Very Vicarious
2017

When the guys in ApologetiX were growing up, we lived vicariously through our favorite rock stars. Now we live vicariously through Jesus Christ. Of course, those are different kinds of vicarious, as Merriam-Webster offers various definitions, including:

"experienced or realized through imaginative or sympathetic participation in the experience of another" (like the rock star fantasy) and "performed or suffered by one person as a substitute for another or to the benefit or advantage of another" (like the reality of Christ).

Rock stars live the kind of lives we can't live. But is that how you really want to live? Jesus also lived the kind of life we can't live -- a perfect, sinless life -- and then sacrificed it on our behalf.

His words on the subject were the antithesis of the rock-star mentality: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45).

Peter and Paul explain further: "For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God" (1 Peter 3:18) and "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Now, if that doesn't give you a vicarious thrill, what will?