A substitute is a person or thing that takes the place, function, or role of another. If we think of the substitute teachers we have had in our school years, we may remember how poorly we treated these victims. When a hockey player is injured and a farm team player is called up, he may be considered a poor substitute for the veteran player. Or consider a dish you are making and suddenly realize you are missing an ingredient, and you are forced to improvise. In each of these scenarios the substitute is a second-choice backup to the original.
On the other hand, substitution can be an honorable and heroic thing. When a person takes the place of another in order to bear their pain and save them from it. This is noble. We admire those who spare other people pain or death. We admire them even more when it costs them their own comforts. Moses was willing to have his own name blotted out of the Book of Life if God would spare Israel (Ex. 32:32). The Apostle Paul wished that he could be accursed by God if only it would save his Jewish brothers (Rom. 9:3).
We cannot help but be moved by such heroism. Maximilian Kolbe, the Polish priest in Auschwitz death camp, exemplified this. When a number of prisoners were chosen for execution, one of them shouted that he was a married man with children. Kolbe stepped forward and offered to take his place. The German officer agreed and sent Kolbe off to die.
As we come to the cross today, we approach with this perspective: At the cross, Jesus does not merely stand with us in suffering; he stands for us, taking our pain, our punishment, our place. For Jesus himself said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends,” (Jn. 15:13). There is no greater example of substitution than Jesus.
1. The Servant Took Our Pain (Isaiah 53:4)
The best expression of this substitution is found not in the NT, but in Isaiah 53:4-6. Here Isaiah shows how the Servant takes our pain…This passage is known as the Song of the Suffering Servant. Isaiah doesn’t identify the Servant by name, but he described what the Servant would do for the people of God.
We observe the substitution immediately as Isaiah wrote, “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows…” The Hebrew word “borne” means “to lift up and carry a heavy load.” A great weight is placed upon the Servant, and it is described as “our griefs” and “our sorrows.” Life is full of griefs and sorrows, you will admit. But where do these griefs and sorrows come from? Why is the world the way it is with mass shootings, sexual immorality, and greed? The Bible tells us that our griefs and sorrows are the result of sin. And sin takes us back to the ultimate problem, which is not our suffering, but the cause of our suffering, our rebellion against God.
The Suffering Servant has come and taken that burden off of us. It has been placed on his shoulders. The image of this burden is taken straight out of Leviticus 16. On the Day of Atonement, (that’s one day every year when sacrifices were made for the sins of the nation of Israel), two goats were set aside. One goat was slaughtered for the people before the LORD and its blood sprinkled on the mercy seat. But the other goat was allowed to live. The priest would lay both hands on the goat’s head and confess over it all the iniquities and transgressions of the people. Then we read, “The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area, and he shall let the goat go free in the wilderness,” (16:22). What do you think happened to the goat out in the wilderness?
This imagery is where we get the term “scapegoat.” When a business is failing to meet its goals and quotas, the top brass sometimes try to lay the blame on a mid-level executive, some oblivious rube who has really nothing to do with the fortunes or misfortunes of the company. Someone has to take the fall; someone has to take the blame; this guy is expendable and he gets the axe. Does it help? For a time. But it never removes guilt.
Isaiah is saying what Leviticus only hinted at: this Servant is not a ritual animal sent away for a year, but a person who bears sin once for all. Isaiah says, “…yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.” In other words, when someone suffers like this, we deduce that they deserved it. Look at Jesus on the cross. What…did…you…do? Who did you tick off?
Jesus suffers alone for our griefs and our sorrows. His sufferings were for us, but we had no part in them. The world stands aloof as he takes on our moral failings and spiritual diseases. We are not mentioned except as contributors of the sin that caused his pain. Our pain. He takes OUR pain upon himself. Jesus is the scapegoat for our sin. (2 Cor. 5:21)
2. The Servant Took Our Punishment (53:5)
So, the Servant takes on our pain expressed as “our griefs” and “our sorrows.” Now Isaiah goes deeper, He shows us the Servant taking our punishment…Isaiah describes the root of these griefs and sorrows as “our transgressions” and “our iniquities,” or simply, sin. You can see that the situation is no longer a matter of dealing with the “troubles of life,” or that the Servant merely steps in to take our pain; the Servant takes on punishment that belonged to us. He takes on our penalty.
Isaiah says, “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement…” (stop there for a moment).
Transgression and iniquity are not everyday words. We know “sin” but don’t use it much these days. Therapists would talk about syndromes or conditions. These terms put moral failings outside of ourselves putting the responsibility elsewhere. It’s not my fault. Isaiah doesn’t mess around: he tells us the Servant was pierced for “our transgressions” and “our iniquities.” We have missed the mark. We have fallen short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23). We have crossed the line and broken the law. We have ruined ourselves with sin. And the Servant has taken OUR punishment.
I will admit these terms for sin are quite dramatic, and not many of us would describe our sins this way. A few might. But I wonder if we feel the weight of our sins in such terms. Do we really deserve the punishment that was heaped on the Servant? Think of the worst sins and the worst sinners in history and compare yourself. Our temptation is to soften Isaiah’s language. But human history does not allow us to.
One of the most evil minds of the Holocaust was a man named Adolf Eichmann. After WWII he escaped to Argentina to avoid the death penalty. In 1959, Mossad found him and secretly brought him back to stand trial in Israel.
As the trial proceeded, witnesses to were called to testify against Eichmann: all were former concentration camp prisoners. One man, Yehiel Dinur, had escaped Auschwitz, was called on to testify. Dinur entered the courtroom and stared at the man in the bulletproof glass – the man who murdered his friends, a man who personally executed a number of Jews, and ordered the death of millions more. As Dinur stared at Eichmann, Dinur suddenly fell to the floor sobbing and yelling. Overcome by hatred? By memories? By this evil man? No, Dinur later explained it was because Eichmann was not the demonic personification of evil that Dinur had expected. Rather, he was an ordinary man, just like anyone else. And in that instant, Dinur came to a stunning realization that sin and evil are the human condition. “I was afraid about myself,” Dinur said, “I saw that I am capable to do this…I am exactly like he.”
That’s a confession of one’s own iniquity. I too am distorted by sin. My loves are disordered – that is, I love things out of proportion to their true worth. I am twisted in the core of my being. But the Servant steps in and takes my burden. “Upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.” He was pierced through – a violent and excruciating death; he was crushed and broken to pieces – no doubt by the burden of my sin. He did so you could know Peace – to have peace with God (Shalom); so you could be healed – healed from your guilt; healed from your shame; healed from your past; healed from your doubt. This healing flows from that punishment.
3. The Servant Took Our Place (53:6)
Finally, Isaiah leaves no room for evasion: the Servant has taken our place. You have heard it a thousand times: Jesus took the cross that was meant for us. We deserved the punishment that he endured. He died for us. But do we own it?
You cannot escape this harsh reality. Isaiah wraps the responsibility around all of us, “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned – every one – to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.”
Why sheep? Why not cats? “All we like cats are mischievous and sly.” Because sheep are dumb. My brother had a sheep for a time – he named it Lambert. When I first met Lambert, he was a beautiful little lamb who sweetly came for cuddles. A while later, I saw Lambert had grown bigger and his wool was full of garbage. He liked to roll in the filth. Lambert also had a habit of jumping out of his enclosure and breaking into the garage at night to chew on things. Sheep are just not very clever. They wander off; they chew grass without a care of where they are headed – even off a cliff.
The imagery of sheep is appropriate. As sheep, we do not inadvertently wander away; Isaiah very specifically says we are guilty of willfully straying from the shepherd. We wander through neglect, through distraction, through choosing our own way even when we know better. The parable of “The Lost Sheep” makes me reflect a lot on this. Jesus tells how the shepherd leaves the 99 to search for the one. Why is “the one” lost? That lamb wandered away. How does the shepherd hope to find a tiny lamb in a great wilderness? That lamb keeps wandering, following its appetites, until it is caught in some inescapable situation. Then it cries out. That’s the only way the shepherd could find it.
Jesus likens himself to the shepherd who does the searching. But in other teachings, Jesus is the Lamb who was slain and by his blood we are forgiven, cleansed, and made whole (Rev. 5:9-10).
Paul reflected on this too saying, “For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering,” (Rom. 8:3). Jesus took our place as the sheep, the goat, the substitute.
As I was praying recently, I began to meditate on what figure of authority most impacted me. I rejected political figures, prime ministers, presidents, and kings. I mean, who do you want to please most in life? Who do you seek affirmation from more than any other person?
It occurred to me that teachers have been that figure of authority in my life. In yours it may be a boss, a spouse, or people in general (if you are a people-pleaser). For me it has always been teachers. To please my teachers was a priority. Do the lessons. Get good grades. Demonstrate that I was learning. I didn’t always get an A; if I scored in the 80s and 90s, I was content. I never received a perfect mark of A+ or 100%. My goal was not to be the teacher’s best friend, only to impress him or her that I was capable.
If God is my teacher, nothing less than 100%, an A+, is required. But you and I cannot hand in that perfect paper. Our work is not good enough. Only Jesus can.
Jesus does not merely improve your grade. He takes your failing paper, signs his own name to it, and hands you his perfect obedience as a gift. He substitutes his work for yours so that you can pass the course. Jesus will take your failure and suffer the consequences in your place.
That’s the cross of substitution. If you are still trying to pass on your own work, lay it down. The substitute has already done the work for you. The substitute has taken your pain, your punishment, and your place.
AMEN
No comments:
Post a Comment