My Substitute

A basic part of Christian theology is the idea of sacrificial substitution: Christ bore the burden of our sins so that we could be set free from it.  Some of us come to a personal understanding of this concept that fills us with an abiding gratitude to God for his gift of atoning salvation, which drives our life in a very different direction.  As a result we begin to participate with the movement of the Holy Spirit in our lives, who directs us into very different pathways than we'd otherwise follow and transforms us into very different people than we would be on our own.

I'm getting a different glimpse into this than I've ever had before, one with which I must be very careful because of its potential to lead me back to an emotionally unhealthy place. Yet I think it is not only worthwhile to give it appropriate consideration, it may be a gift from God in this season of Lent.

Seventeen years ago, I received mercy I didn't deserve.  At the time, I didn't really recognize how true that was.  At first, at least, it felt unfair that my own actions to address the wrong I'd done led me at all into the legal consequences of my wrongdoing.  I came to understand that entire cause-and-effect much better.  Now, however, I find myself appalled by the sentence handed down against a dear old friend, especially in comparison with my own, when my own actions were so much more damaging than his were.  When I was discussing this with my bride the other evening, she expressed how she is likewise taken aback, and couldn't help but point out the undeniable truth that what I did was so much worse than our friend's crime.  She wasn't putting me down with that; it's just that the severity of our friend's punishment is more along the lines of what I deserved than what he did.  Now as we exchange correspondence and I read his wife's posts of his e-mails detailing his experiences in prison - which is coincidentally located on what was part of an Air Force Base on which he once served at least a TDY - I can't help but get a clearer picture of what I deserved.

I know he isn't there in my place - I completely know this.  As much as he loves me (and I him), I know that my friend would not have chosen to bear my penalty for me had he been offered the opportunity to do so.  I'm confident that he doesn't blame me for the position he's in; when he expresses his anger about his current situation, it is anger at himself for the choices he has made, not over the social climate that played a role in his punishment being so much more extreme than he really deserved - a climate which one could argue all offenders have played a role in creating.

Yet still it feels as if, as a result of his incarceration, I am getting a deeper insight into and understanding of what it really means that Jesus accepted the penalty for my sin.  The pain and humiliation of a crown of thorns is foreign to me, but my friend's separation from his family is real, and something I have experienced to a lesser degree.  The flogging that Jesus experienced for my sake is a pain unlike any I have ever known, but my friend's fear of what his experience in prison might become is frightfully familiar.  And the burden of bearing the world's guilt in the gruesome crucifixion on that cross is utterly alien to me, and so the idea that Jesus bore it for me has always been a little distant, but this feeling that my friend's place should have been mine helps me to feel more grateful than ever to Jesus for taking my place.