Our Substitute

‘‘Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” — 1 PET. iii.

WE do not find the word “substitute”

in the Bible, but the sense of it comes over and over again. It means one person put in another person’s place, or one thing put instead of another.

There was a little girl of three years old, who showed that she understood perfectly about the Lord Jesus being our Substitute. She put her little hands together and said, “I thank you, Jesus, that you was punished instead of me!” That is it! the Lord Jesus taking our place, and punished instead of us. That was why He suffered; He was the Just one, that is, perfectly good; and we are the unjust, that is, sinful and bad; and so He

36 Worning Stars.

suffered for our sins, the Just one suffering instead of us, the unjust ones.

There are many pictures of this in the Bible. One is when Judah, the elder brother, wanted to save Benjamin from being kept as a slave in Egypt. He begged hard that he might take his brother’s place, and stay “instead of the lad” (Gen. xliv.: That was offering to be his substitute. When an Israelite had sinned he was to bring a clean animal to be killed and offered for him; and when he put his hand on the head of the burnt-offering it was ‘accepted for him” (Lev.i. ). That was to teach him that Some One must suffer and shed blood for his sin, and that His death would be accepted instead of his being punished.

The Lord Jesus was wounded for our transgressions, and was bruised for our iniquities; that is, He was wounded and bruised zzstead of our being punished for them (Isa. liii. ). And because we were like sheep going astray Jesus was ied like a sheep to the slaughter, instead, always instead, of us! Dear children, when you hear or read the story of the cross, think of this, that Jesus was your Substitute as He hung there in all that agony; He bore it all for love of you, and for your sins, and zxstead of

you!
Oh, think of His sorrow!
That we may know
‘lis wondrous love
In His wondrous woe

Restored from a scan of the 1879 edition, with page headers and numbers removed and words rejoined across line breaks. Scan-derived text, still being proofread; compare the original scan before quoting.