He had to be the substitute...

What would you say to the following scenario: Your first born child is going to suffer from a lifelong disease that will cause much pain and hardship. God says, “I can allow you to suffer the rest of your life with this condition and spare your child.” Would you do it?

Luckily this is not something that any of us will have to face, but I ask this question because I didn’t at once say yes when I thought of it. I hope it is because I don’t really know the joys of having children. I suspect it is because part of me is flesh, selfish and unable to sympathize with the sick and suffering as much as I would like. This scenario and question had original pointed me to the Cross and how Christ chose suffering as I realized how hard it would be to choose this on someone else’s behalf. I was uneasy for two reasons. The first was the fact that the scenario only touches the surface of the God-man’s suffering. The second was the actual act of what Jesus did on the cross.

There is something wrong with this offer to spare our child to eliminate the eternal suffering waiting for them. We first have to ask ourselves, how can the least amount of lives be spared by the suffering of this destructive disease? As humans we have only two options to the scenario in question: to take on the suffering of our child, or to allow our child to suffer. Right, we’ve talked about this enough already. The point, no matter which we chose, is that there will always be at least two souls, lives, or persons affected by the disease.

If we allow our child to go through the life of suffering, we are at the same time going through the same if not more suffering. By watching the life of your first born being tormented by the death and decay that sin brought into the world, we will not only be spectators but victims. Because this person will never have the life that we wanted for them, it will cause us to suffer along with our beloved.

Well, let’s just take on the suffering so that we are the only one to be victims of death and decay. Impossible. Just like our child was our beloved, we are also someone’s beloved. I apologize for having the opinion that every one of us should be loved by at least one person. Because of the sin in this world I know this appears to not be the case. You may not feel like you are loved by someone, but I will guarantee, if you had a part in the creation of another human being you would have a deep, unavoidable bond to this life. Just because you may not feel loved, does not mean that the person in question has abandoned the profound and mysterious love that was present at the beginning of your life.

Fortunately I have been blessed with two of the most loving humans I have ever known as my parents. This is the basis and viewpoint for the statement that we are loved by at least one other life. So, I choose the suffering of my child to be imparted to me, but by doing this I become the suffering child. I have to watch my parents’ lives be torn apart by the death and decay that I have chosen to consume me. This may be an exaggeration of reality, but still, at least two lives are victims of the disease.

The flaw of this scenario solidifies the fact that only God could take on the suffering of the human race. He is Three in One. He is both the Father and the Son. He sent Himself to take on the death and decay that would have been imparted to us. Philippians 2:4-11(NASB) has more than perfectly laid this out for us:

Do not merely look out for your own personal interest, but also for the interests of others. Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore also God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

He did this so that only He would be the one to suffer. He suffered as the parent and as the child. The suffering, death and disease of this world would have just kept transferring from generation to generation. It could never be stopped by someone who was created but only by the Creator.