In the book Born Crucified, the writer tells a story that occurred during the Civil War in the United States. A man was chosen to go to the front to fight at the sacrifice of his life, yet he had a wife and six children. Another young man offered to go to replace this man, to be his substitute. Both parties agreed, and the authorities put this into their records. Then that young man who replaced the first man went to the war and was killed in action. Later, the authorities still tried to draft the first man into service. But the first man told them to look at their records, which said that the other man was his substitute. He claimed that he had died in the person of the young man who was his substitute, his representative. The author uses this case to illustrate that Christ was our Substitute.

According to the legal record, this is a good illustration, but according to the thought of our identification with Christ, this illustration is inadequate. Christ was our Substitute on the cross not just legally, to make a legal record in the heavenly account. He also came to be our Substitute in the way of identification. First, He came into humanity. He did not come to replace man but to be man. In the way of identification, He came to become us. Spontaneously, He is our Substitute.

In the medical field, a doctor will give someone an injection at a spot on their body for the benefit of their entire body. The doctor injects only one spot, but this one spot represents the entire body, so the entire body receives the injection. This spot where the injection takes place is not a kind of substitute of our entire body in a legal way. This spot is a substitute for the entire body in the way of identification. Thus, when this spot receives the injection, the entire body receives it. Christ could be our Substitute only in the way of identification. If He had never become us, He could never have been our Substitute. If He had not become us, His being our Substitute would have merely been according to a legal record. But because He became us, His being our Substitute is according to the way of identification.

Now we need to consider once more who died on the cross. We need to say, "I died on the cross." When Christ was incarnated, He took us upon Himself. He put on blood and flesh (Heb. 2:14). Therefore, when He was crucified, we were crucified with Him. All of us as a part of Christ, received the injection of His death on the cross.

The writer of Born Crucified also told a story about an old missionary who had lived a defeated Christian life. One day he was reading the Bible, and his eyes fell upon the words in Galatians 2:20—"Christ liveth in me." This phrase enlightened that man. The book says that though he was a solid Presbyterian, he was jumping around his table with joy, saying, "Christ liveth in me! Christ liveth in me!" The Christ who lived in this Presbyterian missionary is the pneumatic Christ, the life-giving Christ.

Some may speak of the doctrine of identification, but they do not see that our identification with Christ can be experienced by us only in the life-giving Spirit. The Christ who was our Substitute became a life-giving Spirit (1 Cor. 15:45b). There are a number of people in Christianity who teach that the three of the Divine Trinity are three separate persons. To say this is wrong. There is no separation among the three, but there is a distinction among the Father and the Son and the Spirit. The three of the Godhead are one.