The Cross - Substitution

The rule was that if any person escaped 10 prisoners would be killed. All the prisoners were brought out. ’The fugitive has not been found!’ the commandant screamed. ’You will all pay for this. Ten of you will be locked in the starvation bunker without food or water until they die.’

The prisoners trembled in terror. The ten were selected, including a prisoner named Franciszek Gajowniczek (Gah-yav-NEE-chek). He couldn’t help a cry of anguish. ’My poor wife!’ he sobbed. ’My poor children! What will they do?’ When he uttered this cry of dismay, Maximilian stepped silently forward and stood before the commandant and said, ’I am a Catholic priest. Let me take his place. I am old. He has a wife and children.’ Gajowniczek was returned to the ranks, and the priest took his place.

The Nazis kept Kolbe in the starvation bunker for two weeks and then put him to death by lethal injection. Gajowniczek survived the prison. He died on March 13, 1995, in Poland at the age of 95 - and 53 years after Father Kolbe had saved him. But he was never to forget the ragged monk. Every year on August 14 he went back to Auschwitz. He spent the next five decades paying homage to Father Kolbe, honoring the man who died on his behalf. In October of 1982, Franciszek Gajowniczek, his wife, children, and grandchildren gathered with 150,000 others in St. Peter’s Square in Rome to celebrate Father Kolbe’s victory over hatred at Auschwitz.

Another survivor of Auschwitz described the effect of Kolbe’s action: "It was an enormous shock to the whole camp. We became aware that someone among us in this spiritual dark night of the soul was raising the standard of love on high. Someone unknown, like everyone else, tortured and bereft of name and social standing, went to a horrible death for the sake of someone not even related to him. Therefore it is not true, we cried, that humanity is cast down and trampled in the mud, overcome by oppressors, and overwhelmed by hopelessness. Thousands of prisoners were convinced the true world continued to exist and that our torturers would not be able to destroy it. To say that Father Kolbe died for us or for that person’s family is too great a simplification. His death was the salvation of thousands. ... We were stunned by his act, which became for us a mighty explosion of light in the dark camp."

On the cross Jesus became our substitute. A divine exchange occurred. Jesus took our place and died the death which we deserved. This explains His words from the cross:

Matt. 27: 45 From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land 46 About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" -- which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

These are the only words of Jesus as recorded in Matthew and Mark. Perhaps this is because they made such an impact on those who heard them. On the cross the divine exchange takes place. Jesus is punished in our place.

2. PARTITION OF SIN IS REMOVED - Jesus gives us His righteousness

On the cross Jesus became our substitute and paid for our sin. Not only is our sin paid for but we are given the righteousness of Christ.

2 Cor 5:21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

Because we are given the righteousness of Christ there is no longer