Redeemer

Psalm 78:35, Isaiah 44:6-8, Isaiah 54:5-8, Jeremiah 50:34, Acts 7:35

To redeem is to buy back something. All humanity has lost - lost their honor, their place within God’s presence, their status among creation…maybe reading this doesn’t quite resonate with you. But you know what I am talking about when I say that people are lost. Are we all not trying to seek purpose, meaning, or something among the things around us? Do you not chase after sex, money, alcohol, influence, popularity, power, materialism, justice, knowledge, you name it for it to fill the space where something is missing. Humanity, creation, and all things need to be redeemed. Sin came into the world and stole from us the ability to be with our Creator. In our rebellion, we had lost the right to be fulfilled in God himself. 

Enter Jesus the foretold Redeemer. The one who bought us back, who is making all things new. As Christians, we are both the redeemed and the ones being redeemed because of God. God is our redeemer, the one who wrapped himself in human flesh that he may pay the price that he did not owe, that we would be restored to be his dwelling place, to be his children, to be deemed honored in his sight. However, we must not forget our faith and our redemption are not about us, but about the God who was the only one capable of being our Redeemer. God in his justice, in his goodness, in his holiness could have rejected us and it would have been good. It would have been just. It would have been acceptable, not cruel or unloving. Yet, God’s glory was seen as being our Redeemer and thus out of his character he became so. 

Let that sink in today. God is your Redeemer, yesterday, today, and tomorrow, that you have been redeemed and are being redeemed. You are a saint because of the redemption work of Christ, yet you are becoming holy, fully redeemed and those are true in the midst of your failures. Cling to your redeemer in the victories, the defeats and everything in between.