Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “He died for us”. I find it interesting that our Quarterly, from time-to-time, keeps referencing the death of Christ as “substitutionary” (Quarterly for Sunday and Thursday). For most of us, that word means…” something in-place of another thing”. The Quarterly uses the term in that manner in the context of the lessons. Yet the Bible also states that we are die with Christ. That His crucifixion is to be ours, too. Making His death my own. Two of the most notable scriptures about this are: Galatians 2:20 “I have been crucified with Christ” … meaning “I am making His death my own”. And Romans 6:7, “For he who has died has been freed from sin” … meaning you dying… you dying with Christ. So, the conventional explanation of “substitute” does not work here. To illustrate a better concept of “substitute”, I will quote an anecdotal story told by a visiting pastor several decades ago. I was present when it was told and still remember it as a great illustration. Here is the story as I remember it.
“Hi folks. I am your substitute pastor while your regular pastor is away. In order for you to appreciate what it is like for someone to fill-in at another church, I would like to tell you this story. It happened to a friend of mine who was substituting like I am today.
My friend stood before the congregation and said, ‘I am your substitute pastor for the day. What if the deacons as they arrived this morning, discovered a windowpane broken in the Sanctuary here. Having no glass, they would scurry around to find a substitute for the pane. Perhaps a piece of cardboard would suffice. That cardboard would be a substitute for the pane until the deacons could install a real windowpane. So, think of me today as a substitute in that way… like a substitute windowpane until your pastor returns’.
After the service, the pastor was shaking hands at the door as people filed out. One little old lady shook his hand and said, ‘Oh Pastor. Your message today was wonderful. You shouldn’t think of yourself as a mere substitute. You were a real pane’.”
Funny. But illustrates a sublime truth. Christ went to the cross as our “substitute” until the real “pane” shows-up… you… and me. In this way, Christ did it “for” us, awaiting our love response to His outpouring of love. We are the ones who must voluntarily go to the cross and die there with Christ, in order to be “born again” (until we “die” with Him, we are not freed from our self-centeredness… not freed to love profligately… not freed to love that counts not the cost). Christ’s death is not an unusual event. It shows us the very motive of the Godhead and all of Heaven’s inhabitants. And of us, too, if we follow our Lord and Savior. We don’t stop following Him at the foot of the cross. We follow Him all the way… and die with Him there on the cross every day. “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me” (Luke 9:23). For me, this is the better meaning of “substitute”. Christ does not die instead of us. He dies for us, awaiting the day we chose His death for ourselves so that we may have His life for ourselves, too… if we will. If we will come into union with Him in His death… and His life. We are such sinners. We think we can be rehabilitated. But we cannot. The only way for us to realize our own true nature is to die to our false sinful nature with our God... and be re-born with Him.
As we come into union with Him we see the beauty of other-centered love; we long to be like Him and we begin to yield self. Self-love begins to be supplanted by other-centered love. It is a continual yielding of self (continual crucifixion of self with Christ) and a continual re-birth to other-centered love (continual rising to newness of life with Christ). Baptism being a fitting and vital symbol of this daily, hourly, minute-by-minute process. Only accomplished in tight intimate relationship with the One whom we die-with and rise-with… because it is an act of creation itself. Bringing to life your soul which is dead in sin and self-serving.
With brotherly love,
Jim