Substitution

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All real Bible students are doubtless aware that the words "substitute" and "substitution" are not found in The Book. It is not so generally known that the theological concept represented by these words is also foreign to the Bible, and as distinctly heathen in its origin as the Sun Festival, but a careful study, first of every passage of the Bible bearing on the subject; and secondly, of the history of the apostasy in its influence on theological thought, will show that this is true.

The doctrine of substitution is properly named. It is simply a substitute for personal obedience and genuine consecration. If further evidence of this is needed it is found in the fact that to defend substitution, a whole series of articles on "The Blood" was written and published, without one thought in the whole series, even touching the subject of individual consecration.

Properly understood, the doctrine of the blood, which runs like a scarlet thread through the whole Bible, is simply the doctrine of individual consecration, due to the divine indwelling, given life. The Bible is "The Book" of spiritual biology, a record of the working of the divine given life in man.

The doctrine of substitution has obscured this wonderful, glorious fact, and has largely transformed the Bible into the record of the DEATH of one divine superman, to which death all people, forward and backward, were to look for salvation. Now any salvation that can come to any man from something that took place four thousand years after he was dead, or two thousand years before he was born, however great and splendid that something may be, can be only an arbitrary salvation, a letting him off from damnation.

If the salvation is arbitrary and external, the damnation that made it necessary must also be arbitrary and external. And if the damnation is arbitrary and external, the law, the transgression of which caused the damnation, was also arbitrary; and the God who gave man such an arbitrary law, and who damned man when he disobeyed it, was an arbitrary God. Thus we have traced the whole doctrine of substitution to its ultimate source, in the first lie the devil told about God.

The concept of substitution stated literally is this: God, as Satan said, is an arbitrary God, dictating to man arbitrarily to keep him from some possible pleasure. God gave an arbitrary law, saying, "do this, and I will let you live; don't do that or you shall die." Man transgressed this arbitrary law, and God damned him therefore, or doomed him to utter destruction and death. Christ stepped in and suffered death, bearing the penalty of the law in the place of man, thus satisfying the demand of God, and so all who accept the death of Christ by faith are exempt from damnation.  

This theory is logical throughout, but a theory may be logical and yet false; and this whole theory contradicts the Bible at every point. It discriminates between the Father and the Son, making the Father stern and hard, demanding His full pound of flesh; but making the Son loving, and kind, so sympathetic that He gives His life to satisfy the Father's demands.

But Jesus, again and again said "I and my Father are one." "He that seeth me, seeth the Father." It was the whole thought and effort of Christ to so place every man in loving relations with "Our Father in Heaven" that all our prayer, and praise and thanksgiving would go up gratefully, and trustingly to Him.

The doctrine of substitution has so changed this that even in the hymnology of the world there are a hundred songs of praise to Christ to one that gives any praise to the Father.

This view makes Christ the source of salvation, and even the source in opposition to the original will of the Father. The Scriptures never make Christ the source of salvation, but only the means of salvation, and God the source. Christ is most careful on this point. Hear Him saying, “I came not to do my will but the will of Him who sent me.” My doctrine is not mine but His that sent me.” "I can do nothing of myself.” The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works!”

And Paul tells us, "All things are of God who hath reconciled us unto himself by Jesus Christ." Nothing could be plainer, from all this, then that God is the source and Christ the means..

This theory of substitution sets the heathen idea of sacrifice in the place of the Christian idea, and blasphemously applies it, even to the sacrifice on the cross. All heathen sacrifice meant the anger and wrath of the gods, that must be satisfied and appeased before man could be let off.

The divine idea of sacrifice is "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." And why did He give Him? Was it to satisfy His own demands? No, emphatically no. Listen, "that whosoever believeth on Him should not perish" (literally come to nothing), "but have everlasting life," (literally come to the realization of every possibility.) A moment's thought will show any one that the substitutionary idea is a complete contradiction of this Bible idea of sacrifice, and is simply an application of the heathen idea as stated above, to the sacrifice of Christ. It has transformed what was intended to be a revelation of love to make all God's children wonder and adore, into a revelation of divine wrath that needed to be appeased and that demanded a sacrifice.

This view makes God's love for us the result of the atonement and teaches that God loves us because Christ died for us. The Bible makes God's love the cause of the atonement, and tells us that God loved us even “when we were dead in trespasses and sins.”

This theory makes God forgive us because Christ paid the price. But Christ teaches that God forgives without price, “when we have nothing to pay”. And the whole Bible teaches that God paid the price, to so reveal His love to us as to bring us to repentance, so He might pardon us freely. These are only a few of the evidences that might be brought to show that the substitutionary idea contradicts the Bible at every point.

Now the Bible is a divine and harmonious revelation, and does not conflict with itself; and the fact that substitution is in conflict with the Bible at every point shows that it is extraneous to the Bible, and as purely heathen in its origin as the Sun Festival or the doctrine of inherent immortality.

There is another view of damnation and of salvation which is not arbitrary, and which is not only logical throughout, but is in perfect harmony with the Scriptures on all points where the substitutionary idea contradicts them.

God is not arbitrary; but He is Infinite love, mercy and truth.

God's law is not arbitrary, but in infinite wisdom God foreknew, and in infinite love he foretold the eternal principles of right, accordance with which is happiness and life, and discordance with which is misery and death. Man transgressed this law, bringing upon himself misery, damnation and death.

When man had done this God did not leave him to his fate, or demand a price for his pardon; but God paid the price, pouring out His very life through Christ, by the Holy Spirit to break down the barriers that sin had built up, to shine away the darkness that sin had brought in, and so to reveal His love in spite of it all, as to bring man to repentance and forgive him freely. The whole plan of salvation is the outreaching heart of God, through Christ, by the Holy Spirit, to bring home to the Father's House every lost soul who will heed the Spirit's call.

Both of these views of damnation and of salvation are logical throughout when they are kept separate; but when they are mixed they become contradictory and self-destructive.

It is strange how the advocates of substitution will persist in assuming that those who deny this doctrine thereby deny the Divinity of Christ, and reduce His whole life to merely the human example of giving His life in loving service. But those who do not believe in substitution wish here to assert that they believe in a Divine, Omnipresent, Living Christ.

They believe that Christ is the "Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." They believe that then and there the real Rock was smitten, from which the "living water" of the omnipresent Christ life flows; and that ever since then Christ has so lived His life in humanity that "He was their Saviour and in all their afflictions he was afflicted, and the angel of His presence saved them; and He bare them and carried them all the days of old." They believe that Christ was just as spiritually present the four thousand years before His death on Calvary as He has been the two thousand years since. They believe that all this time Christ has been spiritually present to do in us all that God did in the flesh of the incarnate Christ.

This is why we do not believe in substitution. If Christ was only present to do in us some of the things He did in times past or to let us off from doing them, why then we would believe in substitution just that far. Here again it is plain that substitution is properly named. If it is true at all it is to just that extent a limitation on our entering into the fulness of Christ's experience, and so is a substitute for personal righteousness.

The writer for years publicly asserted that if any man can show one thing that Jesus did that He does not want to do in us now, but to let us off from doing it, he will from that time on believe in substitution just that far. It surely is not Chist's Crucifixion, for He, Himself, said "Except ye take up your cross, and deny yourself daily, and come after me, ye can not be my disciples. Will any one dare assert that our cross does not mean for us, just what His cross meant for Him? Did He, Himself, not teach that it meant that we, as well as He, must be true and loyal to all God's requirements, even if it costs us our lives?

It is in this Presence of Christ to do in us now all that Jesus did, that ALL SALVATION RESTS. The salvation of the Bible is salvation from sin. "His name shall be called Jesus (Saviour) for He shall save His people from their sins." The external thought of letting one off from an external damnation is not anywhere to be found in the Bible idea of salvation. Paul did not say, as from some teaching it would seem that he should have said, "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is an arrangement made by Christ with the Father by means of which we can be let off". What he did say was "I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the POWER OF GOD unto salvation to every one that believeth."

God did not have to be made willing to have us saved, nor did He demand a price. God, himself, was so willing, and so desirous that we should be saved, that He paid the price and it is His Power in Christ, and through Christ, in us that brings salvation. The instant we see that all Bible salvation is salvation from sin, that instant we see that it takes a present, living Christ to do the saving. To save me, the power must act here, now, when and where I am.

Abraham was not saved by a future Christ, and I am not saved by a past Christ and the scripture says "Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them because greater is He that is in you than he that is in the world." "The riches of the glory of this mystery," which God would make known to you, "is Christ in you the hope of glory." And when Christ dwells in our hearts by faith, the result is that "we may be filled with all the fulness of God." Not a part of it but all.

Now how plain it is that the whole of salvation is not death as the substitutionists teach but ever Life, the divine, omnipresent, omnipotent, transforming all-conquering Life of God in man. The everlasting gospel of this present transforming life power was revealed in various ways, in the water from the rock, in Aaron's rod that budded, but chiefly in the Sanctuary and in the sacrifices; but this spiritual saving truth was lost out of all these, and so they became dead forms, and the very God who instituted them said "Bring me no more vain oblations I cannot away with - - I am weary to bear them."

Then the working of this divine transforming life, and of how the world and the church, receive and reject it, was revealed all over again in the incarnate life and death of Jesus of Nazareth; and so we enter into these same wonderful experiences by a new and living way which He opened for us, through the veil, that is to say His flesh. Jesus said "I am the way, no man cometh unto the Father but by me." People are trying to be saved by the way, instead of entering by the way, into salvation. The local and temporal incarnate Christ is a revelation of the eternal, living) omnipresent Christ, - the Christ who saves.

Believing in Christ after the flesh and in that only saves no man. Thousands have, all their lives without question or philosophic doubt, believed that Jesus of Nazareth was the divine Son of God, that He lived, that He died, and that He rose again, and ascended into Heaven, from whence He will come again at the last day; and yet, by all this they have not been saved, but the deepening lines of guilt and sin on their faces, show that they are lost, and are being lost more and more. Paul said, Henceforth I will know Christ after the flesh no more, and Paul was not giving up anything that saves, but only going on into the deeper experiences of salvation. See II Corinthians 5:16

While the death of Jesus was not necessary because God demanded a price, the reader will please note that the writer does not say that death did not become necessary for other reasons. God does not permit such things to take place unnecessarily. I have not the space here to show what was accomplished by the death of Jesus, but I call the readers attention to the wonderful thought that the Bible never once asserts that we are saved by the death of Christ, but always that we are saved by His life.

It is the doctrine of substitution that before almost the whole world has taken the emphasis off from the divine, omnipresent, saving Christ life, and centered it simply on the local and temporal death, using that to hide, instead of to reveal the larger fact. And in thus misplacing the emphasis, the doctrine of substitution has belittled the whole idea of salvation, and changed it from the spiritual concept of salvation from sin into a mere external letting off from damnation.

Illustrating this removal of the emphasis from life to death, and the resultant hiding of spiritual truth, we will speak briefly of the offerings or sacrifices. These were the "sin offering", the "trespass offering", the "burnt offering", the "meat offering", and the "peace offering." These offerings could be brought only in the order named; and they represented so many successive, and progressive steps of saving spiritual experience.

"The sin offering", represented the sinner coming to God for pardon, yielding up his carnal nature to destruction and crucifixion, and presenting his blood, his life, to be renewed by the divine power, glorified by the divine presence, and poured out in the divine service.

The "trespass offering" represented the trespasser, overtaken in a fault bringing his offering for forgiveness and giving over his carnal nature, his flesh, to renewed crucifixion.

The "burnt offering" was the consecration offering. After one had been, by bringing the proper offering, received and pardoned as a sinner, or as a trespasser, he could bring his individual burnt offering, or have part in the daily consecration offering, or burnt offering of the congregation. It must be a whole burnt offering, for it represented the whole renewed life given over to God, to be consumed in His service for a sweet odor unto Him, consumed in His service by the sacred love-fire which He alone can kindle in the saved soul. Woe to him that brings any other motive than the divine love, to this sacrifice, for it is the profane fire that means failure and death.

The "Meat offering" represented the wonderful mystery of the redeemed, and sanctified soul, made beautiful and fragrant even in consuming sorrow, being a revelation of God to others, the food of God, on which men are to feed to find Him.

The "peace offering", culminating all the others, represented that it is only by complete consecration in all these successive and progressive steps, that the soul can find abiding peace and rest. The imagery of the New Testament language is largely borrowed from the facts here stated about these offerings. These offerings do not mean death, merely. They mean the divine, conquering, transforming, glorifying life. The Christology of the Bible is not a dirge; it is a paean of LIFE, and of victory. While Jesus was still living He entered into all these progressive experiences, and fulfilled the meaning of these offerings, presenting His body a "living sacrifice.".

Paul, understood this, and knew that it was our "reasonable service" to do the same, and that if we did, while living, come into these successive experiences, presenting our bodies as "a living sacrifice", we would not be conformed to the world, but that the divine given life of God in Christ would transform us by the renewing of our minds. Romans 12: 1-3

It is this heathen doctrine of substitution that has obscured all this wonderful spiritual teaching of the offerings, and has mixed all five of them together making them mean simply death, the death of one man, by which all others who believe, are supposed to be let off. If the sacrifices simply mean death why did Paul speak of presenting ourselves "a living sacrifice; why did he say of all consecrated souls, himself included, we are the fragrance of Christ ascending unto God, in which there is a direct reference to the burnt offering and the meat offering with its fragrant frankincense. 2 Cor. 2:15, 20th cen. Trans.

Why all these laboured arguments to prove that the blood means death, when the Bible never says the blood means death, but "the blood is the life" and the Blood is for the life, and the blood is all one with the life." "The shedding of the blood" is the giving of the life; the flowing of the blood is the out flowing of the life. It is true, of course, that the taking of the blood, is to kill or to take the life. But listen, Paul says "I die daily." "Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus". Why? "That the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body."

See how Paul subordinates death to life, instead of making death the supreme thing as the substitutionist always does? Again; "For we which live are always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh." Paul was "crucified with Christ", long before he was executed by Nero --- Christ, himself, was crucified long before Pilate, and even long before his incarnation. In both cases this crucifixion was the absolute consecration and giving of the life, and the figure and revelation of it is the shedding of the blood.

When the soldier pierced the side of the crucified Saviour, there came out two dreams, one of blood and one of water. Now here is the test. What do these two streams mean? Do they mean death, substitutionary death, that we may be let off, or do they mean life, given life? Here is the inspired interpretation. "For there are three that bear witness, the Spirit, and the water and the blood, and the three agree in one." 1 John, 5:8, Revised Version.

What does the Spirit mean? Does it mean death? Never. The Spirit brooded over the chaos, in creation. The Spirit is ever the creating, life-giving power. Thou sendest forth thy Spirit and they are created, thou renewest the face of the earth." "The word that I speak unto you are Spirit and they are Life." Thus said Jesus.

 The Spirit is not death, but the omnipresent, creative, transforming, all-conquering given life of God. What is the water? Does it mean death? The water that flows from the throne of God, is "the river of the water of life." Whosoever will may take thereof and live. Jesus said of this water, "The water that I shall give you shall be in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life." And the Psalmist says "With thee is the Fountain of Life."

And lastly, what about the blood? Does it mean death or life? The Bible answers, "The Blood is the life; the blood is for the life; the blood is all one with the life." "In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established"; and all these three witnesses "agree in one" in witnessing to the fact that Christ's crucifixion signified the given, creative, saving, transforming life and not the substitutionary death.

Every passage in the New Testament that speaks of the blood is in harmony with the above statement, and contradictory and destructive of the substitutionary idea. I can, however, only consider a few of these passages here. "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth (or is cleansing) us from all sin" Does that text say that, through the blood every one who did believe, or had believed or should believe, is let off? Does it say anywhere any such thing, or does it contain the substitutionary idea? Absolutely not. It speaks of the blood as a present, inner, active, spiritual power, acting now under certain definite given conditions, to cleanse us from all sin. Evidently the blood here means the omnipresent, transforming life of God in Christ.

Jesus was made "not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the POWER of an ENDLESS LIFE." The gift of God in Christ is this "more abundant life", this "everlasting life", given to do "what the law could not do", grow us into the divine image by the power of this same "endless life."

Again, "how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God". Hebrews 9: 14. Does the blood of Christ satisfy the law's demands by flowing two thousand years ago? No such thought is here expressed. The blood of Christ is the omnipresent life of Christ, a present, active, cleansing power, doing in us spiritually what the physical blood does physically; that is cleansing us from evil; not from what we think to be evil, but from what God knows to be evil. This is the work of the cleansing blood.

Perhaps one more illustration of the use of the term "blood of Christ" in the New Testament will suffice. "Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that which is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ to whom be glory forever and ever, Amen." Hebrews 13:20-21.

Here again, as everywhere the blood is mentioned, the substitutionary idea is conspicuous by its entire absence. The blood here is clearly the omnipresent, transforming, given life of Christ, doing in us spiritually, just the other thing that the physical blood does. The physical blood in us first cleanses us from poisons. Not what we may think to be poisons but what the life power in us knows to be poisons; and then the blood grows us into the physical image God knows is best for us, perhaps not what we may desire at all.

The other two texts on the blood, speak of the blood cleansing us, and purging us thus fulfilling the first office of the blood. This wonderful scripture speaks of the blood of Christ growing us into God's divine spiritual ideal for each one of us.

There is no higher possible manifestation of love here than for one to give his blood to be transfused into another person to save his life. We are saved by transfusion of blood, but it is a spiritual transfusion of blood, or life of Christ, and the salvation is a spiritual salvation, and a spiritual growth into the divine image.

The very scripture that speaks of Christ "suffering for sin, the just for the unjust", so often quoted in support of substitution, first speaks of our having to suffer when we are innocent because of the evil of others, and then says, "for Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust that He might bring us to God. That is, Christ suffered under the same law that we suffer, the law that makes it unavoidable here that the innocent must suffer for the guilty, and He did this, not to appease God, and get Him to let us off, but that He might reveal God to us, and break down the barriers of misunderstanding and shine away the shadows that sin has brought in, and so bring us back to God.

And finally, "Without shedding of blood there is no remission." What does this scripture really mean? To the advocate of substitution it simply means that without Christ being killed to satisfy the demand of God, or the demand of the law, which is exactly the same thing, it was impossible for God to let us off.

To the one who denies substitution, but believes in the divine omnipresent, given life, this scripture is one deepest and sweetest consecration. It means what the law means when it says "whosoever eateth the blood," that is, whosoever appropriates His life to himself, "shall die." It means what Jesus said and which doubtless He used from this same statement in the law, "whosoever saveth his life shall lose it."

Nothing that the writer has written or said, properly understood, will in any way depreciate or belittle the wonderful life and death of Jesus, the Christ. And the writer desires to speak very reverently of that life and death, which is a revelation of all saving truth and power.

But that the truth of this scripture may appear, he must state that if there were forty divine supermen who died two thousand years ago, instead of the one and only Jesus, he might believe without one doubt in them all, and accept them each and all as his substitute, and yet, while he kept his life to himself, refusing to shed his blood, refusing to let his life flow out to others, and for others, his sins could not be remitted, nor could he be atoned for or made one with him who gave and who gives his life for us all. And this the writer says on the authority of Jesus “whosoever saveth his life shall lose it.”

It is the giving of the Christ life, not simply then and there, but also here and now, through us, and in us that brings remission of sin, and unity with Him whose life outflows for us all.

It is when self is crucified and we become broken and emptied vessels, channels through which the given Christ life may flow out to others, that this wonderful scripture is realized in our lives.

It is the earnest wish and prayer of the writer that this study may be blessed to the deeper unfading of the Word to many hearts, and to the helping of us all to enter into a closer unity of spiritual experience with the Christ.

George E. Fifield.

Memo: This study should never be taken alone but studied with the sermon on "The Atonement"

Oh To Be Nothing.

Oh to be nothing, nothing,

Only to lie at His feet, A broken and empty vessel

For the Master's use made meet. Emptied, that He might fill me,

As forth to His service I go; Broken, that so unhindered,

His life through me might flow.

Oh, to be nothing, nothing, Only as led by His hand; A messenger at His gateway,

Only waiting for His command. Only an instrument ready

His praises to sound at His will, Willing, should He not require me,

In silence to wait on Him still.

Oh, to be nothing, nothing,

Painful the humbling may be Yet low in the dust I'd lay me

That the world might my Saviour see.

Rather be nothing, nothing,

To Him let our voices be raised,

For He is the Fountain of Blessing,

He only is meet to be praised.