Quotes about Substitution

Now please let your servant stay here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy. Let him return with his brothers.

He [Christ] died for me. He made His righteousness mine and made my sin His own; and if He made my sin His own, then I do not have it, and I am free.

“Behold, I have taken the Levites from among the children of Israel in place of every firstborn Israelite from the womb. The Levites belong to Me,

Jesus Christ was treated as we deserved so that when we believe in Jesus, God treats us as Jesus deserves.

“Take the Levites in place of all the firstborn of Israel, and the livestock of the Levites in place of their livestock. The Levites belong to Me; I am the LORD.

So the steward continued to withhold their choice food and the wine they were to drink, and he gave them vegetables instead.

For the Levites have been wholly given to Me from among the sons of Israel. I have taken them for Myself in place of all who come first from the womb, the firstborn of all the sons of Israel.

You are to take the Levites for Me—I am the LORD—in place of all the firstborn of Israel, and the livestock of the Levites in place of all the firstborn of the livestock of the Israelites.”

And the Lamb of God not only did this, but was chastised on our behalf, and suffered a penalty He did not owe, but which we owed because of the multitude of our sins; and so He became the cause of the forgiveness of our sins, because He received death for us, and transferred to Himself the scourging, the insults, and the dishonour, which were due to us, and drew down on Himself the apportioned curse, being made a curse for us.

The meaning of atonement is not to be found in our penitence evoked by the sight of Calvary, but rather in what God did when in Christ on the cross He took our place and bore our sin.

God is not counting our sins against us because He is counting our sins against Christ.

Thus, whether on the large scale — where Jesus as Messiah stands in for Israel, and hence (because of Israel's representative status in God's purposes) for the world — or on the small scale, with individual moments, the point is rammed home by all four gospels. It is not either 'victory' or 'substitution'. The victory is won by Jesus dying the death of the unrighteous.