“…Christ Jesus, who has become for us…redemption…”

I don’t know … I was having a hard time wrapping my mind around redemption, or better yet, letting redemption wrap itself around my mind.  I guess the idea of redemption had been too abstract, too theoretical for me to snag a piece of it.  That’s where it’s really helpful to have faithful family members, in the Body of Christ, of course.  For such a small church, we have quite a bit of diverse backgrounds and experiences.  One brother told us of a time when his kids were kidnapped in a South American country.  Fortunately they were returned unharmed.  Another brother told us of his recent trip to Russia to adopt another child, this time a boy who would become his son.  And what a fine young man he is.  Another brother gave an example of a woman pinned under piles of concrete after a terrorist attack.  Knocked out and pinned for days with two broken legs under tons of debris, she obviously wasn’t going anywhere fast.  What do all three have in common?  They are all precursors for redemption.

Redemption in its ultimate sense means deliverance, an act of loosening or freeing.  So how do these three illustrations anticipate redemption?  Simple.  My one friend had to pay a price to free his kids.  My other friend had to pay a price to adopt the Russian boy from an orphanage.  Similarly, someone had to pay the price of time, effort and heavy machinery to save the woman under the rubble.  Each needed to be freed from their current restricted situation.  In at least one scenario the situation was life threatening.  And let’s make another observation.  In each situation the ones redeemed were delivered from one thing and to something else.  The kids were delivered from their captors and to their parents.  They were not just saved from the kidnappers and left on the street.  My friends didn’t go to Russia to get the child out of the orphanage only to leave him behind.  They accepted him into their family.  The rescuers didn’t free the trapped and wounded woman only to set her up on her two broken legs to walk home.  Far from it!  They whisked her away to the hospital for emergency medical care.  Delivered from one thing to something else.  So not ever having been kidnapped, orphaned or seriously injured in a terrorist event, these illustrations helped me get a grip on the practical implications of Jesus being our redemption.

And that’s exactly what 1 Corinthians 1:30 says: “It is because of him [God] that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption”.  The immediate context describes God’s calling.  He deliberately chose the “foolish”, “weak”, “lowly” and “despised things—and the things that are not” (vs. 27-28) “so that no one may boast before him” (v. 29).  What that meant was that we who fit such categories couldn’t work out our salvation by ourselves.  Couldn’t even get started, really.  That’s why he set it up so that we would be “in Christ Jesus”, that wonderful position where our Savior becomes our new federal head replacing Adam.  Now in Christ, all of his blessings become ours, and all the negatives of Adam are extinguished.  The order seems to be significant, too: first righteousness, God’s declaration and gift of freedom from the law’s condemnation, then sanctification, the process that makes us more like Christ, and finally redemption, when both reach their ultimate conclusion with “our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23).

Paul mentioned redemption twice in Ephesians in connection with the Spirit: “…you were marked in him [Christ] with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession” (1:13-14).  And “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with whom you were sealed for the day of redemption” (4:30).  Clearly the Spirit of God, with whom we are to “keep in step” (Galatians 5:25), is the critical agent in assuring our arrival on that “day”.  What the Father has chosen and declared, what the Son has done and generated, the Spirit applies to and perfects in our lives.  It takes all three Persons to get the job done.

Now that my mind is clearing up, it dawned on me that there is a very real captivity that God knew about — long before I realized it — namely, the slavery to sin.  That is something my everyday experience proves in both others and me.  Believers get day-by-day redemption through sanctification, while unbelievers have neither any deliverance here nor any hope of that day coming in the future.

Christ is our redemption.  Are you moving away from sin’s domination to freedom in the Lord?