Bench Players
The 2024 NBA (pro basketball) Championship Series (“Finals”) has just begun, and one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in this year’s playoffs has been how crucially so-called “bench players” have contributed to the winning team’s success in each series so far.
For those who don’t play or watch basketball, NBA bench players are the handful of fellows who free up the first-string “starters” for foul-trouble or breath-catching breaks throughout a game, which is why they’re also commonly called “substitutes” or “subs” or “substitute players”.
And as I’ve watched them do their thing for these past four or five weeks of the season-finishing playoffs, my mind keeps coming back to how Jesus – the very essence of holiness and perfection – became a substitute for US by willingly and lovingly volunteering to vault over that humanly-unclearable bar (sinless perfection) so one day we will join Him in heaven for all eternity, thus escaping humanity’s truly due and deserved destiny of hell.
- “He [i.e., God the Father] made Him [i.e., God the Son, Jesus] who knew no sin to be sin on OUR behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21, emphasis added)
- “… while we were yet sinners, Christ died for US.” (Romans 5:8b)
Jesus Christ is the ULTIMATE Substitute…
- “… we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself IS the PROPITIATION [i.e., substitute!] for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” (1 John 2:1c-2)
… who offered and freely gave His own human life and body and blood in our stead…
- “… having made peace through the blood of His cross… He has now reconciled you in His fleshly body through death, in order to present you before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Colossians 1:20b,22)
- “For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who GAVE HIMSELF as a RANSOM [i.e., substitute!] for all…” (1 Timothy 2:5-6a)
… so our souls could be saved and spared the certain “wages” (result) of sin, which is death – physical and spiritual.
- “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23)
Christ made this ultimate substitution – the Blameless for the blameworthy, the Sinless for the sinners, He “who knew no sin” for those who knew nothing BUT sin – on the Cross, atop a haltingly haunting-turned-thrill-inducing hill called Calvary.
[If that song seemed “sleepy”, this one will wake you up…]
[…and please don’t miss the big blessing of THIS third and final song, I think it just might melt or mend your heart… (it definitely melted mine!)]
Like I said, the ultimate Substitute!
Our all-in-all, our Everything,
Jesus is our God and King.
For Him – and Him alone – we sing,
Because He crushed death’s pow’r and sting;
To Him our hearts we humbly bring –
Yes, Jesus is our God and King.
And bringing this post full circle by ending where we began (basketball), there’s a similar-but-distinct second sort of player who has impressed me throughout these Playoffs, which I’ll write about in the next post so stay tuned (as they say in the TV biz 🙂 ) …
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