He was made poor that we might be made rich in Him. The Son of God was led away captive that we might be set free: “If you seek me, then let these go their way” (John 18:8). He could not save Himself because He came to save others (Matthew 27:42). He was despised as a criminal that we might be received as sons. Our Redeemer was bound and gave Himself a ransom to God for us that we might be freed as the redeemed sons of God. He was taken by soldiers from prison, to judgment and then to death that we might not be left in prison and taken to death by God’s law. He was condemned to death that we might be justified to eternal life. He took our infirmities that we might be healed from our sin. "He gave His back to the smiters and to them that pluck off the hair; He did not hide His face from shame and spitting” (Isaiah 50:6). This He did that we might be caressed in the embrace of His eternal arms of full acceptance, with words of eternal life in the assurance of His eternal love: “His left hand is under my head, and His right arm doth embrace me” (Song 2:6). He drank the dregs of the wrath of God dry that we might drink the cup of blessing in abundance. His broken body is our Bread of Life. "He was made sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). He was forsaken by God to bring us to God: “He died the Just for the unjust to bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). It was expedient that one man, Christ, should die for God’s elect people, that the whole of Adam’s race perish not (John 11:50). “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness, by whose stripes you were healed” (1 Peter 2:24)

“Deity was arrested that guilty sinners might never be arrested by God’s law! Christ our Sacrifice was bound to the altar with cords, pinioned and manacled by cords of divine justice as a common malefactor, that common malefactors might never be!”
       -- Don Fortner

“The Good Shepherd for the straying sheep was offered.
The slave has sinned, but the Son has suffered.
While we nothing heeded, Christ, the God-man, interceded.”
        -- modified from the hymn, “Ah, Dearest Jesus"

The scriptural doctrine of substitution is that God made Christ sin for His chosen people that they might be made the righteousness of God in Him. They were chosen in Him before the foundation of the world. He was made their Surety. All that God required of them, He looked to Christ to receive, and received it from Christ for them. Having been made sin, our Lord Jesus Christ suffered under the just wrath of God due to us for our sins. Having fulfilled the will of God, His obedience is our righteousness.

Our sins became His. He suffered for them in His body and in His soul as a sinner under the curse of God (Isaiah 53:10; Matthew 26:38). His people's sins were charged to Him -- transferred to Him by imputation. Our Surety accepted charge. What God imputes is the truth of the way things really are.  For their sins, Christ became guilty. He owned them as His. He knew their shame. He felt their defilement. He knew and felt God’s loathing of sin in His own person. He did not suffer for sin in general or for an indefinite number of unnamed people. He suffered for specific sins of particular people whose names were written in the Book of Life of the Lamb, slain from the foundation of the world. His death made satisfaction to God for the sins of His people, His sheep, the church, His brethren, His friends. He suffered and died in our place.

He did the will of God. He accomplished atonement. He rose again. His righteousness was credited to us (Jeremiah 23:5-6). (What God counts as true is the truth of the way things really are -- Romans 6:11.)  We are justified in Him (Isaiah 45:25). He is our life (Romans 4:25; Colossians 3:4). God received Him. Receiving Him, He received us in Him (Philemon 1:12,17). He propitiated God -- He appeased His wrath by satisfaction to His justice. He established everlasting righteousness in His obedience unto death. He reconciled us to God by His death. He made us acceptable to God, in Himself, the Beloved, with His church, His Bride, the apple of His eye (Ephesians 1:6; 5:25-ff; Zechariah 2:8). Nothing more can possibly be added to the perfection Christ’s people were made by His obedience unto death. As a result, God will most assuredly pour out on His people all the blessings He determined to give them before the world began in Christ (Ephesians 1:3; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2; Jeremiah 29:11; Romans 8:32).

The Spirit of God gives faith in Christ to every chosen sinner for whom Christ died. Faith in Christ is His chief work (John 3:14-15; 6:29; 6:63; 16:14-15; Ephesians 2:8-9) He puts the gospel in our hearts and minds. He makes Christ known to us in the gospel (2 Corinthians 3:18; 4:6; John 16:14-15; Colossians 1:27). The Spirit of Christ -- the Spirit of God -- in us conforms us to Christ's image as we behold His glory in the gospel (2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 8:29). The just live by faith. The look of faith is the work of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. All who believe Christ are justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of Moses (Acts 13:38-39)

Psalm 31:9-10; Psalm 35:5,10; Psalm 37:11; Song of Solomon 2:16 Matthew 25:19; 27:42; Romans 5:17; Psalm 38:1-14; 40:6-12; Isaiah 53:3, 4, 8; Isaiah 50:6; Jeremiah 33:6; Jeremiah 29:11; Matthew 8:17; Matthew 26:39; Matthew 27:46; John 18:8; John 11:50; Romans 4:25; Romans 5:6-21; Romans 15:7; 1 Corinthians 1:30; 2 Corinthians 5:21; 2 Corinthians 8:9; Philippians 2:5-8; Colossians 3:4; 2 Timothy 1:9; Titus 1:2; Hebrews 10:14; 1 Peter 3:18; Revelation 13:8.

In salvation, the triune God gave all to save His people.  God the Father gave His only begotten Son. He provided all in Christ. He accomplished all by Christ. He gives all in Christ. His people receive all from God in Christ. And He will yet give all to them with Christ when by Christ God receives all glory.

He gave all. God the Father gave all when He gave His only begotten Son.  In giving Christ, God emptied the eternal treasures of heaven to pay the price of our redemption.  He who is all gave all of His treasure -- His Son -- for we who are nothing. Christ gave Himself.  In giving Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ gave all. He laid aside His glory. He emptied Himself. He made Himself of no reputation. He took the nature of His people. He became a servant.  He gave Himself to God for His people with His whole heart, soul, mind and strength.  He left nothing unpaid that could be paid. He gave all. He is the everlasting Father, the second Adam, who did all for His people to recover them from their fall in their first father and to establish for them an everlasting righteousness in Him. How?  He fulfilled God’s everlasting will and covenant:  He was made their sin. His obedience unto death, even the death of the curse and wrath of God in His soul and body in the garden and on cross, made His people the righteousness of God in Him.

He provided all in Christ.  He who gave all, provided all for His people. Nothing God would or could require of them was left out.  All requirements were met. All was provided to bring them to God, to make them His sons, to grant them the blessings of Christ, to receive them with Christ and as Christ, accepted in the Beloved.  He provided for them complete remission of their sins, abundant pardon, full forgiveness, freedom from all debt and freedom to all blessings. He made Christ to them wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. He provided for them a completeness that fills up and runs over in the fullness of Christ, who is the fullness of God.  The have no sin, not spot, no shadow of wrong.  They have all perfection. Christ, by His wisdom knows and has fulfilled all that God requires for them.  And all that God has provided for His people, He has provided for them in Christ throughout eternity.  All that God is, He is to us in Christ (1 Corinthians 1:30; Colossians 2:9-10).

He accomplished all by Christ.  “When he cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: In burnt offerings and sacrifices for sin thou hast had no pleasure. Then said I, Lo, I come (in the volume of the book it is written of me,) to do thy will, O God" (Hebrews 10).  At the age of twelve (Luke 2), in the temple, He was asking and answering questions of the doctors of the law. When His parents found Him, He said, “[Don’t you know] I must be about my Father’s business?”  At His baptism, He told John, “[Allow this to be so] now, for thus it becometh us to fulfill all righteousness (Matthew 3).”  When His disciples found Him talking to the woman at Samaria’s well, He said, “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work" (John 4).  Before healing the man born blind, He told His disciples, “I must work the works of Him that sent me" (John 9). While multitudes thought to make Him king on earth, He prepared to glorify His Father by offering Himself to make atonement for His people, saying, “What shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour" (John 12)  In His high-priestly prayer recorded in John 17, He said, “I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do.”  The last words He cried before He yielded up His life to death were, “It is Finished!”  Christ accomplished all of the will of God.  He did this in obedience to His Father, to fulfill the everlasting covenant (Hebrews 13:20), to bring His many sons to glory, and to magnify the perfections of God, and in saving His people from their sins. All that He did, He did for His people. What He did is all of their salvation. The work is done, and it is very good. Oh restless soul of mine, rest in Christ alone!

He gives all in Christ. All that God could give to His people, He has given them in Christ. “Therefore let no man glory in men. For all things are yours; Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; And ye are Christ's; and Christ is God's” (1 Corinthians 3:21-23). We are ignorant. God has made Christ wisdom to us. We are sinful. God has made our Christ righteousness. We are ungodly. God has justified us in Christ. We are debtors. God has redeemed us with the price of Christ’s own blood.  All that Christ is, He is from God to us. We are dead. Christ is our life. We are lost. Christ is the good Shepherd who seeks and finds us. We do not know what or how to pray.  Christ is our High Priest, who makes intercession for us. We want acceptance and favor from God.  We are accepted in Christ, the Beloved (Romans 8:34; Ephesians 1:4-5).

We receive all things from God in Christ. What can a man receive that is not given him from heaven (John 3:27)?  And what do we have from heaven that we do not have in Christ (Colossians 3:11)?  We have nothing, yet we lack nothing because we have all in Christ. We have nothing but what we have in Christ. Do we need faith? We come to Him, hear Him, look to Him and call on Him for it. Do we need repentance?  God has exalted Him to give repentance to His people (Acts 5:31; Psalm 80:17-19; 2 Corinthians 4:6). Do we lack wisdom? We only know God in Christ, and God has made Christ unto us, wisdom.  We need acceptance with God. By His knowledge, the Lord Jesus Christ has justified us by His blood (Isaiah 53:11; Romans 5:9). Do we need the Spirit of God that we may live and believe and bear all fruit to God?  Christ earned the blessing of the New Covenant to give us the Spirit of Adoption, another Comforter, the great Remembrancer, who takes the things of Christ and shows them to us. (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:15; John 17; Galatians 4:5-6).  Did not our Lord graciously command all who have nothing to come to Him and find all in Him? “Come unto Me, all ye who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28-29)?

By Christ, God receives all glory.  If God has given all, provided all, accomplished all, gives all to us in Christ now and for eternity, and causes us to receive all in Him, then does not He alone deserve all glory, and will not He alone receive all glory, to the joy and peace of His people?! (Revelation chapters 4 and 5; Ephesians 1:3-11).  If God, out of His free grace, uninfluenced by any and all but what He is in Himself, has given the accumulated riches of glory in His Son to save His people from their sins and to justify them before God, to bring them to glory, to give them all things in Christ, then why, oh why, do we who are nothing -- yea, those who by nature are less than nothing and positively opposed to God, ignorant, foolish, sold under sin, not subject to God’s law and unable to be subject to it, unable to please God, and dead in sins -- how can we imagine that after God has so saved us in and by Christ, that anything needed is lacking, that my sin could keep me from Him, and that God would look to me for anything?! To God be all glory for Christ’s sake!