SUBSTITUTION, EXAMPLE OF

A man was lost in the Alps. The owner of the lodge where he had been staying sent out his best rescue dog to look for him. The dog found the man half-conscious, grabbed him, and started to shake him in order to wake him up. On coming to his senses the man, seeing the dog and thinking it was a wolf, stabbed the animal. The dog let go and returned to the lodge, where it died shortly thereafter. The dog’s owner followed the trail of blood, came to the lost man, and saved him. The dog had given his life so that another might live.1326

“One day a certain farmer saw that a fire had ignited in his wheat fields, and was being blown toward his barns by the wind. To save the stored grain there, he lit a backfire, in hopes that it would impede the progress of the other flames. After both fires had subsided—and the barns had been saved—the farmer walked out through the smoldering ashes of the nearby fields. There he discovered the dead body of one of his hens, which had been caught in the blaze. Sadly, he turned over her black, charred body with his foot—and out from underneath ran four baby chicks. Her sacrifice saved her young ones. Such is the work of Christ on the cross, a place where the love of God dealt with the justice of God, where God’s mercy matched God’s wrath. Our Lord’s sacrifice has saved us” (Attributed to Donald Grey Barnhouse).1327

In the winter of 1975, the Chicago Sun Times pictured a couple at a table kissing. The caption read: “Roderick A. Hinson gets a snack and a smack from Jacqueline Y. Nash in East Cleveland, Ohio, after he served her three-day jail sentence for possession of an unregistered gun.” Hinson said it was his fault that she had the gun and that “a jail is not a good place for a lady.” The judge said the substitution was unusual, but legal.1328

In one of Billy Graham’s evangelistic films, Shiokari Pass, a young Christian became a hero. He was working with a railroad company, far away from his fiancée. He worked hard every day and finally the time came to go back to his fiancée and marry her. On the way back home, just before the peak of a steep hill, the train suddenly shook hard and stopped. When the young man went to the front of the passenger car on which he was riding, he found that it was disconnected from the rest of the train. It then began to roll backward down the steep slope. Since he had worked on the railroad, he knew there was a sharp curve behind them that the passenger car could not handle. It would be thrown off the tracks, killing the passengers. He tried to stop the car with the hand brake, but he failed. Our hero then remembered his favorite verse in the Bible: “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” Although this man had everything to live for, he jumped on the train tracks and stopped the passenger car with his body. He literally laid down his life to save the lives of many.1329

During a war between Britain and France, men were conscripted into the French Army by a kind of lottery system. When someone’s name was drawn, he had to go off to battle. On one occasion, the authorities came to a certain man and told him he was among those who had been chosen. He refused to go, saying, “I was shot and killed two years ago.” At first the officials questioned his sanity, but he insisted that was indeed the case. He claimed that the military records would show that he had been killed in action. “How can that be?” they questioned. “You are alive now!” He explained that when his name first came up, a close friend said to him, “You have a large family, but I am not married and nobody is dependent upon me. I’ll take your name and address and go in your place.” And that is indeed what the record showed. This rather unusual case was referred to Napoleon Bonaparte, who decided that the country had no legal claim on that man. He was free. He had died in the person of another!1330

A number of years ago, a news story told of a dramatic incident that occurred in a small midwestern town. The residents of this town were warned to take cover because a tornado had been sighted. Living in this town was a young couple with a small baby. Knowing the tornado was upon them and that they had no time to take cover, they laid the tiny infant on the floor of their living room and covered the baby with their own bodies. The tornado struck with devastating force and leveled a row of homes, including theirs. The next morning, as rescue workers were rummaging through the destroyed homes, they heard a muffled crying. They came upon the lifeless bodies of the young couple, with their baby still safe beneath their shattered bodies.

They gave their lives for their child. This is what Christ has done for us.1331

A wise and just ruler established a series of laws for his people to follow. One day his mother broke one of the laws and was brought to the ruler after being caught. The penalty was twenty lashes. How could the ruler remain just and still fulfill the demands of his love for his mother? He took the lashes on his own back. Justice was satisfied, while love was revealed in full measure.1332

During the Civil War, a company of irregulars known as “bushwhackers” was arrested by the Union soldiers. Because they were guerrilla fighters and not in uniform, they were sentenced to be shot.

A courageous young boy in the Union Army touched his commanding officer on the arm and pleaded, “Won’t you allow me to take the place of one of the men you have just condemned? I know him well—he has a large family who needs him badly. My parents are dead and I have few friends. No one will miss me. Please let me take his punishment!” The officer hesitated, but finally gave his consent. Pulling the husband and father to one side, the young man filled his position in the death line. On the stone that marks his grave in a little southern town are these words: “Sacred to the memory of Willy Lear. He took my place.”1333

In Dickens’s novel A Tale of Two Cities, a young French aristocrat was condemned to die by the guillotine during the bloody French Revolution. His punishment was based solely on his forefathers’ crimes against the peasantry. The hour before his execution he was visited by a young English friend who could have passed for his twin. After the guard had left, the friend overpowered the doomed man with an anesthetic and exchanged clothes with him. Then, pretending to be the one condemned to die, he called the jailor and asked that his unconscious “visitor,” supposedly overcome with grief, be removed and returned to his home. The nobleman was thus saved from death.

On his way to the guillotine, the young Englishman spoke these final words: “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.…” And he comforted himself with these words: “I am the Resurrection and the Life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:25).1334

Auschwitz was the first German concentration camp to become an extermination camp. The gas chambers were in constant use. But because of the great influx of new prisoners daily, the Germans began to use firing squads as well.

One day, the commandant selected ten men from one barracks to be executed by the firing squad. One of those selected was the father of a large family. When he was pulled from his place in line, he fell to the ground, begging the commandant to spare his life. The commandant was unresponsive until the man standing next to the fallen one, a Catholic priest named Maximillian Kolbe, stepped forward to offer his life in exchange for the man on his knees. Surprisingly, the commandant agreed to such an arrangement. But, instead of being led away to the firing squad, Father Maximillian was thrown into a tiny damp cell where he suffered the agonizing death of starvation. Today, Maximillian Kolbe is honored by millions of people because he died in the place of one man.

Jesus Christ, through an agonizing death on the cross, died not for one man, or a few, or even several—but for all men.1335

One Thanksgiving afternoon, while waiting for the expected feast, two sisters went outside to play. Being a bit mischievous, they soon found something that looked like fun to do, which all too soon led them to something they had been told not to do. Their father came into the backyard and found the evidence of their disobedience and called them to him. He explained to the girls that they must go to their room and that neither would be allowed to eat Thanksgiving dinner until the one who had disobeyed him confessed. The girls went to their room.

A while later the girls heard their mother calling them for dinner. Not knowing what was going to happen, they went and took their usual places around the table. The girls noticed that their father was not seated at the table as usual and asked, “Where is Daddy?”

The mother replied, “Daddy said that you girls could not eat Thanksgiving dinner with us today until one of you came to him and confessed your disobedience. Since neither of you came, Daddy decided that he would take your punishment himself—and so he will not be eating Thanksgiving dinner with us today.”1336