Redemption is quite possibly the most beautiful doctrinal term in scripture. It lies behind all that we have in Jesus and proceeds all we become in Jesus Christ. Redemption is simply a full expression of God’s love for His chosen people on earth, as well as, those above earth!
The beauty in redemption lays in its primary subjects, a Heavenly Person and an earthly person. A supreme, all knowing, righteous holy God reaches His hand down from heaven into decadence, a worldly system corrupted by depravity, sustained by futile self-awareness, and debauchery. Man, having lost the purity of his original creation, turns the earth upside-down into a pagan ritual of selfish pleasure and man hasn’t look back! But God, nevertheless, provides salvation through redemption.
God’s agape love prevails! God in His Holy Trinity provides divine intervention. He enters into man’s debauchery and literally delivers a bloody path for man’s salvation with His own personal sacrifice in Jesus, the Son of God and the son of man! Redemption is the foundation on which we receive justification, sanctification and glorification.
If you ask someone to explain redemption, you might hear: “Jesus dying for my sin.” This is certainly a slice of it, and right out of the middle. But this like saying watermelon is red. It is also green, round, lays on the ground growing seeds inside!
The way I began understanding redemption was in Greek class. Basically, it means belonging to God; Jesus purchased us! We are His personal possession releasing us from sin’s slavery that binds us in darkness. Redemption sets us free from earthly bondage while we become Jesus’ precious sheep!
Redemption does all this, plus, it releases God’s grace into our meager existence. Grace is an expression of God’s love allowing us to choose faith, as a habit! Grace disciplines, blesses and leads us into the glorious presence of God’s person! We learn to choose grace by believing and trusting Jesus. This is a repetitive choice we must turn into a faith habit in order to learn the deeper meaning of redemption and experience personally the presence of Jesus.
This is possible because we have already boarded the bus from earth to heaven. Jesus paid our fare! We have already been created righteous by a divine new creation within each believer. We have already been set free from sin’s bondage; we have already been endowed with abounding grace far greater than any stumbling block, or stone wall, or huge mountain.
The issue for the redeemed person, created new in Jesus, is a believer’s temptation to marry earth to heaven. Man has the inclination to spiritualize the “good” God created in our cursed world. Born again believers will take God’s natural “good” and combine it with our new spiritual birth created within each born again believer. Jesus, on the other hand, calls us to separate ourselves from “good” worldliness and puts to death everything that is not of faith. We are in the world but not of the world!
While this is certainly a discussion point in sanctification, it must be emphatically isolated in redemption because not only is the believer the personal possession of Jesus, but we are also set free from sin’s bondage. Jesus must become our prime focus in love thus creating the Great Divorce from earth in preference to heaven.
Redemption was accomplished by Jesus coming into flesh, untainted by sin, dying on the cross, thus paying the price for our sin. Jesus’ resurrection releases us from sin’s bondage and corruption. We benefit by both His death and His resurrection, our redemption requires both! We are on earth as He is in heaven. We open our heart’s door, so that, He can open heaven’s door into us. He creates righteousness and eternal life, sealing His work within us by our indwelling Holy Spirit.
Redemption is God’s way of restoring His creation into purity, holiness and truth.
But there is still more to it than this. Our redemption is still not complete! We live in bodies of flesh that are not redeemed … yet! We who are alive on earth will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air acquiring new resurrection bodies for our already existing eternal identity. The dead in Christ will arise first and then we who remain will be caught up with the Lord and so shall we ever be in the Lord!
To understand redemption is to understand God is piercing finite barriers of time within our personal humanity; it is actually seeing within us the glory of our Lord God in His eternality. We only see dimly now, like the blind man who saw men as trees walking, but we will see even as we are now seen! Growing in Christ thru His grace is experiencing deeper and deeper the wonder of the “law of the Spirit.” The Holy Spirit draws us deeper into the reality of being eternal. Just as we were born as a person of dust, we have already been born again in the image of the man from heaven: we bear His image. All this becomes possible because of our redemption.
Redemption is God’s love story for a human creation. He chose to love and cherish us by sharing His divine self. But it is even more than us! It also includes the land cursed because of our sin. Adam was given dominion to rule, to cultivate and manage earth; it is also to be redeemed! The redemption story includes His people, His Church and the land He created!
Redemption is a good launching pad for looking into the book of Revelation. The last book in the Bible is the Revelation of Jesus Christ. It is His story of what was, of what is and what will be for the soul of man in the Kingdom of God. It is God’s love story of man’s redemption thru the revelation of Jesus Himself. Man is transformed out from mortality into immortality bearing the image of the Man from heaven.
God’s universes, including our own Milky Way, and inhabitant earth, still belong to God. He has not given up His ownership. Satan’s current rule over our culture and worldliness is not by ownership authority but by delegated authority. Satan’s power is authority stolen from Adam in the Garden of Eden. It was and is delegated authority which God will take back in judgment.
The Old Testament story of Israel depicts the story of redemption. Remember the story of Ruth? Boaz was her kinsman-redeemer. He purchased her husband’s lands and restored her so that she became an ancestor of Jesus Himself.
Israel was in bondage to Egypt. God used Moses to redeem the people to occupy Canaan, their promised land. Moses rebelled saying he was not qualified to perform such a huge task. God told Moses:
“What is that in your hand?”
Moses replied: “A staff.”
“Throw it on the ground.” Moses did and it became a snake and Moses ran from it!
God told Moses to pick it up by the tail; He did and it turned back into his staff.
God’s purpose will not be impaired by our human weakness. We simply have to use what we have in our hand! His redemption plan has been set in place and we are redeemed to participate in our redeemer’s grace. Whatever we have in our hand, God will use for His purpose and it will not be disrupted by our weakness! We merely need to come into loving submission participating by faith.
Redemption is God’s provision allowing us access into the grace in which we stand. In God’s eyes, after being created new in Jesus, we are a spiritual Person. If our spiritual choices are right, our physical condition will fall into place so as to support our Heavenly Father’s Spiritual Purpose! We are no longer of this world, our citizenship is no longer resident in this worldly system.
Too many of us continue in a temporal mode not believing God the Father has actually redeemed us. Oh, we believe our sins are forgiven, yes! We even believe we are going to heaven but it takes faith to move us from “going to heaven when we die” to walking in the resurrection power of God’s love while in our corrupted temporal bodies. Grasping and consuming grace in earth’s bodies effects our place in God’s Kingdom.
We are not only restored into fellowship but also created brand new, the old is passed and the new has come, We can begin living spiritually, learning how to walk in the light of His resurrection power, rather than, the futility of fleshly pride or fear.
A verse we should all have in our quiver at all times is Philippians 4:12-13:
“I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any circumstance and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.”
We must walk through a wide range of physical conditions, good and bad, equipping us to walk in the mercy of our redemption; understanding redemption is walking as well as just living spiritually. Agape love operates in God’s children so that spiritual faith choices become our first choice and not second best options. We have to kill the habits of selfness, choosing rather, living and walking in the habit of faith.
The dunamis resurrection power of God is not confined to physical shows of strength or changing water to wine. God’s power reaches into the very essence of knowing and seeing, of wisdom and discernment, of mercy and forgiveness. Our eternal values become alive from the omniscience and sovereignty of our almighty God! His grace operates in us because we chose His redemption plan rather than the futility of life outside of God, within the darkness of sin.
Redemption is about the forgiveness of sin but it is so much more. It sets us free to walk in light, grow in grace, making Spiritual choices which are not even available to those not created spiritually. These are the lost souls who are not redeemed and not created righteous in the resurrection power of Jesus.
Our redemption is the foundation upon which God lays the foundation for our righteousness in Christ Jesus; redemption provides our access into grace because we receive Christ’s righteousness and it provides in us the glorification of God’s work. Our indwelling Holy Spirit gives us spiritual light to see the beauty and majesty of our everlasting Father.
The reality of all we have in Christ Jesus is already provided. Our possession is dependent upon our faith. Our sanctification is complete yet at the same time dependent upon our faith. It sounds contradictory, an oxymoron, but it is not! It is the mystery of godliness which is the hands of God Himself.
Like Peter, we too need to walk in His glorious light, feeding His lambs and sheep while tending His sheep by following Jesus Himself! Jesus agape loves us!