The Gracious Substitution

John Newton, author of “Amazing Grace” also wrote many other hymns.  Along with his friend William Cowper they wrote an entire hymnal, “The Olney Hymnal”, so named after Olney, England where it was written.  Another great hymn from John Newton is “He Died for Me”.  In Genesis chapter 22 we find just such a substitutionary death illustrated for us.

Abraham and Sarah now had a boy of their own.  He wasn’t just a little lad anymore.  He was a young man.  Then one day God called upon Abraham with a very strange and scary demand, “Take now your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love . . . and offer him as a burnt offering.”  Hagar and her son had been sent away.  By God’s divine record keeping Abraham had only one son that counted, Isaac.  He was the son of promise.  He was to be the heir of all the promises that God had given to Abraham.  He was Abraham and Sarah’s pride and joy and hope for their own future.  Now God said to Abraham, “Take this boy and offer him as a sacrifice.”

God had a plan that Abraham did not know about.  That is true for us all.  We can’t see tomorrow.  We have a hard time handling all the demands of today without getting behind with interruptions and side issues.  But God had a plan.  It was a plan of grace. 

Abraham obeyed God and took Isaac to the appointed spot and tied him up and laid him on the altar.  As he was raising the knife to slay his son God intervened.  “No, Abraham, you do not need to kill Isaac.  Look behind you, Abraham.”  There, caught by its horns in a thicket was a ram.  Abraham untied Isaac and then took the ram and put it on the altar in Isaac’s place.  The ram died for Isaac.  The ram is a picture of Jesus Christ dying for us.  The child of promise, who is a picture of Jesus Christ, was figuratively raised from the dead.  The substitute ram, also a picture of Jesus Christ, died in his place. 

Now we can consider the title of John Newton’s great hymn “He Died for Me”.  We were supposed to die for our sins.  Instead God provided a substitute, His own sinless Son, to die for us.  The fifth stanza of his hymn concludes with Jesus saying to the audience at the cross, “This blood is for thy ransom paid.  I die that you may live.”  Then Newton concludes the whole with a chorus that captures the amazing grace of God’s gift to us.  “Oh, can it be, upon a tree the Savior died for me?  My soul is thrilled; my heart is filled, to think He died for me.”  

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