DAILY DEVOTIONAL – May 21, 2020
“No Substitute“
Prayer: Almighty God, we kneel before You because You alone are God. Forgive us for so many times thinking and behaving as if we could be gods and save ourselves. Thank you Jesus for dying in our place, for living the life we could never live and for earning for us the life and salvation we do not deserve, but have received freely through faith in what You have done for us. Amen.
Scripture: 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer.17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Devotional – “No Substitute”
One of the most unique movie plots I remember is that of the action movie Face Off starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta. In the movie, Sean Archer (played by N. Cage) is one of the FBI’s toughest and most successful agents who is hot on the trail of one of the world’s most notorious terrorists, Caster Troy (played by J. Travolta). In an attempt to kill Agent Archer, Troy accidentally kills Archer’s son instead. When Archer finally catches Troy, they have a good’ol Hollywood movie fight which leaves Castor Troy captured and in a coma. Before he is able to breathe a sigh of relief over the capture of his son’s killer, Agent Archer finds out that Troy had planted a bomb that threatens the entire city of Los Angeles and all of its people. With Castor in a coma, the only other person who knows the location of the bomb is Castor’s brother Pollux who is in jail and is refusing to talk to the cops.
In order to trick Pollux into talking, Archer agrees to undergo an outlandish procedure where he will physically be transformed into the exact image of Castor Troy. Enlisting the help of a special doctor and fanciful medical technology, every part of Agent Archer’s body is engineered and changed to look exactly like Castor Troy; from body hair, eye color and even the sound of his voice. To make the transformation believable enough to fool Castor’s brother Pollux, the faces of both Castor Troy (who is in a coma) and Agent Archer are both surgically removed, and Archer has his face replaced with Troy’s. The whole plan goes awry when Castor unexpectedly wakes up from his coma and is able to force the doctor to perform the same “face off” procedure on him, but in reverse, making him now look exactly like Agent Archer. The rest of the movie is an action packed “face-off” between these two men. In the end, Agent Archer kills Troy and Pollux, but not without his whole life and family being turned upside down and nearly destroyed in the process.
Of course like all Hollywood action movies, this plot is a wildly far-fetched story, but I see in the movie a picture of the real story of the Bible. In the Garden of Eden the Devil told Adam and Eve that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would become gods unto themselves. In the fall of mankind, Adam and Eve believed the devil’s deception and ate the fruit believing that they could be their own substitute for God; that they could stand in His place. Unfortunately, much like it did for Agent Archer, our sinful attempts to substitute ourselves for God and be gods unto ourselves have destroyed everything and brought suffering and death, just as God told Adam and Eve it would.
Despite the obvious evil and wickedness of humanity and the destruction we continue to bring upon ourselves, many believe themselves and humanity to be the only gods that can save us from ourselves. Some say science will eventually save us, others say technology and, still yet, I heard the other day that some people literally believe aliens will one day come to earth to save us from ourselves. That craziness makes a movie like Face Off seem reasonable!
Forgive me for being a bit sarcastic, but I don’t know how anyone can believe science will save us when it still can’t manage to get the daily forecast in Omaha right. Humanity is not and cannot be the answer to humanity’s sinfulness. The only hope of salvation comes from God Himself, and the Good News is that God has provided salvation in Jesus. While we make miserable substitutes for God, God has made salvation available by Himself becoming our perfect substitute. God sent Jesus, God in the flesh. As 2 Corinthians says, “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
I very much like what John R. W. Scott said about sin, salvation and substitution. “The concept substitution may be said, then, to lie at the heart of both sin and salvation. 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.”
What makes the Good News of Jesus truly good, is not that we have somehow become able to be gods, but that God became one of us, to pay the price of sin for us, die for us and rise again to give us His righteousness and His life. Let’s leave the substituting to Him.
Thanks for joining me today in another time of devotion in God’s Word, and remember, that God has forgiven yesterday, is with you today and has already taken care of tomorrow. Amen.
