Serving My Time

   
   

There’s trouble with the judicial system in Denmark. Seems there is a widespread practice of convicted criminals paying others to serve their sentences for them. So let’s say you are sentenced to serve two months behind bars for a crime such as drunk driving, theft, or assault. All you have to do is pay someone (the going rate is the equivalent to about $175.00 per day) to take the punishment for you. Identification papers are rarely checked when a person shows up claiming to be a convict reporting to serve his time.

How awesome is that — going free while someone else serves your sentence!

While the Danish government is trying to end the practice of prisoner substitution, Christians urgently are trying to get the word out — Jesus took our punishment and we are free! Numerous scriptures teach this amazing truth.

  • “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
  • “For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit’ (1 Peter 3:18).
  • “For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times” (Romans 3:25).
  • ”Live a life filled with love for others, following the example of Christ, who loved you and gave himself as a sacrifice to take away your sins. And God was pleased, because that sacrifice was like sweet perfume to him” (Ephesians 5:2 NLT).
  • “He died for our sins, just as God our Father planned, in order to rescue us from this evil world in which we live” (Galatians 1:4).
  • “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

God provided a ram to take Isaac’s place in the sacrifice (Genesis 22:13), He provided His Son to take our place in receiving the wrath of God we deserved because of our sin. Jesus is our Passover lamb (1 Corinthians 5:7-8). Jesus is our sin offering (Romans 8:3). Jesus was sacrificed to take away our sins (Hebrews 9:28).

We sinned. He paid.

“For the essence of sin is man substituting himself for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for man. Man asserts himself against God and puts himself where only God deserves to be; God sacrifices himself for man and puts himself where only man deserves to be. Man claims prerogatives which belong to God alone; God accepts penalties which belong to man alone.” John Stott in The Cross of Christ , p. 160

Thank God for the sacrifice of Jesus!

— Bob Clark

5/3/2005