September 28, 2021 - What Substitute?

Recently, during a question-and-answer session at a local church, someone asked me about what I had spoken on earlier, about Jesus as my Substitute.

“What substitute?” he asked.

What substitute?

Was he kidding (unfortunately not)?

Look around at our world. At babies dying, at adults dying. At sickness, at evil, at death, at suffering. Look at every war, every crime, every natural disaster, at orphans, at the handicapped, at the insane, at the hungry, the depressed, at the homeless, at everything wrong in our world.

And it all comes down to one thing: sin.

And, if God is a moral God, which He is, and if He runs a moral universe, which He does, then someone has to pay for all that sin has done, unless God were, simply, to wipe us all out and be done with it, period.

But, instead of destroying this sinful world, Christ died for it instead.

What substitute?

Rather than making us pay for all the evil that we have done, and we have all done evil—" There is none who does good” (Psalm 14:1, 3; Psalm 53:1, 3; Romans 3:12)—Christ went to the cross, bearing in Himself the punishment for the sins and evil of us all. “Surely He has borne our griefs/ And carried our sorrows” (Isaiah 53:4).

What substitute?

The substitution of God Himself, in the person of Jesus, bearing in Himself the punishment for the wrong that we all have done.

Otherwise what? You pay it yourself?

Good luck with that.