Dr. Michael D. Halsey
SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT
INTRODUCTION
Outside the walls of Jerusalem 2000 years ago, passersby say three men hanging on three crosses. What they were seeing was one of the three most important events in world history (the death of Christ, the Resurrection of Christ and the Second Coming of Christ.) What they were seeing was an event that would be recorded, explained and remembered forever.
What they were seeing was an event that had cast its shadows long before it occurred because what they were seeing was the complete, total and finished solution to the problem of man’s sin and sinful state. They were seeing would history changed before their eyes, a unique event, something that had never happened before, something that would never happen again.
The death of Christ on the Cross is an event that God explains to us because without His explanation, we wouldn’t know what was happening at the time. God explains it in only one place: the Bible. The way He explains it is by means of a system and two prepositions.
By means of a system as old as Genesis 3, God inaugurated a sacrificial system for fallen man, a system that was a picture of the One to come, a picture of the way to get back to God. Under the sacrificial system, later codified in the Mosaic Law at Mt. Sinai, the sacrificer would bring the animal to the alter, lay his hands on the animal about to be sacrificed and then the animal was put to death. The sacrificer understood that the animal was taking his place, functioning as his representative because he had identified with the animal by placing his hands on it.
When the authors of Scripture wrote the preposition "anti," they were using a word which meant "face to face," "opposite" as two objects place over against each other and one of those objects being taken instead of the other one. It meant "an exchange." In means "instead of." We see this in Matthew 2:22 and Luke 11:11. Other Scriptures show the idea of exchange in John 1:16, Romans 12:17, I Thessalonians 5:15, Hebrews 12:16 and I Peter 3:9. The most important verse which uses "anti" is Mark 10:45, which also gives us Jesus’ interpretation of His coming death. His words settle the matter.
Other preposition God uses in the Bible to explain Christ’s death is the preposition huper. The original idea of this word meant to stand in the place of someone to protect him and receive the blows on his behalf. Romans 9:3 and Philemon 13 show us this use. In Philemon 13, Onesimus was a newly converted slave and about to return to his master Philemon in Colosse. Paul wants to keep Onesimus with him to help him on Onesimus’ behalf. This can only mean that someone has to be in Rome with Paul—either Philemon or his slave, Onesimus, as his substitute.
Other Scripture in this regard are John 11:50-51, Romans 5:6-8, II Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13, Titus 2:14 and I Peter 3:18.
CONCULSION
Christ suffered as a substitute for us; that is, Christ suffered instead of us, resulting in the advantage to us of paying for our sins. This substitution was voluntary on His part ("No one takes My life from Me; I lay it down and I take it up again") and it provides an eternal satisfaction, once for all, never to be repeated.