The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1905, Page 25

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Che Lutheran Pioneer.

A

MISSIONARY

MOONTHLY.

PuBLIsSHED BY THE EVANGELICAL LUTHERAN SyNODICAL CONFERENCE OF NorTH AMERICA.

R. A. BISCHOFF, Editor.

Entered at the Post Office at St. Louls, Mo., as second-class matter.

Vol. XXVII. St. Louis,

Mo., April, 1905.

No. 4.

Only the Crucified.

Ask me what great thing I know
That delights and stirs me so?
What the high reward I win?
Whose the name I glory in?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

What is faith’s foundation strong?

What awakes my lips to song?

He who bore my sinful load,

Purchased for me peace with God—
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

Who is life in life to me?

Who the death of death will be?

Who will place me on His right

With the countless hosts of light?
Jesus Christ, the Crucified.

This is that great thing I know;
This delights and stirs me so:
Faith in Him who died to save,
Him who triumphed o’er the grave —

Jesus Christ, the Crucified.
Selected.

$s >—____

Our Substitute.

DELIVERED FoR Our OFFENSES.

A substitute is one who takes the place of an-
other, acting and suffering in his stead. Christ is
our Substitute, because He took our place, the sin-
ners’ place, acting and suffering in our stead. The
apostle says, “Christ was delivered for our offenses.”’
On account of our sins we are under the wrath and
curse of God; for our sins are offenses against the
holy God, whose justice demands the punishment
of sin. To redeem us from sin and its punishment,
Christ took our place and was delivered into suffer-
ings and death for our offenses. In the darkness of
Gethsemane, in the darkness of Calvary God met

His Son, standing in the sinners’ place and laden
with the sinners’ offenses, and the sin-hating God
poured out upon His sin-bearing Son the wrath
which we deserved by our offenses. So Christ was
our Substitute, suffering and dying in our stead.
His agony was our agony, His sufferings were our
sufferings, His death was our death.

RAIseD AGAIN FOR OuR JUSTIFICATION.

Christ is our Substitute not only in His suffer-
ings and death, but also in His resurrection. As
our Substitute, laden with our sins, He endured
sufferings and death, and was laid in the grave.
As our Substitute, justified and free from sin, He
came forth triumphantly from the grave. If He
had remained in the grave, we should be lost. It
would mean that He, as our Substitute, undertook
the work of our redemption, but failed. It would
mean that the burden of our sin and woe was laid
upon Him and crushed Him. But, blessed be God!
It is not so. Christ is risen! He is risen, indeed!
Our Substitute is set free from the prison-house of
death; He is justified and absolved from sin—not
from His own sins, for He had none, but from our
sins, which He took upon Himself and bore in His
own body on the tree as our Substitute. In Him
we are absolved from sin and justified. Therefore
the apostle says, ‘“‘Christ was delivered for our of-
fenses, and raised again for our justification,” Rom.
4, 25.

Blessed Easter tidings! They give us the as-
surance that our debt is paid, that the work of our
redemption is finished, that heaven is again opened
to us through the sufferings, death, and resurrec-
tion of our Substitute. Glad Easter tidings! They
assure us of the forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus,
they rob the grave of its gloom and death of its ter-