Quotes about Substitution

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.

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.

If anywhere in the whole New Testament teaches an explicit doctrine of "penal substitution," this is it—but it falls within the narrative not of a "works contract," not of an angry God determined to punish someone, not of "going to heaven," but of God's vocational covenant with Israel and through Israel, the vocation that focused on the Messiah himself and then opened out at last into a genuinely human existence:

Today we have substituted doctrinal belief for personal belief, and that is why so many people are devoted to causes and so few are devoted to Jesus Christ.

Vicarious intercession means that we deliberately substitute God's interests in others for our natural sympathy with them.

Substitution is always twofold—not only is Jesus Christ identified with my sin, but I am so identified with Him that the disposition which ruled Him is in me.

Then Abraham looked up and saw behind him a ram in a thicket, caught by its horns. So he went and took the ram and offered it as a burnt offering in place of his son.

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

He must not inspect whether it is good or bad, and he shall not make any substitution. But if he does make a substitution, both the animal and its substitute shall become holy; they cannot be redeemed.’”

“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,

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.”

“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.