IN 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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GOD’S WIDE EMBRACE

“God sent His Son, they called Him Jesus,
He came to love, heal, and forgive;
He lived and died to buy my pardon,
An empty grave is there to prove my Savior lives.”  (Bill and Gloria Gaither)

God, in Christ, embraces all the events and all the people who ever will pass before Him in the march of time. In that broad panorama, individual Christians may often feel so insignificant that they wonder to themselves whether or not even the most powerful microscope could find them! At those moments we need to rediscover the truth that God entered human history in the person of Jesus Christ in order to tie the poor threads of our scrap of time back into eternity. God's wide embrace includes you and me, for it was the lost of this world that God sent Jesus so that we and our moment of history's stage might be redeemed. You are locked into the embrace of God, an embrace that will never fail. In Jesus Christ, God said, "I love you. You are Mine." 

-- Paul K. Peterson in “Redeeming Love”

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THE REDEMPTIVE CROSS

“We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”  (Romans 8:28 NIV)

As we now know, the climactic example of God’s working for good was Jesus’ death on the cross… This incident was used by God for the redemption of the world. The cross thus became the central symbol of the Christian faith, and through it, the world was changed.

The cross teaches us that God can take the pain and suffering of our past, when we put them into His hands, and produce something beautiful. That is why some have defined forgiveness as “giving up the hope of a different past.” I would add to this that it’s taking on the hope of a joyful future. Forgiveness is believing that the future can be better than the past. The past can’t be changed, but God can do something redemptive with it. 

-- Adam Hamilton in “Forgiveness: Finding Peace Through Letting Go”

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JESUS CAME TO GIVE HIMSELF

“Surely He took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered Him punished by God, stricken by Him, and afflicted. But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on Him, and by His wounds we are healed.”  (Isaiah 53:4-5 NIV)

Jesus did not come merely to disclose God’s character. He came to make it possible to be remade in the likeness of that character. He came to redeem us from what we are and remake us in the likeness of what He is. He is not merely a teacher, a doer – He is a redeemer.

He came not merely to give His word, His example. He came to give Himself. He became like us that we might become like Him. He was baptized into the world’s toil for thirty years, baptized into our temptations for these years, and baptized into our sin at the end. He became sin for us at the cross. He died between two malefactors like one of them and cried the cry of dereliction that you and I cry when we sin: “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” If “life is sensitivity,” then there was infinite life, for here was infinite sensitivity – every [person’s] hunger His hunger; every [person’s] bondage His bondage; and every [person’s] sin His sin. “He bore in His own body our sins upon a tree.” (1 Peter 2:24)

Don’t ask me to explain it. I can’t explain it; I bow in humility and repentance at the cross, at the wonder of it, that God should give Himself for me. I bow and I am redeemed! 

-- E. Stanley Jones in “A Song of Ascents”

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BELONGING TO GOD

“You were bought with a price [you were actually purchased with the precious blood of Jesus and made His own]. So then, honor and glorify God with your body."  (1 Corinthians 6:20 Amplified Bible)

It frequently happens that the value of a thing lies in the fact that someone has possessed it. A very ordinary thing acquires a new value, if it has been possessed by some famous person. In any museum we will find quite ordinary things -- clothes, a walking-stick, a pen, pieces of furniture -- which are only of value because they were possessed and used by some great person. It is the ownership which gives them worth. It is so with the Christian. The Christian may be a very ordinary person, but he acquires a new value and dignity and greatness because he belongs to God. The greatness of the Christian lies in the fact that he is God's. 

-- William Barclay (1907-1978) in “The Letters of James and Peter”

GOD REDEEMS OUR SUFFERING

“The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on Me, because the Lord has anointed Me to… comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion -- to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair. They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the Lord for the display of His splendor.”  (Isaiah 61:1a, 2b-3 NIV)

In our personal lives, when we place our sorrows and suffering in God’s hands, we find God redeems the suffering and uses it for our good…

A man who recently had a brush with death wrote to say, “My wife says I am a different person, more loving, more caring, more compassionate, more appreciative of everyday things since my diagnosis, and she is right.” A woman who went through a two-year period of unemployment tells me that, while she would not wish this on anyone, her entire perspective on life and faith was changed as a result of the experience. She told me that today she thanks God for this time of adversity. I have walked with dozens of parents who have lost children. They don’t thank God for the loss of their children; they know that God did not “take” their children. But they do tell me, years later, how God sustained them and used their pain to change them, and how the trajectory of their lives was different, deeper, and more meaningful, as a result of the terrible grief they endured. 

-- Adam Hamilton in “Why?: Making Sense of God’s Will”

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GOD’S REDEMPTIVE PLAN

God has no orphans -- only family. He has provided for every child of His through the unlimited resources of heaven. No matter what mistakes we have made, God cares for those who have chosen to enter a love relationship with Him. Our world is full of hurting people who have no hope, but God made provision for their every need through Jesus Christ. He then made Christ the head of the churches He has established, in order that He might bring healing through His people who have come to know His saving grace. That is the strategy of God’s redemptive plan to touch the world. 

Local churches, the gathered people of God, are crucial to God’s eternal purpose in salvation and world redemption. If you are a member of a local church, by the direction and will of God, you are most fortunate. You are exactly where God wants you and where God will unfold to you the fullness of salvation. And it is here where God will cause you to reach out to a lost world for His glory.  

-- Henry Blackaby and Melvin D. Blackaby in “Experiencing God Together: God's Plan to Touch Your World”

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