In our daily meditations, we continue exploring the theme of being equipped to share the Gospel with others. Often, our challenge is not knowing how to share the Gospel—what do we say? There is a need for training on which truths to convey. We have already covered three essential parts of a Gospel presentation: 1. Salvation is a gift, 2. All have sinned, 3. The wages of sin. Now we turn to the fourth part, which explains why Christ, God in the flesh, had to die. He died as us and for us. He died the death of a substitute.
In today’s message, we are diving into the good news itself, and the following truths should be clearly explained so that people can resolve the issue of righteousness once and for all. If someone feels unworthy, they will find it difficult to approach God. Attempting to live the Christian life based on our merit and effort is impossible. There is a reason Jesus had to suffer on the cross, and this is the crucial point people need to understand:
For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive in the Spirit (1 Peter 3:18; emphasis added).
Jesus did not die as a martyr; He died as a substitute. What do we mean by a substitute? In his book Written in Blood, Robert Coleman recounts a story about a little boy whose sister needed a blood transfusion. The doctor explained that she had the same disease the boy had recovered from two years earlier. Her only chance for recovery was a transfusion from someone who had previously conquered the disease. Because the two children shared the same rare blood type, the boy was the ideal donor. "Would you give your blood to Mary?" the doctor asked. Johnny hesitated. His lower lip began to tremble. Then he smiled and replied, "Sure, for my sister."
The two children were wheeled into the hospital room—Mary, pale and thin; Johnny, robust and healthy. Neither spoke, but when their eyes met, Johnny grinned. As the nurse inserted the needle into his arm, Johnny's smile faded. He watched the blood flow through the tube. With the ordeal almost over, his slightly shaky voice broke the silence. "Doctor, when do I die?' Only then did the doctor realize why Johnny had hesitated, why his lip had trembled when he'd agreed to donate his blood. He thought that giving his blood to his sister meant giving up his life. In that brief moment, he'd made his great decision. Fortunately, Johnny didn't have to die to save his sister. However, each of us faces a condition more serious than Mary's, and it required Jesus to give not just His blood but His life. He took the just punishment that you and I deserved upon Himself so that forgiveness could be offered to us freely as a gift.
"He himself bore our sins" in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; "by his wounds you have been healed" (1 Peter 2:24).
He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5).
The problem of sin and its effects needed to be dealt with and resolved. In His love, God sent His Son, Jesus Christ—God in human form—born as a man to overcome sin and death on our behalf. When Jesus was crucified, He took our place, dying as our substitute. The term "substitutionary death" best describes what Jesus accomplished by dying in our stead.
Let’s illustrate this further with the following story. In the book Miracle on the River Kwai, Ernest Gordon recounts the true story of a group of prisoners of war working on the Burma Railway during World War II. At the end of each day, the tools were collected from the work party. On one occasion, a Japanese guard shouted that a shovel was missing and demanded to know which man had taken it. He ranted and raved, working himself into a paranoid fury, and ordered whoever was guilty to step forward. No one moved. "All die! All die!" he shrieked, cocking and aiming his rifle at the prisoners. At that moment, one man stepped forward, and the guard clubbed him to death with his rifle while he stood silently at attention. When they returned to the camp, the soldiers counted the tools again, and no shovel was missing. That one man stepped forward as a substitute to save the others. In the same way, Jesus stepped forward and satisfied justice by dying in our place. Let’s continue this theme tomorrow. Keith Thomas
This short meditation is taken from the Discipleship series. It’s called Sharing the Gospel
Maybe you’d like to check out our video teachings at YouTube