I was rereading The Reason for God by Tim Keller recently and came across a quote that really hit me. It was in a section of the book where we was talking about how substitution is at the heart of Christianity. In it, he quotes John Stott’s book The Cross of Christ. In it he writes,

“The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We… put ourselves where God deserves to be; God… puts himself where we deserved to be.”

What a great reminder of the extent of our trespass and the unreal mercy of God.