The Accomplishments of Christ’s Death: Substitution; 2 Corinthians 5:21

We have been studying in Matthew, the stages in the crucifixion, starting with the time that that pilot completes his second trial of Jesus which is the sixth of six trials and Jesus is released and the Scripture says they led Him away to be crucified. We started there and then we began to work our way through these stages of the cross. We are at a pause right now to talk about the significance of that death on the cross: the spiritual death when He paid the penalty for sins, and the physical death.

We saw the first three hours from 9am until noon when He is the object of the mockery and the slander and the blasphemy of men. Then in the second three hours God brought darkness upon Golgotha and that area of Jerusalem and Israel when He is shrouded in darkness as He paid the penalty for sin, separated from God judicially as God pours out the sins of all mankind. Every single sin in human history, every sin you and I commit, was paid for in that three hours on the cross.

Galatians 4:4 tells us that in the fullness of time God brought forth the Savior. He had a plan. It took 4000 years to prepare the human race for the coming of Jesus, and part of that coming involved prophecies and pictures, also call types or shadows, of what would take place. A type is an example that may involve an object such as the Ark of the Covenant, it may involve an animal such as a lamb, or it may involve a person such as Melchizedek, the high priest of Salem who is a picture of the priesthood of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Last week we looked at four different objects or types that tell us something and teach us something about what would be required in salvation. We looked at the tabernacle and how the furniture in the tabernacle, specifically that in the outer courtyard—the brazen altar in the laver depicting the necessity of death or a cleansing. It's substitutionary, so that's a focal point there. Then we looked at the blood sacrifices that are described in Leviticus chapters 1 through 6:7. The burn offerings, the trespass offerings, the sin offerings, and also the red heifer sacrifice, and how that also depicted the necessity of death in the shedding of blood for the remission, that is, the forgiveness of sin. We looked at what took place on the Day of Atonement on Yom Kippur when the high priest would bring two goats and cast a lot to determine which one would be the Lords, that is, which one would be sacrificed. One would be sacrificed and the blood would be sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant on the mercy seat, which is a picture of what was necessary to satisfy the righteousness and the justice of God. The other goat which was actually was given a name or title was the scapegoat, and as the high priest put his hands on that goat he would recite the sins of the nation and then that goat would be taken far out into the wilderness to be released. It is a picture of the complete break with our sins because they are paid for, they are forgiven, they are forgotten and they are no longer an issue. Then we closed with the picture of the kinsman redeemer.

As we look at all of those they indicate certain key doctrine, certain key accomplishments, that must take place by the Messiah, by the Savior. Those five we will look at here. They are substitution: the sacrifice is a substitutionary sacrifice—the sacrifice replaces us in the payment of that penalty. Second, redemption: that sacrifice purchases freedom, it purchases forgiveness; it pays a price. That is the key word. When you think of redemption you think of the payment of a price. Because the price is paid; the debt is paid; the debt is canceled. That is called expiation in older theological terminology, and that is the foundation then for forgiveness, which is the fourth aspect that we are looking at pictured in the Day of Atonement sacrifices, and ultimately it depicts that God's righteousness and justice are satisfied—what the Bible teaches about propitiation. That's the older theological term; it means that God's righteousness and justice are satisfied.

Those five things are accomplished objectively at the cross. They don't happen when we believe in Jesus, they happened when Jesus died. There is a difference between what is objectively done on the cross and what is subjectively worked out in our lives when we trust in Christ, but what Christ did on the cross accomplished these five things.

Now we are going to look at the idea of substitution. Usually this term is associated with the word atonement, substitutionary atonement. The word atonement is really a coined English word that summarizes everything that was done on the cross. It is an English word similar to reconciliation (at-one-meant) bringing the two sides together. That doesn't really accurately reflect a specific word in the Hebrew. Atonement is not a word that you find in the New Testament. It is a description though of what happens in the Old Testament and usually it is translated in Hebrew with the word, which means to cleanse or to purify. That is the main idea there, so it's substitutionary in nature. We need to look at what that means when we talk about substitution.

Looking back to our five things that are accomplished on the cross, there is redemption, there is expiation, there is forgiveness, and there is satisfaction; all rest on substitution, which is the foundation. That is why that is so important to understand this.

Sometime you may be in a situation where you are witnessing to somebody you are trying to explain the gospel to them, and they say that doesn't work, you can't substitute yourself or someone else; you can't pay for somebody else's crime. While that may be true in American jurisprudence, or in jurisprudence in some other human culture, that is not true in the divine jurisprudence, because ultimately we have to start with how God informs us about penalties and about payment for those penalties, and what He has pictured and from the very beginning of time. The way we understand justice and righteousness is not by looking at the horizontal experience of man, but by looking at what God has revealed about these terms. We can even talk about justice and righteousness unless we presuppose that there are absolutes in the universe.

That's another thing: if you talking to somebody who is an unbeliever, and they are being critical and say, well this can even work, that's not fair, that's not righteous. As soon as they use terms like that they're critiquing our understanding of what Christ did on the cross, that transaction of substitution. They are saying, well you can do that, that's not fair. Well where you get the idea of fairness? You believe in moral relativism, so how can you even use terms that reflect moral absolutes? You only get that because you've stolen that from the Judeo-Christian heritage of our culture. Now where do you get the idea that you can talk about what is right and what is wrong unless you presuppose that there is a God who is absolute righteousness and absolute justice? And you can only legitimately presuppose that in your thinking and in your language if you believe the Judeo-Christian view of God. Without that you have no right to even think that something is right or something is wrong, or to make those sort of moral judgments; so that's an illogical fallacy in your thinking.

Scripture presents this. When we think of substitution we go back to Genesis chapter 3. After God outlines the consequences of sin in Genesis 3:14ff the last thing that He did was to clothe them with animal skins. That's just presented as a sort of description of what happened. There's not a whole lot said, we are not told how He did that, we are not told what the animal skins were; but for God to clothe them with animal skins means that an animal had to die. It also means that He had to teach them or show them how to treat those animal skins: what to do with them so that they would not just dry and harden, but they would be soft and supple and could be worked with, and could fashion clothing with. So this is something that took a lot of time.

He would have also taught them about the nature of sacrifice as He did that, because when we get to Genesis chapter 4, it is clear that Cain and Abel clearly understand that they need to bring a sacrifice to the Lord. They understand that there is a right way to do it, and they will come to understand that there is a wrong way to do it. This wasn't just discovered then, but that they had already been informed of that. Abel had believed it and had brought a righteous sacrifice. Cain had rejected it and thought he knew better and brought his own kind of sacrifice, which was rejected by God, which led to his anger and depression, and he murdered his brother as a result of that.

So from the very beginning God began to teach Adam and Eve and their progeny what righteousness was, what justice was, and that His righteousness and justice had to be placated. It had to be satisfied or propitiated by a certain kind of sacrifice, and that sacrifice was inherently substitutionary.

When we come to talk about Jesus death is substitutionary, that is not an idea that just popped up on the scene when Jesus was on the earth, but it had been present since Genesis chapter 3, and is developed out book-by-book, chapter-by-chapter, throughout the Old Testament. By the time Jesus came on the scene all of these ideas should have been fully understood on the basis of 4000 years of Revelation.

The key verse for understanding substitution is Corinthians 5:21. Romans 5:8 would be another excellent verse as a key verse for understanding substitution, and I could pick any number of others.

2 Corinthians 5:21 He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

God the father made Him, that is, the Lord Jesus Christ on the cross. "… him who knew no sin" refers to His perfection. He was without sin, therefore qualified to go to the cross to pay the penalty for us. "… to be sin for us" indicates substitution. He replaced us, paid the penalty for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Substitutionary in theology refers to Christ dying in our place. He takes our place. He actually does something so we don't have to do it. When you take that and apply it to redemption, redemption is the payment of a price, and we will see that that idea comes from the last thing Jesus said on the cross. The last thing Jesus said was, "It is finished". The Greek word TETELESTAI means paid in full. It was a transactional term when a debt was paid. The bill is paid in full. Can you pay the bill anymore once it is paid in full? No you can't. When it's paid in full, everything has been done, everything has been accomplished. That's the idea inherent in substitution. Christ died in our place. He replaced us as the one who bore in His own body on the tree our sins.

The second thing we must understand is that this relates to the character of God. God is absolutely righteous and absolutely just, and this demands a payment of the penalty for sin that meets His righteous standard, and either each person pays that penalty or someone else pays the penalty. Those are the only two options. It's either Jesus or somebody else or something else, that's it. Jesus becomes that substitute as depicted in the Old Testament sacrifices.

This is from Habakkuk 1:13, which tells us that because God is righteous, because He is perfect, He cannot behold evil. Therefore, God cannot have a relationship with a fallen, corrupt, sinful creature. When Adam sinned by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil there was a breach that occurred, and it is a breach that has enormous ramifications, not only personally in terms of Adam and Eve and their relationship with God, but also reverberates through throughout creation. As a sort of a preview of coming attractions, when Jesus pays the penalty for sin there are also reverberations that occur in creation, which shows that what happens morally in God's universe is not divided in some sort of neo-platonic way between the spiritual and the physical as if they're not related, they're all related together in God's creation. So when sin happens, it changes the nature of creation. When Christ pays the penalty for sin there's an earthquake that occurs, showing again this the correlation between spiritual events and physical events.

So Habakkuk 1:13 says, "{Your} eyes are too pure to approve evil, And You can not look on wickedness {with favor.}"

The correlation of that was when God came to walk in the garden with Adam and Eve. They ran and hid. And then when God questioned them as to why they ran and hid they said, "Because we heard the sound of you in the garden". They were afraid, they recognized that something happened in their relationship with God, and there was that breach.

All human beings, therefore, have sinned and are thus under the judgment of God. Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned, everyone. We were born in the state of sin. Ephesians 2:1 says we are born dead in our trespasses and sins. That can't be physical death, so it must be spiritual death. We are born separated from God dead in our trespasses and sins. Romans 3:23 says all have sinned and they fall short of the glory of God. Now that's a term that may be confusing for some but this was an idiom that was used often to refer to the entirety of God's character and His essence. So if God were referred to in terms of His essence and the term that was used was His glory, the totality of His being. But it is focusing in these passages on specifically his righteousness and His justice. The righteousness of God is the standard of God's character. It is the standard by which all things are evaluated. Either they conform to God's standard of righteousness and truth and justice, or they don't. If they don't, then there must be a penalty. That's where justice comes in.

Justice is the application of God's righteous standard to his creatures, so righteousness expresses the standard of God's character. Justice represents the application of that standard to His creatures. Those who conform to His righteousness are blessed; those who violate His righteousness come under judgment.

The only way we can stand before God is if we possess His perfect righteousness because we are born spiritually dead, because we have all sinned. We are unrighteous, even in the best that we can do, and there are some mighty wonderful people who do many good wonderful things in their lives. But that doesn't change the fact that they are still spiritually dead. Good deeds cannot overcome the deficit of a loss of righteousness, and being unrighteous. The only way that can be corrected is if somebody's perfect righteousness is given to us.

You can think about a very simple situation that occurs every day on the streets of Houston. Someone is given a speeding ticket. Maybe you're someone who's driven four 30, 40, 50, 60 years and you never had a speeding ticket. There may be some people like that. I don't understand that, but that's just me, I do not relate. But in the illustration, somebody's going 40 or 50 years and they've never had a speeding ticket. And one day they don't catch it, and they speed through a school zone, which is going to break the bank account, and they do. Even if you do 30 or 35 miles an hour in a school zone that's at least probably now $500 or $600 penalty, but they could plead, well I've never broken the law before, I've never sped before and never sped in a school zone before; cut me some slack. And the officer will say well it doesn't matter what you've done because that was just obeying the law. What you did now is you broke the law. And that's where the penalty comes in. You can't balance out your disobedience by any act of obedience. That doesn't work in any court of law. It may ameliorate the sentence a little bit, but it doesn't take away the guilt, and this is what we must understand.

Nobody can negate their unrighteousness by any acts of righteousness at all. It doesn't work that way in any court system in the world.

The fact that we are corrupt fallen demands a cleansing, a purification for sin; and it must be eradicated. That's the word that is used in the Old Testament translated atonement in the King James version and other translations, the word kaphar, which when the rabbis translated it in the second and third century BC in the Greek Septuagint they translated it with the word KATHARIZO, which means to be cleansed. It's that purification of sin that what must take place. And the pictures that we have seen in the Old Testament showed that perfect substitute depicted by that Lamb that was, without spot or blemish. That perfect substitute was what was needed in order for purification. And that is a picture of Jesus is the Lamb of God who is without sin and a perfect substitute. Only by trusting in him and receiving His righteousness can we be righteous before God. We are never righteous before God because we've done something righteous, we are righteous before God because Jesus' righteousness is reckoned to us or imputed to us. It is given to us so that our deficit is covered by His perfect righteousness.

That's why second Corinthians 5:21 says, "He who knew no sin was made sin for us that the righteousness of God might be found in us". Not our righteousness but His righteousness is given to us, that's what comes with the trust in Christ.

The next point is a reference to those Old Testament illustrations of what happens in the sacrifices depicting substitution. In Leviticus 1:3 we are told about the offering for the burnt offering and that the offerer is to bring a lamb or a bullock or whatever from the herd. He offers a male without blemish, and then in verse four it says, "Then he shall put his hand on the head of the burnt offering and it will be accepted on his behalf (substitution) to make atonement for sin". The picture is that as the person bringing the sacrifice places his hand on it, it depicts identification.

We see that same imagery when we get into the New Testament with things such as ordination or commissioning missionaries to go out. The church leaders would lay hands on somebody, and that's what that picture is. We are identifying with one another; what they do is an extension of what we do, and so there's that transfer there that takes place that is depicted in the laying on of hands. The worshiper will lay his hand on the animal and recite his sins and those sins are transferred then from him onto that innocent animal that has done nothing wrong, and then that animal is then sacrificed for your sins in behalf of you instead of you paying the penalty. They are now on that animal.

When they translated the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek they would translate these phrases with the Greek words PERI HAMARTION. HAMARTIA is the word for sin. The plural there is located for sins, and that preposition PERI means in the place of, on behalf of, and there are number of things said in the dictionaries about it, but the main major Greek English dictionary for the study of Scripture says when used with HAMARTIA the word "for" has the sense to take away, to atone for. It's that idea of substitution that is emphasized by that Greek preposition. That is seen in passages like Leviticus 5:6, "he shall bring his trespass offering to the Lord for his sin", the idea of substitution, "which he had committed, a female from the flock, a lamb or kid of the goats as a sin offering. So the priest shall make atonement for him on behalf [or concerning] his sin". That's the word PERI there emphasizing substitution.

We see it again in that great prophetic passage in the Old Testament about the Messiah in Isaiah 53:5, 6. "He was wounded for our transgressions …" There it just uses a different preposition but it has the same idea of substitution. He was wounded for our transgressions. We transgressed and He is wounded or bruised, pierced even, in that same passage, on behalf of us. It's the picture of substitution. He's wounded for our transgressions, is bruised for our iniquities. "The chastisement (or, the punishment) for our peace (that we might have peace) was upon Him, and by His stripes (the flogging, the wounds that he incurred through the whipping) we are healed [saved].

Isaiah 53:6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.

There's that picture again that it is on Him, not on us, the picture of substitution.

We go back and see the Passover lamb imagery that shows that lamb dying in the place of that family at the 10th plague in Egypt. The Passover lamb is sacrificed. His blood is applied to the doorposts and the lintel of the door so that God would pass over and the firstborn's life would not be taken. This is picked up in 1 Corinthians 5:7 where the apostle Paul says, "For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us". That's the idea of substitution.

This Passover lamb imagery shows that the lamb died in our place, and Jesus is that Passover Lamb. As John the Baptist announced in John 1:29, when he saw Jesus coming down to be baptized, he said, "Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world". Again the Jewish audience listening to him would have their mind immediately go to that Passover sacrifice. On the Day of Atonement it was a goat. Other sacrifices were other animals, so it's the Lamb that is drawn specifically from that Passover imagery and that Passover analogy. So there is again is that picture of substitution.

Mark 10:45, “For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”

Christ presented Himself to serve God and mankind by giving His life as a payment price. We often hear in a lot of sermons about Christ serving but the application of that falls short because the picture that Jesus is always using ultimately of His service is to pay the penalty for sin. It's not just about service, it's a certain kind of service, and that uses a different preposition, ANTI, which again emphasizes substitution and emphasizes in place of. So there you have the term ransom, which is the doctrine of redemption, what the Bible teaches about the payment for sin.

There is another preposition HUPER, which means in place of. Again it's a preposition for substitution, just like on ANTI, and this is used in Luke 22:19 when Jesus is instituting the Lord's Table and says, "This is my body which is given for you". It is HUPER there indicating substitution.

2 Corinthians 5:21, He made Him who knew no sin {to be} sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

We see the preposition PERI again in 1 John 2:2. "and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for {those of} the whole world." Propitiation means satisfaction, so He is the one who satisfies God's righteousness. It's based on substitution.

What we have seen just in terms of these passages that emphasize substitution is they connect that to redemption, they connect that to propitiation, they connect that to the cleansing of sin, which is related to expiation. So we see how substitution is inherent in each of these other words that are used to relate to what Christ did on the cross.

Now let's tie this together for a minute in terms of understanding the difference between what Christ accomplished on the cross and what must take place as a transaction in our spiritual lives when we trust Christ as Savior.

There are three basic problems that face every member of the human race, except for Jesus was born without sin. We are all born with these three problems that have to be solved, and can only be solved by God. The first is that we are under a judicial penalty. We have been declared guilty because of the sin of Adam. That's what's referred to as Original Sin, the doctrine of original sin that what Adam did, we did.

There's the old Puritan primer or the New England primer where there's a little saying associated with each letter of the alphabet, and the first one is a for Adam: in Adam's fall we sin all. That's Original Sin. Adam was our representative in the garden. Because he fell, and that corrupted him spiritually, he's now spiritually dead; physically he is corrupted by sin. When they gave birth to their children, their children were all born spiritually dead and corrupted by sin. There is this genetic DNA connection that connects all of the human race, because we are all descended from Adam. Because of that we are under a judicial penalty of spiritual death. That means we are separated from God; we are born that way, Ephesians 2:1. We are born dead in our trespasses and sins. How did we get that way? The word born there is not in the passage, but it indicates that, because the only way we could have become dead in our sins and trip trespasses and sins is through Adam's original sin, which is taught elsewhere. "In Adam all die". We are born spiritually dead. That spiritual death is the judicial penalty.

When God put Adam and Eve in the garden He told them that they could eat from the fruit of any tree in the garden except one, the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The instant they ate from it they would die, but they did not die physically, they died spiritually. That is indicated by what happened.

When God came to walk in the garden they ran and hid in fear. They'd already tried to cover themselves up with fig leaves and so they are indicating their spiritual death. They hear God they run because they're afraid of Him. They are spiritually dead, but they don't die physically for over 900 years. Physical death was a consequence of sin, that's outlined in chapter 3. They are under this judicial penalty of spiritual death. We are all born under that judicial penalty. Somebody has to pay that penalty for us. That is the spiritual death of Christ on the cross. He paid the penalty for sin actually and truly for all people.

But even though Christ paid the penalty for sin, experientially we are still born spiritually dead. His death paid the penalty, but it didn't change anybody. It just paid a legal penalty that was directed towards God, satisfies His righteousness and justice and propitiation, but every human being is still born in Adam and dead. So we have an experiential reality, which is, we are born spiritually dead, were under a judicial penalty that's been paid. But that doesn't change our status at all. We are born spiritually dead and we are born unrighteous. We lack righteousness.

Jesus' death on the cross just satisfied that first problem. That is that it paid for our sin on the cross. It canceled it. He pays the price and He cancels the sin. That's Colossians 2:12-14. It doesn't potentially cancel it; it cancels it. It doesn't theoretically cancel it if we believe it because what Colossians 2:14 says is that it was nailed to the cross. That certificate of debt is nailed to the cross. It's nailed to the cross in AD 33; it's not nailed to the cross in 1970 or 1980 or 2005 when you trust Christ as Savior. It's nailed to the cross and eradicated at the cross, not now.

That tells us that that the only issue now between you and God is not your sins, because they are paid for. The issue is whether or not you've trusted Christ. When you trust in Christ, what happens is that you become spiritually alive, you are born again; that's regeneration. That's not what Christ accomplished on the cross, that's what happens when you trust in Christ. We are born spiritually dead, that's the legal penalty. Christ paid the penalty on the cross but it doesn't change anybody. That change only comes when they trust in Christ. When they trust in Christ, then they are regenerated, they become a new creature in Christ, and they also receive the imputation or the reckoning of Christ's righteousness to them. We are credited with his righteousness. That doesn't happen at the cross that happens when you and I trust in Christ as Savior. That's the foundation. Everything builds around substitution, which is what took place at the cross.

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