And Jesus cried with a loud voice.
Christ died as a substitute
In one sense, Jesus died as our substitute. Now, what is a substitute. A substitute is one who suffers for or instead of another. A schoolboy feeble of body was brought up to the master’s desk for breaking one of the laws of the school. In those days, the punishment at school was something like that which is given to garrotters in our prisons. The poor boy took off his clothes, and stood there with his thin body and his hones almost pushing through his skin. It was a pitiable sight, so poor and thin and wretched was that body! There was a great hush in the school! Then one of the leading boys sprang up with tears in his eyes, and in a moment almost tore his clothes from his back, and, while every boy wept, he stood before the master, saying, “Please, sir, he cannot bear it; I will take his punishment.” (W. Birch.)
The death of death
Last winter, Jacob, a native assistant of mine, was summoned to his rest. On the day before his death, having been asked how he felt, he replied, “I shall not rise from this bed again. I am called hence to the Lord.” He then raised his arm, stretched it out, and said, “Look! my arm is nothing but bones and skin; it is the same with my earthly body. The flesh is dead within me; my desire is fixed on my heavenly country-that country where I shall behold Him who loves me, and whom I love. Yes, I shall see Him shortly.” When asked whether he feared death, “Oh, no,” he answered, “how can I love Christ and fear death? How can death affect me? The death of Christ was the death of Death!” (J. Kogel, Greenland.)
Vicarious dying
In the recent floods in France, at Castle-zarazin, while the house was being swept away, the mother, in agony to save her two children, put them in a bread tray and floated the bread tray off upon the waves; but the tray with the two children had gone but a short distance when it struck a tree and capsized. The mother started out for the place. She got there. She took the two children. She somehow clambered up into the tree with them, and held on to a branch. But while hanging there the branch began to crack, and she knew it could not long hold the three, and so she wrapped up her little ones as well as she could, and she tied them fast to the branch, and then she kissed the darlings good-bye and fell backward into the wave and died, while they lived and were recovered. What do you think of that? O! you say: “Bravo! bravo! That was just like a mother to do that;” but what do you say when I tell you that these tides of sin and death are bearing away the race, and that Jesus Christ swims through the flood, and He comes to us tonight to lift us out and to fasten us to the tree of life, and then having given us the kiss of pardon and peace, falls back Himself in the billows of death, dying Himself that we might live. O! the sacrifice of the Son of God! Bleeding Jesus, let me embrace Thee now! (Dr. Talmage.)