In my place

In My Place

The Spirituality of Substitution

Extracts from a booklet in the Grove Spirituality Series, In My Place, by Gary Jenkins, vicar of Holy Trinity. The full text is obtainable from Grove Books Ltd. The whole text is Copyright Ó Gary Jenkins, 1999.

1. The Power of Substitution

In my place condemned he stood;

sealed my pardon with his blood:

Alleluia ! what a saviour[1][1]

Few doctrines have been so consistently unpopular among theologians as the substitutionary atonement. It has been variously described as immoral, unjust, incomprehensible, unchristian, incredible and outdated. Few doctrines, however, have brought so much joy, assurance, comfort and hope to the Christian believer. Charles Spurgeon, the great nineteenth-century Baptist preacher to the teeming hordes of London, maintained:

If there should ever come a wretched day when all the pulpits shall be full of modern thought, and the old doctrine of substitutionary sacrifice shall be exploded, there will remain no word of comfort for the guilty or hope for the despairing. Hushed will be for ever those silken notes which console the living and cheer the dying.[2][2]

Today, the doctrine of substitution continues to lie at the heart of evangelical spirituality. David Gillett, writing of the substitutionary death of Christ on the cross. writes :

Nothing else in earth or heaven is as vital to evangelicals as the objective truth of the cross and a person’s conscious acceptance of all that it offers as God’s gracious provision of forgiveness, reconciliation, and eternal life.[3][3]

It is preached from the pulpits of many growing churches. It is the subject of scores of popular hymns and choruses. It has been proclaimed by some of our greatest evangelists from D.L. Moody to Billy Graham. It features in some of the most widely known evangelistic resources from Alpha to Emmaus. It was loved by the Reformers of the sixteenth century and was at the heart of the revival of the eighteenth. The Book of the Common Prayer, the Articles of the Church of England,[4][4] and other Reformation formularies bear witness to it.

Far from being unbelievable and incomprehensible, many people do believe it and claim to have had their lives changed by it. This old doctrine that stubbornly refuses to die, this ‘irrelevant’ relic from the past, annoyingly persists in demonstrating its power to change lives. Even its critics admit it ‘preaches well’. Gillett (defending it) explains why :

An exposition of substitutionary atonement allows the whole mystery of the cross to be communicated in manageable compass: the hearer is given a step by step explanation of the relationship between the eternal God, the historical event of Calvary, and his or her present spiritual state. The need for a response can be clearly shown and the way opened for the individual to enter here and now into the benefits of what Christ did two thousand years ago. [5][5]

I wish to argue the particular relevance of the substitutionary atonement to the people who live in Urban Priority Areas and outer housing estates, of the kind that I am privileged to live amongst and serve. Of course, substitution is relevant to all, but I believe the message of ‘Christ in my place’ is especially Good News in this cultural setting. Why? Because it addresses directly and personally two of the chief problems people wrestle with and it does it in a way that no other understanding of the atonement does. These two problems are feelings of guilt and of low self-worth.

I hope to show how substitution speaks directly to these and, in the process of doing so, to argue for the importance of regaining and maintaining a living contemporary spirituality centred on substitutionary atonement .

2. Why Substitution ?

Amazing love, O what sacrifice,

The Son of God given for me.

My debt He pays, and my death He dies,

That I might live, that I might live.[6][6]

Substitution in scripture

The first and most obvious answer to that question is that this is how God decided to do it . From early on in scripture the principle of substitution[7][7]can be discerned. It comes to its fullest expression at the cross[8][8] where Jesus took the place of, or substituted himself for sinners.

The Bible does not explain why God chose to operate in this way, although that he did so seems to be in harmony with his general mode of operation as revealed in scripture.

Substitution is, of course, closely related to incarnation, though, it is sometimes those who most stress the incarnation as a principle for Christian living and ministry who are least happy with the idea of substitution. However, on the basis of scriptural revelation it would be wrong to set the two in opposition for two main reasons:

Firstly, incarnation led to substitution. It was the incarnate Lord who substituted himself for sinners on the cross. Jesus was the man born to die. When he took flesh and became a human being he did so in order to save humankind and he did that in his death and resurrection which included him dying as a substitute and taking our place. He was a suitable substitute for us because he was one of us, because he was fully human, as well as fully God. Rembrandt’s famous painting of the Nativity which shows the shadow of the cross in the background nicely makes the connnection between incarnation and atonement.

Secondly, substitution is the incarnation taken to its logical conclusion. If the incarnation is about the Son of God coming to live in our world, living amongst us, sharing and identifying with our joys and our sorrows and our lives to the extent of taking flesh and living amongst us, then substitutionary atonement speaks of that same Jesus coming to us in our sadness and guilt and even in our judgement before God and standing there in our place, for us and instead of us. Substitution is, therefore, a working out of the incarnational principle:

on the cross Jesus’ representative relation to us, as the last Adam whose image we are to bear, took the form of substituting for us under judgement, as the suffering servant on whom the Lord ‘laid the iniquity of us all.’ [9][9]

There are only two parties involved in the atonement: the believer and the Lord. We are dealing with the self-substitution of God[10][10] and not with God sending someone else, quite separate from himself, to take the blame on behalf of sinful humanity. It is God, in the person of his Son, who stands in the place of sinners.

The personal impact of substitution

If the first reason is that the Bible teaches it, the second, which arises from it, is the pastoral power of substitution in people’s lives.

Although, this by no means exhausts the achievement or the significance of the cross, I want to argue that substitution speaks particularly and powerfully to those who feel a profound sense of guilt and those who feel a deep sense of worthlessness and lack of personal significance.

I shall call as my witnesses some members of my church here in our large council estate parish in south west London and also some of the writers of popular Christian worship songs. Happily, singing about the cross is undergoing something of a renaissance.[11][11] They are indicators of the current state of spirituality in the churches which are growing and where most younger people worship.

The great strength of a substitutionary understanding of the atonement is that it presents the cross as an objective event - something definite that actually happened, something decisive occurred then which affects things now. Objective theories of atonement stand in contrast to subjective models such as that generally attributed to Abelard, where the chief effect of the cross is seen in the subject - in the change that is wrought in the life of the believer in his contemplation of the cross and the following of it by way of example and not in any objective change in the external world. There are, of course, other models of the atonement that present the cross as an objective event, for example, the Christus Victor[12][12] model which, as the name implies, stresses the objective victory of Christ over the devil and the powers of evil. But the the particular strength of substitution is the way it links the objective historical event of the cross with the life of the believer here and now.

With substitution the cross is an event that affects me personally. It is not merely a historical event consigned to the past. It is an event from the past that affects me now. It does not just affect me in the sense that what it achieved has some effect on me now - in much the same way as the victory of the Second World War affects me now as a citizen of the UK in 1999 who enjoys the benefit of not living under Nazi tyranny.[13][13] It affects me personally because it was my death Jesus died, it was my sin he bore, it was my judgement he underwent. And because of all this, I can say with the apostle Paul ‘the son of God loved me and gave himself for me‘ or in the words of a contemporary worship song: ‘Thank you Jesus, for loving me’ [14][14]

To dismiss substitution, as some of its critics do, as no more than a legal fiction or an impersonal and incredible mechanism for the transferring of sin, or what Edward Irving called ‘stock-exchange divinity’[15][15] is fundamentally to misunderstand it . Substitution, properly understood, is about how the Trinitarian God, the God who has relationships at his heart, relates to the sinner personally and relationally through the cross.

There is nothing impersonal about substitution. Only a substitutionary understanding of the atonement gives that direct, personal, here-and-now connection between Jesus who died on the cross around AD 30 and the modern day believer. The cross is no longer a remote event from the distant past but something that affects me personally now. As to how it affects the individual believer we now turn.

3. Substitution and Guilt

4. Substitution and True Worth

These chapters are available in the full text of In My Place: the Spirituality of Substitution by Gary Jenkins in the Grove Spirituality Series, obtainable from Grove Books Ltd, Ridley Hall Rd, Cambridge, CB3 9HU (1223 464748). £2.25 post free.

5. Substitution and the Praise-Filled Life

Jesus, what can I give, what can I bring

To so faithful a friend, to so loving a king?

Saviour, what can be said, what can be sung

as a praise of your name

For the things you have done

Oh, my words could not tell, not even in part

Of the debt of love that is owed by this thankful heart

You deserve my every breath

For you’ve paid the great cost;

Giving up your life to death

even death on the cross [16][16]

The spirituality of substitution is one of deep praise and thanksgiving to God. It is a spirituality of personal indebtedness to Christ. It is a spirituality that inspires sacrificial living and giving. It is a spirituality that leads, in short, to worship. George Carey explains:

the love of a representative is generous enough but the love of a substitute, who takes my sin and makes it his and who becomes ‘God forsaken’ is beyond the realm of human language, but thankfully not worship.[17][17]

The spirituality of substitution inspires the believer to a sacrificial offering of himself to God in thanksgiving for his indescribable gift. In Pilgrim’s Progress Hopeful’s sense of gratitude to the substitute who ‘died the death..not for himself but for me’[18][18] issues in a desire to glorify Christ and live a holy life:

And now was my heart full of joy, mine eyes full of tears, and my affections running over with love, to the name, people and ways of Jesus Christ...It made me love a holy life, and long to do something for the honour and glory of the name of the Lord Jesus.[19][19]

James Packer notes:

The notion which the phrase penal substitution expresses is that Jesus Christ our Lord, moved by a love that was determined to do everything necessary to save us, endured and exhausted the destructive divine judgement, for which we were otherwise inescapably destined, and so won us forgiveness, adoption and glory. To affirm penal substitution is to say that believers are in debt to Christ specifically for this and that this is the mainspring of all their joy, peace, and praise both now and for eternity.[20][20]

The power of the spirituality of substitution to inspire the believer to sacrificial acts of service to God and the community, to generous financial giving, and even to the laying down of life in perilous missionary circumstances is well-known. Michael Saward argues that there is a direct correlation between the level of giving and the preaching of a message of redemption centered on the cross:

For many years the stewardship movement has laid great stress on the goodness of God in creation. It has not ... made much of the redemptive act of God in Christ. I am personally convinced that the one thing that has always been the deepest motivational challenge to Christians has been the redeeming work of Christ’s death and the power of his subsequent resurrection.....Jesus paid a price beyond all reckoning and we in gratitude give ourselves as a thank-offering. Moved by that conviction Christians have gone to the ends of the earth. It is the supreme motivation of Christian living and giving.[21][21]

The spirituality of substitution springs from a deep knowledge and awareness of God’s love which itself evokes a response of love. This surely is true worship. This is the basis of St Paul’s exhortation in Romans 12. In the first eleven chapters of the letter he describes the grace and mercy of God shown in Christ, then in chapter 12 he exhorts his readers to respond in the only appropriate way:

Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God - this is your spiritual act of worship.[22][22]

And so the spirituality of substitution leads the believer to sing

Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were an offering far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.[23][23]

You have been reading extracts from In My Place: the Spirituality of Substitution, by Gary Jenkins, in the Grove Spirituality Series. The full text is obtainable from Grove Books Ltd, Ridley Hall Rd, Cambridge, CB3 9HU (1223 464748). £2.25 post free.

[1][1] Bliss, P., Hymns for Today’s Church, Hodder & Stoughton, 1982, hymn number 130

[2][2] Gillett, D.K., Trust and Obey: Explorations in Evangelical Spirituality, London: Darton, Longman, & Todd, 1993, p.7

[4][4] See ‘Appendix : Salvation and the Anglican Heritage’ in Doctrine Commission of the General Synod of the Church of England, The Mystery of Salvation, London: Church House Publishing, 1995, pp 206-216

[6][6] Kendrick, G, ‘My Lord what love is this ?’, Songs of Fellowship, Eastbourne: Kingsway Music, 1998, Song 398

[7][7] The provision of the ram which dies instead of Isaac in Genesis 22 is clearly substitutionary in character as is the passover lamb of Exodus 12. Later on in the OT Isaiah 53 is, of course, a key text.

[8][8] The principal New Testament texts are Mark 10.45, Galatians 3.13, Romans 3.21-26, 1 Corinthians 5.7, Hebrews 9.28, 1 Peter 1.19, 1 Peter 2.24, 1 Timothy 2.6, John 11.50, 2 Corinthians 5.14, 2 Corinthians 5.21,

[9][9] Packer, J.I., What Did the Cross Achieve? The Logic of Penal Substitution, Tyndale Bulletin, 25, 1974, p.34

[11][11] See especially songs by Graham Kendrick or Matt Redman in collections such as Songs of Fellowship, Eastbourne: Kingsway Music, 1998

[12][12] Aulen, G., Christus Victor, London: SPCK, 1961

[13][13] This would be the kind of way that the Christus Victor model of the atonement could be said to affect individuals. It affects them because they share in the benefits of the victory achieved and not in the sense (as it would be with substitution) that they are personally involved in the event of the cross themselves. In advocating substitution, the insights of the Christus Victor model are not denied since it, too, witnesses to an important strand of New Testament teaching about the cross.

[15][15] Letham, R., The Work of Christ, Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993, p.138. Letham describes how penal substitution can seem a ‘heartless business transaction’ when detached from the Bible’s wider frame of reference.

[16][16] Redman, M., ‘I will offer up my life,’ Songs of Fellowship, song 851

[17][17] Carey, G., The Gate of Glory, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1986, p154

[21][21] Saward, M., All Change: The Local Church Changes Gear, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1983, p 75

[23][23] Watts, I., Hymns for Today’s Church, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1982, hymn 147