For Your Understanding: What Is The Christian Doctrine Of Substitution?

How did the Lord substitute Himself in the place of mankind? We'll explain, shortly, in this post.

First, beloved, let me ask you: How many times have you heard the phrase, "Lord have mercy!?"

A few times, no doubt.

Some people might twang it and say, "Lawd ham mercy."

However you say it, it points to the fact that Almighty God is the only true God of supreme justice and mercy.

Let's say we're watching a TV judge show. A plaintiff comes forward suing for wrongful death by way of murder. The defendant admits his guilt and throws himself on the mercy of the Supreme Court by begging the judges for forgiveness.

The judges oblige and set the murderer free, to the chagrin, mortification and outrage of everyone seeking justice. How can a judge let a killer go free and continue to uphold the law of the land?

Well, likely it will be virtually impossible, for a human judge.

But the Supreme Judge of the World thrives in doing the same thing that the TV judges, in my example, did.

The Lord Jesus Christ does it by what some Christians call the "Doctrine of Substitution."

That Christ died on the cross of crucifixion, in place of, as a substitute for all of us human sinners who have disobeyed His laws and commandments, including "Thou shalt not kill."

They killed God: the Jewish religious leaders did, after persuading Pontius Pilate that Jesus should die, under corporal punishment, for committing blasphemy.

But how can God blaspheme God? He cannot.

But He can serve as a substitute sacrifice and take away the sins of the world. That is why He is known as the "Lamb of God" and "The Lamb Who Was Slain" but prevailed by arising from the dead.

He subsequently granted eternal life to whosoever believes in Him.

He also will and does uphold the law, as the judge of the world, by meting out supreme justice to whosever does not believe in Him.

When Christ died, as a sacrifice to God the Father for the appeasement of our sins, Jesus did not become a sinner in order to die. For, the Bible does say that the wages of sin is death.

The Holy Scripture is clear that Christ, the world's only ever pure and perfect man, who cannot sin, laid down His life in substitute of all the world's sinners; similar to how an unblemished lamb was sacrificed, by the Jewish Levitical priests, to atone for the sins of the ancient Hebrew Israelites.

The Lord displayed His justice by punishing sin with the wages of sin: death. Adam and Eve ushered death into the world, by way of their Original Sin.

God's justice demands that every sin that has ever been committed, be punished. And, there are basically two punishments: Either in the eternal torment of hell and the lake of fire burning with brimstone.

The just God did not want to kill everyone, as He promised not to ever again do what He did with the flood of Noah's days.

So God the Father sent His son to die for us: Christ at Calvary on the cross. He gave Jesus our substitute wages of sin, in order to grant forgiveness to whosever believes in Him.

What an awesome God we serve.