Substitution

I miss the year 2013. It was the year I turned 19 and more significantly the year my relationship with food took a new turn. I was brought more closely to what will subsequently birth the devotion of my life.

My first baking experience happened a few months into 2013, although unexpected, it was no doubt divinely orchestrated. At the time of that exposure, I did not realize what effect it would have on me until a certain fondness crept into my heart some days later.

Since my training was not formal, I had difficulties understanding unfamiliar recipes. I could take precise measurements but often, I did not know what some ingredients were, how to source them, or why they were even required in the recipe. A lot of those cakes did not turn out well because of my limited understanding.

That was always the case until I stumbled on a technique called substitution. Yes, substitution! Not the mathematical approach but the literal act of replacing something with another to achieve a similar result or purpose. So I started substituting; a cup of milk and a tablespoon of vinegar for buttermilk; a cup of all purpose flour minus two tablespoons plus two tablespoons of corn flour for cake flour; a cup of yogurt and a teaspoon of baking soda for sour cream; a cup of white sugar and a tablespoon of molasses for dark brown sugar, and the list goes on and on.

These recommended substitutes achieved similar results as the original items and gave me a good feel of what the expected outcome should be. Occasionally, using a substitute could mean adjusting some measurements but over the years of being the kitchen, I have grown to see the possibilities of substituiting almost anything whenever the need arises without compromising on quality.

Apparently, substituition has been a time honoured practice. Men in generations before now accepted alternatives to what was required provided it met the intended purpose. The Bible tells the story of how Abraham sacrificed a lamb in the place of his son Isaac. Just as the knife was set to slay Isaac, Abraham lifted his eyes and looked, and there behind him was a ram. So he went and took the ram, and offered it up for a burnt offering instead of his son. Genesis 22:1-13.

This need for substitution was not limited to Abraham or relegated to baking alone. The entire human race because of sin attracted the penalty of death but God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). We were all like Isaac, stretched out to be slaughtered but The Lamb was slain in our place.

This Lamb, the man that became our substitute is Jesus. He is the substitution for the whole of mankind, the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. Our substitute met all the requirements for taking the penalty of sin. Man had sinned and man had to die and Jesus was the man for the job. The place of our crucifixion rather had Jesus on it. He became the sin that made us fall short of the glory of God and received the full punishment for that.

Whenever I bake, I treat my substitutes as I would the actual items. I do not give them a new title or use them differently from what was prescribed in the recipe. Where the recipe called for buttermilk, I used my substitute buttermilk. When it asked for the cake flour to be seived before being measured, I did exact with my replacement just as God did the same.

Sin demanded justice and God exercised justice by offering Jesus Christ on our behalf. Cleansing from sin required blood and without the shedding of blood there is neither release from sin and its guilt nor the remission of the due and merited punishment for sins (Hebrews 9:22). By Jesus' death on the Cross the wages of sin was paid for and His blood became the cleansing from the sin we were conceived in.

My baking substitutions, so long as it is done precisely gives me the expected outcome. I have made countless of cakes like this Ginger Lemon Cupcakes adapted from Fine Cooking's Recipes of Cakes & Cupcakes. Here, I substituted for sour cream and cake flour and still acheived a toothsome result. Similarly was Jesus's substitutionary death on the cross.

The effect of His death in our stead is profound, overwhelming, unending and humanly impossible to fully comprehend. Jesus was not just our sin offering, He was our sin. His death did not make us righteous, it made us the righteousness of God through Christ. We have been ransomed, healed, restored and forgiven on the account of this great substitution. We received redemption from the penalty of sin on the account of Jesus.

Even now, these divine benefits are available to anyone who will come to Jesus accepting His death in his place and receiving His righteousness for himself. You can be that person, Jesus Christ is your perfect substitute and your death sentence has been executed on Him. The Lamb of God has died your death and you have indeed been set loose to truly live.