IN OUR PLACE

"I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20, NIV)

As I was preparing to leave with a friend on a recent Links golf outing, his wife said, "I'll be playing with you vicariously."

We were headed to some special courses, and she didn't want to miss out.

Now my friend's wife is not delusional. She knew that she wouldn't really be playing. And as she has been playing less and less in recent years, she wasn't really jealous either. What she was saying was that she shared our joy, knowing what a pleasurable time we would have.

She was right. We had a wonderful time. And if she had been with us, she would have almost certainly had an equally wonderful time.

But she wasn't with us—which is the longstanding trouble with vicarious living. It almost never works.

And yet theologians speak often of "vicarious atonement." It may sound like a highfalutin way of speaking, but difficult ideas are often equally difficult to express. Here, in essence, is what it means: Jesus Christ's death, a sacrifice made for the atoning forgiveness of our sins, actually worked for us.

You see, I might have said to my friend's wife (or he might have said to her): "You got it. When I play, everything I experience with my eyes and my ears and my arms and my hands, you will experience too. And the memories I make, they will be yours." But had I said this, you would have known full well who was delusional—and no, it would not have been she.

Vicarious atonement, however—where Christ's experience on the cross applies to us—is the work of God. Therefore, every miracle is possible, even this greatest one.

Had we set out to create forgiveness of our own sins, we could never have achieved it. Not by mournful apologies, not by a thousand penitent acts, not by a boatload of good deeds done in His name. God is too holy and our sin is too dreadful. The only chance for the one to meet the other came at the cross, on Christ's shoulders. And the result of that borne weight, remarkably, incredibly, impossibly, was our forgiveness, our atonement, bought not by us but by Another.

As Paul wrote to the Galatians, this crucifixion was not only vicarious atonement, it is vicarious living. It is how we go on now. His atonement made for us on that day is a marvelous piece of the past on which to meditate today. How we live in that reality now shall be the topic we address tomorrow.

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Jeff Hopper

August 22, 2006

Copyright 2006 Links Players International

The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.