THE BUSINESS OF REDEMPTION

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children.”  (Galatians 4:4-5 NRSV)

With endless patience, at infinite cost to Himself, God had been waiting since the beginning of history -- watching, suffering, loving -- until in the fullness of time He sent His only begotten Son to a redemption center on a hill called Calvary. What does He want to redeem? Everything. All creation is groaning for redemption, Paul says. God wants to redeem you.

When circumstances look bleak, when the stock market is down, or when your morale is sinking or your assets are shrinking or your health is collapsing, you may wonder, Is anything going up? Yes.

The chance to trust God when trusting isn’t easy is wide open. The prospect for modeling hope for a hope-needy world is trending upward. And the possibility of cultivating a storm-proof faith is always going up. This is so because certain truths remain unchanged: God remains sovereign, grace beats sin, prayers get heard, the Bible endures, heaven’s mercies spring up new every morning, the cross still testifies to the power of sacrificial love, the tomb is still empty, and the kingdom that Jesus announced is still expanding without needing to be bailed out by human efforts.

God is still in the business of redemption, specializing in bringing something very, very good out of something very, very bad.

-- John Ortberg in “The Me I Want to Be”

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