The Lord Jesus Christ put Himself into the sinner’s place and whosoever will trust Him, will be put into Christ’s place by the grace and power of God. The sinner that trusts Christ alone, that man’s sins are not his sins anymore. All his sins are put on Christ forever, and Christ’s Righteousness is eternally placed over that man’s soul. That man’s sin shall never be imputed (charged) to him again. Christ suffered on the Cross, He poured out His own life’s blood, He tasted death for every man. Come and cast your soul on what Christ has done with simple faith, hearty faith, and you will hate the things you once loved. You will then serve the God you once despised. In the Old Testament, the offender brought a lamb to make atonement for his offenses, and in the sinner’s place the innocent lamb was slain. Now the Lamb of God Himself from heaven has taken the sinner’s place, bearing the sinner’s sin, suffering in the sinner’s place and vindicating the divine justice of God, making it possible for God to be Just and the Justifier of him that believeth on Jesus. Sin must be punished, and it was punished in Christ’s bloody death. This is the only hope for sinful man.
Come now, and rely on Jesus who suffered in the sinner’s place, and was punished for the ungodly, bearing their iniquities in His own body on Calvary’s tree. One look at Him, one look of faith, will transfer every sin debt and every sin from your soul to Christ instantly. Jesus will take you out of sin’s prison, and bring you to His house and table. Substitution is the main and central doctrine, that is, Christ died in the sinner’s place. Our very iniquities were laid upon Him. The sins were transferred from us to Christ. His weariness and woe, His thirst and hunger, His pangs and misery, He felt all this throughout His entire life for our sake. Then at the end, up on the Cross, all our sins were laid upon Him. His love constrained Him to take the sinner’s place and suffer what the sinner ought to have suffered. The very pith and marrow of the gospel lies in the one word – Substitution. Christ was made sin for us, He knew no sin, that we might be made the Righteousness of God in Christ.
We can take Christ’s place, because Christ took our place. He died in the place of lost sinners. The place of a sinner is wrath, curse and extreme darkness. Outer darkness will be the lost sinner’s eternal place, darkness is sinner’s present state, the sinner's natural condition is this -- ye were sometimes darkness. So the Savior is made to bleed and die in darkness. Man should abide forever in darkness, misery, despair, and hopelessness, so the Savior hung in the thick darkness on Calvary for three hours; He is denied all comfort, all mercies, He is forsaken by His Father, while He died all alone in the place of sinners. Sin put us in the dark and it put the Lord Jesus Christ in the dark. Our sins made Him hang bleeding from His wounds. The Savior was God and man in one person, dying in the sinner’s place and stead, and He shed His own blood especially for you.
The penalty for sin is eternal death, so Jesus has to die. In the Old Testament, there is no atonement except by the bloody death of a Victim. This was God’s way from the beginning, even in the garden of Eden. The sentence of God’s law still requires eternal death for sin against God. “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Sin necessitates death. The Lord Jesus Christ came to earth to make a reconciliation by His sinless death. The Bible says, “By His own blood He entered in, He must die in the place of guilty men, before He could enter heaven on their behalf. The animal in the Old Testament were slain and their blood was poured out before God, even so must Jesus be slain in the sinner’s place. Trust in this great truth and chief teaching of God’s book. The core doctrine of Christ is Atonement by His bloody death. The Lord Jesus offered up Himself unto God, by the death of the Cross, and bore the horror of bearing human sin. The tempest of sin’s consequence fell upon the head of the Innocent Substitute; the thundercloud of God’s wrath emptied its contents upon Christ’s soul.
Christ Jesus voluntarily put Himself in our place, and bore the wrath we deserved for sinning against the holiness of God. Out of divine and infinite love, Jesus became an offering for our sins. He became the eternal sin-offering. Willingly Jesus became the sin-offering for the sinner, that the sinner might be made the righteousness of God in Him. Who His own self bare our sin in His own body on the tree. Jesus Christ bore all the punishment our soul deserved to have received. God cannot in justice punish the sinner that trusts Christ, for God has punished Christ instead of Him. Christ drank the cup of wrath to the very dregs. There is not a drop of wrath left in the cup for the sinner that trusts Christ, for Christ has drained it. Jesus paid all our sin debts; there is not one of them left in the book of God’s record. Every soul that depends upon Jesus is secure before the courts of heaven, because Jesus stood for Him.
Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. To believe is to implicitly trust the Lamb of God, not yourself at all. Trust only in Jesus. Rely only upon Him. He occupied the sinner’s place, He endured the sinner’s curse. Christ stood before God as the one sinner of the whole universe, but He never sinned. Jesus stood to answer the summons of the law, and He appeared before God as the Substitute for sinners, the Just for the unjust. Christ was God over all blessed forever, without Him was not anything made that was made, before Him the cherubim cried day and night, “Holy, Holy, Holy.” He was in holiness, but for our sakes, He became poor in the bearing our sin. The soul-saving doctrine is Substitution. Christ dying in the place of sinners, the Just for the unjust, to bring us to God. God’s plan of Salvation by the sinless Atonement once offered on Calvary’s cross.
You must be in need of grace, before God will be gracious to you. Until you take the sinner’s place, which is your right place, this is where God’s free favor of God can come and deal with you. The Lord will only give grace to those who need it, and that confess that need. Jesus Christ stood in the sinner’s place, God punished the sinner’s guilt upon Christ instead of upon the sinner, all that the sinner is bidden to do is to trust Christ to save him, and as soon as a lost sinner does that, he is saved immediately and forever.
