What does it mean that Jesus took our place?

All that was needful, not merely to meet our condition, but to satisfy His claims, vindicate His majesty and glorify His name, He Himself has provided in the atoning death of His own Son. Thus He is satisfied. Hence He can preach peace to us by Jesus Christ, Lord of all. The spotless Christ was judged on the cross in our place. God hid His face from that blessed One, turned away His countenance, closed His ear and forsook Him for the moment. Why? Because He was delivered for our offenses. God forsook Him that He might receive us. He treated Him as we deserved in order that He might treat us as He deserved. Jesus took our place in death and judgment, that we might take His place in life, righteousness and everlasting glory.

But, let one suppose that what the Lord Jesus suffered at the hands of men secured redemption for us. When it says that He was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities, we must think deeper than of His flesh torn and bruised by the nails and thorns, and if we can say, "by His stripes we are healed," we must think of something other than the scourging to which Pilate so unjustly condemned Him. "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him," i.e. instead of the unsparing judgment of God coming with its crushing weight upon us, God chose that it should fall upon Him and He gave Him to be our Substitute and to bear it in our stead. He was lifted up by men, the object of their hatred and derision, but when they had done their worst, the sixth hour came, tolling in the darkness that was denser than that that enshrouded Egypt, and such as creation had never seen before; then there took place what no creature mind will ever fully understand, His soul was made an offering for sin, and God made Him, our sinless Substitute, to be sin for us, and He bore our sins in His own body on the Tree. "Through the Eternal Spirit He offered Himself without spot to God." It is this that explains — what is, indeed, beyond all our comprehension — that cry that will never be forgotten, "Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?" which being interpreted is, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" The more we consider that, and the more its meaning enters our souls, the greater will be our wondering appreciation of our great text and the love of God which it reveals to us.

The matter may be put very simply. Is God righteous in setting a sinner free from the claim of everlasting judgment? What is God's answer to this question? Christ in heaven, "whom God has set forth a mercy-seat." The apostle is alluding to the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat of Lev. 16. Suppose one asking an Israelite, How can God dwell among you? How can He vindicate His holiness and yet dwell in the midst of such a people as you? the answer was, The blood-sprinkled mercy-seat. So, now, to the question, Can God be righteous in canceling sins and reckoning a sinner righteous? the answer is, Christ in heaven as a lamb that has been slain is the fullest vindication of His righteousness in doing so. He is there as the One who gave Himself for sins. He is there as the One who paid the full price for the righteous title to redeem. He is there as the One who by offering Himself as a sacrifice unto God has conserved His holiness and maintained His righteousness. The sacrifice by which this was accomplished was the ransom-price which had to be paid that God might be righteous in delivering a sinner from the necessity of receiving the due of his sins. Christ, then, by becoming a substitute for sinners, and making a propitiatory sacrifice, has procured for God the righteous title to save sinners; has put into His hand, so to speak, the title to redeem; has made it consistent for Him to set sinners free from the claim of eternal judgment.

This is substitution. Jehovah laid the iniquity of His people upon Christ, and judged it all upon Him. God only could do this. He only could separate sins from us and lay them on Another. This He did to the praise of the glory of His grace. For this we praise Him now, and, in millennial days, Israel will triumphantly celebrate this goodness of Jehovah; for not only will they bless Jehovah because He forgiveth all their iniquities and healeth all their diseases, but they will add, "As far as the east is from the west, so far hath He removed our transgressions from us." (Ps. 103:3, 12.) They will see that their sins were taken by Jehovah from them and laid upon Christ, and that He was wounded and bruised for them. This is substitution; and the same principle of dealing with our sins is set before us in the New Testament. Our Lord said that His blood was shed for many for the remission of sins. In the Hebrews we are told that Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and if an ancient prophet declared "He shall bear their iniquities," the apostle to the circumcision says, "Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree … by whose stripes we are healed." (Matt. 26:28; Heb. 9:28; Isa. H. 11; 1 Peter 2:24.) Here we have substitution plainly set forth. Our sins laid upon Jesus, He Himself bearing them, and we healed by His stripes. Elsewhere we read that He "once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God;" "that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." So far we see how truly the Lord Jesus Christ has been our substitute as the bearer of our sins, and also of the righteous judgment for which they called.

It might be asked by one who has come to Christ: How is it that my sins could be forgiven? Here we find the divine answer: That on God's holy Lamb our iniquities were laid: that "His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree;" that God dealt with Him in justice, pouring out upon Him the judgment that we deserved. As our hymn expresses it: "O Christ, what burdens bowed Thy head! Our load was laid on Thee; Thou stoodest in the sinner's stead — To bear all ill for me. A victim led, Thy blood was shed; Now there's no load for me."

"Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though GOD DID BESEECH you by us; WE PRAY YOU in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God. FOR he has made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." What a message! God now beseeching you to be reconciled to Himself, because He once on the cross took up with Christ the question of sin. There and then His judgment of it fell upon Christ, so that now whoever believes in Him stands before God in all the value of that work by which God has been glorified and sin put away. God's righteousness, and His estimate of that work, are seen not only in His taking Christ out of the grave into glory, but by His putting the believer in Christ in the very same place before Him that Christ now has. In death on the cross He took our place, in life now before God He gives us His place. What righteousness and what love!

In verse 10 we read that we are "under the curse." Then in verse 13 we read, "Having become a curse on behalf of us." This literally is "over" or "above" us. He is made a curse "over us," and finally in the same verse, Christ has redeemed us out from under the curse. Think of the curse as a great sword hanging by a thread over my head. It may fall at any moment and destroy me. Christ came above me, between me and the sword. The sword fell on Him; He received the blow that must have taken us down to hell; He took us out from under the curse. This preposition translated "on behalf of," or "over," or "above," is really the preposition of substitution, used already in chapters 1:4 and 2:20 to show that the Lord Jesus Christ is our Substitute.

There is a remarkable New Testament scripture bearing on this point, I should like you to notice. "Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also likewise took part of the same (that is, he became a man), that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death — that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Heb. 2:14-15). Wonderful tidings! You and I die because we are men. He became a man that He might be able to die. He could have passed up into glory from this earth at any moment of His history, for death had no claim on Him, He being sinless, but then He would have left every man behind Him. He says to the one who believes in Him, I came down and died for you. I bore your judgment, and died your death, and I bring you to God in righteousness. I bore your judgment that I might deliver and redeem you. Just as David cut off Goliath's head with his own sword, so by death — which is what the devil terrifies a man with — does Jesus deliver the soul that trusts in Him. Death, which was the wages of sin, has now opened the way of life for me, for "AS it is appointed to men once to die, but after this the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and to them that look for him shall he appear the second time without sin to salvation" (Heb. 9:27-28). Death opens the pathway to glory for the believer now, because in the death of the Saviour atonement has been made. That atonement has been presented, and God has accepted it, and what has been the result? God has raised from the dead, and glorified the blessed Man, who died on the cross. His exaltation is God's answer to the sufferings of the Saviour, and is the proof of His absolute victory over every foe of God and man. Hallelujah!

If now we refer to redemption, as found in the New Testament, - we shall see how fully the reality answers to the type. But it must be remembered that He, who was the Passover Lamb of God's own providing, took the sinner's place in His death, and that therefore when He arose from the dead, in virtue of His precious blood, redemption, eternal redemption, was accomplished. (See Heb. 9:12; Heb. 13:20.) The blood of atonement was the ransom-price of His people, and God has declared His infinite satisfaction with it, in that He hath raised Him up from the dead, and given Him glory, that our faith and hope might be in God. (1 Peter 1:20-21.) It is on this account that Peter can write, that we have been redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot; for as soon as we have been brought, through faith, under the value of His sacrifice, we possess in title all the blessings that have been secured by the redemption which He has obtained. We say in title, for not yet are we in the enjoyment of all the results of the work of Christ. Already we are redeemed as to our souls; for God, on the foundation of the work of Christ, because of the value of the precious blood under which we are resting, has even now "delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love." (Col. 1:13.) This is a present blessing; and in this aspect we can say that we are redeemed, that we have been brought out from the house of bondage, out of Egypt; that through the death and resurrection of Christ we have been turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God. (Compare Col. 1:13-15.) For in truth Satan's power has been for ever broken; and we, with death and judgment behind us, have been brought to God.

But verse 24 goes much further, indeed where others could never go. His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree. Not only did He suffer from man unrighteousness; but He assumed the full responsibility for our sins as before God, and suffered on the tree the full, unalleviated penalty of God's wrath against sin. In the three hours of darkness there, the agony He endured as forsaken of God, as being Trade a curse of God, is infinitely beyond explanation or understanding. Alone, intensely alone, He accomplished that great work of atonement.

Besides other great and precious objects of this sacrifice, the object here insisted upon is "that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness." So it is not only that our sins should be forgiven, but that we should recognize ourselves. in His death, to have died to sins, having left them practically in the grave, cutting off all connection with them, so that not even the cruelest treatment of ungodly men would revive such things again In our hearts. For it is by His stripes we are healed. This is no mere bodily healing, but healing from the dread malady of sin: for the stripes are those of God's judgment poured out upon Him on Calvary.