Who Gave Himself For Our Sins

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen”

We have here in Galatians 1:4 this very important idea of substitution. Substitution means in the place of or the exchange of one for another. In theology, this means that Jesus acted as our representative. He acted in our place and on our behalf. It is obvious that Paul is referring to the death of Christ in verse 4—who gave himself for our sins. He means that Jesus died for our sins. Representation is a theological truth contained in the doctrine of the atonement.

In the Old Testament, a lamb that was sacrificed represented the Israelite who had sinned. There were specific requirements regarding the lamb or any other animal. They had to be without blemish (Lev. 1–7, 16). Being without blemish was a picture of being sinless. So the sinless was substituted for the sinner. The unblemished sacrifice is the only acceptable sacrifice because God will not accept a defiled or blemished sacrifice since defilement represents the sinner in his condition.

Leviticus 22:20 makes this clear: “You shall not offer anything that has a blemish, for it will not be acceptable for you.” The idea behind representation is to present the sinner as blameless, and this can only be done with an unblemished offering. The unblemished for the blemished! These truths are inherent in the person and work of Christ. Jesus is not like us with respect to sin. Paul teaches us clearly in Romans 8:3 that God “sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin.” This makes clear that we cannot offer ourselves as a substitute for one another’s sin. God requires a pure sacrifice for the sinner. Only Jesus is the only acceptable offering for sin. This means that Jesus is the only acceptable substitute for sin. God will accept nothing less. Jesus is the reality of all the types and shadows found in the Old Testament sacrificial system.

The doctrine of substitution is clearly seen in Romans 3:23–26. God put forward his Son as a propitiation for sins. Propitiation means satisfaction. Jesus satisfied the divine justice of God the Father by shedding his blood, and Paul says this was God’s purpose—according to the will of our God and Father. It was God who, therefore gave his Son (John 3:16; Rom. 8:32; Gal. 4:1) and it was Jesus who gave himself (Gal. 1:4).

Paul teaches us that there are 2 results from this substitution of Christ. The first result is to deliver us from the present evil age, and the second result is that God would receive the glory. The first result affects us and the second affects God. Let’s start with the second. Everything that God does is for his glory. I don’t need to be able to explain how this works out in every instance, but rather believe it. God gets the glory because he is the God of glory. God cannot and does not do anything apart from his glory. He is glorious and glory surrounds him. All that God does is for the praise of his glory (Eph. 1:12, 14). Heaven resounds with the praise and acclamation of God’s glory. It is beyond our comprehension to imagine millions of angelic beings praising God in perfect chorus. A multitude of the heavenly host praised God at the birth of Christ—glory to God in the highest (Luke 2:13, 14). God gets the glory in the atoning death of his Son. He gets the glory in delivering us from this present evil age. He gets the glory because he is God and he always does his will. It is a never-ending glory—forever and ever.

The second result that flows to us from the death of Jesus for our sins is that we are delivered from this present evil age. What is the present evil age? The word “age” can mean a period of time or the perpetuity of time. It refers to a certain amount of time or endless time. Endless time is another way of saying eternity. It is ageless. Jesus is said to be the same yesterday and today and forever (Heb. 13:8). He does not change therefore he can be completely trusted in the multiple vicissitudes of life. The heavens and earth are said to perish but not the Son. He remains unchanged and unchanging because he is the same and his years have no end (Heb. 1:10–12). Paul qualifies the word “age” by linking it to this present evil age. He is referring to the world that exists at this present moment until Christ returns. It is the age now in comparison to the age that is to come (Matt. 12:32; Luke 18:30). Paul says that the wisdom and rulers of this present age are doomed to pass away (1 Cor. 2:6, also 8). Jesus is said to be seated at God’s right hand “far above all rule, authority, power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Eph. 1:20, 21).

So this “present evil age” is the world as we know it at the moment. To be more specific, we could say, it is from the first coming of Christ (incarnation) until the return of Christ (judgment and glory). Not only is it called the present age, but Paul says that it is evil. It is evil because sin abounds. We are said to be delivered from this evil age because Jesus died for our sins—gave himself for our sins. I am not only set free from sin’s reign but I am also not in bondage to this present age with all of its evil. Sin is darkness and death. It never ascends, but always descends. Sin never makes an improvement upon society. Sin never helps humanity: it binds humanity. Sin is lawlessness (1 John 3:4). Jesus told us that lawlessness would increase and that the love of many would grow cold (Matt. 24:12). Paul says that lawlessness leads to more lawlessness (Rom. 6:19). Sin increases sin. Death can never end unless it is destroyed, and the only way death is destroyed is by the death of Jesus—the sinless sacrifice. In the death of Christ then, we have the death of death, and thus we are delivered from this present evil age. This world and this age is not our master. If Jesus has delivered us, then we are free.

Freedom was the major theme of Galatians. Yet how many of us live in bondage. I believe one of the main reasons we struggle to grasp this concept of freedom is because it seems too good to be true. The depressed person always thinks that someone who is not depressed has something wrong with himself, and is lacking something emotionally or psychologically, which makes them uncompassionate or unfeeling. This is sheer nonsense, of course, but people like this always think this way. It’s the same with freedom.

In Galatians 5, Paul says that it was for freedom that Christ set us free. Jesus did not die so that you might imagine what freedom was like or that you might imagine that you were free (some sort of hypothetical freedom and God forbid that I should know it to be true). I think that we as Christians struggle with the truth because we think somehow that the truth is too good for us. Freedom sets us free from hang-ups. Paul says in Galatians 5:1 that we should not submit (yield again) to the yoke of slavery, and the only way we do this is by standing firm. We are to stand in the freedom that is ours in Christ Jesus. Our freedom came through Jesus’ substitutionary death. He died for us.

Freedom allows us the opportunity to serve one another in love (Gal. 5:13). Apart from this freedom, we cannot serve and love as we ought. So we are free from sin’s penalty and power (one day from its presence) and we are free from this evil age. Let us enjoy what we have in our Lord: deliverance and freedom. Let us live for his glory and enjoy all the good from his hand.