Vicarious Obedience and Suffering

If it is neither by abrogation nor relaxation that we are freed from the demands of the law, how has this deliverance been effected ? By the mystery of vicarious obedience and suffering. This is the gospel of the grace of God. This is what was a scandal to the Jews, and foolishness to the Greeks, but, to those that are called, the power of God and the wisdom of God. The Scriptures teach us that the Son of God, the brightness of the Father's glory, and the express image of his person, who thought it not robbery to be equal with God, became flesh, and subjected himself to the very law to which we were bound; that he perfectly obeyed that law, and suffered its penalty, and thus, by satisfying its demands, delivered us from its bondage and introduced us into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. It is thus that the doctrine of redemption is presented in the Scriptures. God, says the apostle, sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, that he might redeem those that were under the law.* Being made under the law, we know that he obeyed it perfectly, and brought in everlasting righteousness, and is therefore declared to be the Lord our righteousness, since, by his obedience, many are constituted righteous.! He, therefore, is said to be made righteousness unto us4 And those who are in him are said to be righteous before God, not having their own righteousness, but that which is by the faith of Christ. That we are redeemed from the curse of the law by Christ's enduring that curse in our place, is taught in every variety of form from the beginning to the end of the Bible.

Source: Charles Hodge, The Way of Life. Philadelphia, American Sunday-school Union (1841).