Substitution

Pastor Martin begins filling in the completed sentence: Christ offered Himself to make an objective, vicarious, penal satisfaction for the sins of His people. He unpacks the first two words. 'Objective' means Christ was dealing with the real God and real sin, not phantom notions. 'Vicarious' means in the room and place of another, established by Old Testament typology, by explicit bearing-language (Isaiah 53, 1 Peter 2:24, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Galatians 3:13), and by the prepositions huper and anti in the New Testament.

Pastor Martin completes his exposition of the essence of Christ's sacrifice with the words 'penal' and 'satisfaction.' He explains that Christ's sufferings were not merely calamity or chastisement but legal punishment that fully met the demands of God's law against sin. Drawing on the triangular realities of the nature of the law, the nature of God, and the nature of man, he shows from Galatians 3:13, Deuteronomy 21:22-23, and Colossians 2:14 that Christ bore the curse of the law as the God-man, and he closes with John Owen's beautiful imagery of the sinner as Noah's dove finding rest only in the ark of Christ.