Chosen and Redeemed: From Slave to Sister

 

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us. With all wisdom and understanding,  Ephesians 1:7-8

 Slavery. It’s a dark word with dark imagery and connotations to it. It drips with evil. When I hear the word, I think of ships full of people making their way across the ocean – tossing them overboard when they expire from sickness or starvation. I think of plantations filled with people picking cotton all day in the scorching sun until their hands bleed. I think of children corralled in a factory sewing buttons onto clothing. But just like these people, past and present, I too was a slave – to sin. It’s darkness surrounded and entrapped me. It clouded my reasoning and kept me from what was good. Just when I was about to escape its grasp, it would pull me back under, as if I was drowning in its sea of deception.

 Jesus saw me there. He recognized my plight and knew the only means of escape. My slavery was the penalty, the cost of my sin. If you buy a house, you are indebted to a bank for the money they loaned you for its purchase. I didn’t get a house in the deal, but just like with a loan, my sin had a cost that must be repaid. My soul was tossed into a debtors prison, filled with the souls of most of those around me. Our situation was so common that it felt normal to us. Everyone had the same struggles, the same issues. But Jesus desperately wanted us to know that this is NOT NORMAL! Just like people in a debtors prison, I could be free of this evil alternate reality, but that freedom comes at a cost.

 If you want to own your house free and clear, you have to pay the entirety of your debt, principal and interest, back to the bank. In order to be free of the debt from your sin, that cost, both it’s initial consequences and the ripple-effect it had on the world, must also be paid back in full. In ourselves we can never accomplish this. It’s like we’re making the minimum payments on a credit card with 27% interest. No matter how hard we try, we’ll never see the end. Praise God that He knew our struggle and in His perfect wisdom and understanding, He saw how He could pay our debt in full and wipe our slate clean.

 Some people see this salvation as a form of bankruptcy. Jesus wipes their debt clean, but there are consequences still that they must pay. They cannot receive any new credit for a number of years and everywhere they go there is a marker on them saying that they messed up, they failed, and someone had to bail them out. But that’s not how Jesus works at all!

 You see, the wages of our sin is death (Romans 6:23). That is the only acceptable form of payment. What we did deserved the death penalty. That’s a tough truth to swallow. I don’t feel like anything I’ve done is quite that bad – but that’s part of sin’s trap that kept me in bondage. The reality is that sin, any sin, is turning away from God and choosing your own way instead. That’s the biblical definition of death, separation from God. He knew that the only way to pay this debt once and for all was through the physical death of someone who had never sinned and didn’t deserve it. He further knew that no one on earth was ever going to match that description. So, Jesus, God’s Son, a part of God in the Holy Trinity, came down from heaven and lived an earthly life as a human, but without sin. The only way He could do this was because He was still fully God while He was fully man (the Hypostatic Union).  Then, He chose to die on the cross to take the punishment, to pay the cost, to redeem us all from the indebtedness to sin.

 Instead of a bankruptcy, instead of wearing the shame of our past sins around our necks, Jesus lavished on us the riches of God’s grace. Grace. That means unmerited favor. Something we could never earn, but so desperately needed. God gives us grace. Through His sacrifice on our behalf, He cleanses us completely from our sin and makes us a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). The old, icky, dark sin-nature has passed away and in its place God created something beautiful and wonderful! Instead of living in the identity of a slave, I am now a sister of Jesus Christ!

Here's the Thing: In JESUS we have redemption. Through His shed blood on the cross, we have received forgiveness for our sins. It’s not fair, it’s grace.