He had to have unlimited ability to atone, because He would be shedding His blood for all humankind. He had to be perfect because God accepts only unblemished sacrifices. Who could do that? Only God. And God the Son shed His own blood for us (Acts 20:28).

Josh McDowell and Bart Larson

Jesus, a Biblical Defense of His Deity, Josh McDowell and Bart Larson, Here's Life Publishers, Inc., p. 90.

He came to pay a debt He did not owe, because we owed a debt we could not pay.

Author Unknown

There would be absolutely no benefit to us if Jesus merely lived and died as a private person. It is only because He lived and died as our representative that His work becomes beneficial to us.

Jerry Bridges

The purpose of our holy and righteous God was to save His church, but their sin could not go unpunished. It was, therefore, necessary that the punishment for that sin be transferred from those who deserved it but could not bear it, to one who did not deserve it but was able to bear it.

John Owen

Meditation on the Glory of Christ, 1684, ch. 9.

The Lord Christ comes to convinced sinners with His invitation: “Poor creatures! How sad is your condition! What has become of the beauty and glory of the image of God in which you were created? You are now in the deformed image of Satan and even worse, eternal misery lies before you. Yet look up once more; behold Me! I will put Myself in your place. I will bear that burden of guilt and punishment which would sink you to hell for ever. I will be made temporarily a curse for you, that you may have eternal blessedness.”

John Owen

Meditation on the Glory of Christ, 1684, ch. 6.

If He hides the sin, or lesseneth it, He is faulty; if He leaves it still upon us, we die. He must then take our iniquity to Himself, make it His own, and so deliver us; for thus having taken the sin upon Himself, as lawfully He may, and lovingly He doth, it followeth that we live if He lives; and who can desire more?

John Bunyan

Before objecting to the doctrine of covenant or representative headship, remember this: only if Adam represents you in the Garden can Jesus represent you on Golgotha. It was on the cross that Jesus served as your representative head: His obedience to the law, His righteousness, His suffering the penalty of the law, were all the acts of a covenant head acting in the stead and on behalf of His people. If Adam stood for you in the garden, Christ may also hang for you on the cross.

Sam Storms
Original Sin – Part I, November 8, 2006, www.enjoyinggodministries.com. Used by Permission.