Redemption: From Lost and Condemned to Purchased and Won
Many of you know that I was away visiting family these last few weeks. It was truly wonderful. Thank you for giving me that opportunity. We got to see just about everyone on both sides of the family, including an uncle I hadn’t seen in ages. We talked about religion, politics, money – you know, all the things you’re not supposed to talk about in polite conversation – but in the course of our conversation he told me about his interesting investment strategy – he bought a horse.
Now this wasn’t just any horse; it was a racehorse. Normally, I wouldn’t think of racehorses as a good investment – not every horse is a winner; some of them get injured and can never race again. And do you know what happens to racehorses that can’t race anymore? They go to auction, and sadly it’s estimated that about 10,000 former racehorses are sold at auction to be slaughtered every year. One tumble at the track, a string of losses at the races and a racehorse can go to a glue source pretty quickly.
But, thankfully there are people who love horses, whether they can still win the Kentucky Derby or not. There are whole organizations dedicated to rescuing these former racehorses from the slaughterhouses. They go to these auctions and put money down on creatures that had been condemned. Animals that had been deemed worthless are redeemed, i.e. bought back, given a second chance, ransomed, rescued from almost certain death and allowed to go to a green pasture and live in peace.
That’s what it means to redeem something. It means to buy it back, to give it a second chance, to ransom, to rescue it. That’s what we mean when we talk about Jesus’ work of redemption. Only Jesus doesn’t buy washed up, decommissioned racehorses. He redeems us, lost and condemned creatures that we are.
That’s what confess in the Second Article of the Apostles’ Creed: He has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.
We were lost and condemned creatures, not because we had a tumble and fall that kept us from performing at our best (although, who of us hasn’t tumbled or fallen or failed to be as good as we could be?). No, it’s worse than that. We’re rotten to core.
It’s kind of like an apple I tried to eat earlier this week. It looked great! There were no bruises, no cuts. It was firm and colourful. All the other apples from the same bag were ripe and juicy. But I took one bite and everything more than a centimeter below the surface was brown and mushy. I could taste it immediately, and, as soon as I could, I spit it out of my mouth.
That’s the way we often are. We can look like good people, feel like good people, surround ourselves with good people. But when we dig deeper, we find something rotten. Paul talks about it in his letter to the Romans:
I know that good itself does not live in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing… For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?[1]
Does that ever happen to you? You love your wife. You want to have a great relationship with her. But she did the one thing that you just cannot stand. You know it shouldn’t bother you as much as it does. You know she doesn’t it intentionally. You know that if you say what you feel like saying, you’ll regret it, but you say it anyway, because you just can’t help it. You fight it, but the words you know will hurt come tumbling out of your mouth before you can stop them. That’s the same kind of struggle that Paul went through.
You hate to gossip. You hate going back to the bottle or to porn, but all of a sudden you’re in a situation and you can’t help yourself. Your friends are dishing on the boy you knew in high school, and you’ve got some dirt you know would raise some eyebrows. Before you know it, you’re blabbing – airing out his dirty laundry and glorying in his misfortune.
You’re depressed. You’re alone. You’re bored. So, without even thinking about it you reach into the cabinet or you pull out your smartphone, and before you know it, you’ve done it again.
The sad fact is that you don’t have to bury children in an unmarked grave to be a sinner. You just have to lose the battle with your own sinful nature to become what Paul calls “a prisoner of the law of sin,” “a wretched person,” someone whose guilt has condemned them before God and condemned you to eternal life in hell.
That’s what sin is. That’s what our spiritual condition was. We were what Paul says. We were as good as “dead in [our] transgressions and sins.”[2] We were lost and condemned creatures, like washed up, decommissioned racehorses doomed to slaughter.
But Christ has redeemed you! He has purchased and won you from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil. Jesus bought you back. Jesus intervened. He did not let you be lost forever. He purchased you “not with gold or silver, but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.”
No amount of money could ever undo the wrongs that we have committed. When you say something hurtful to your spouse, your child, your friend, you can’t just write them a cheque and make it go away. When you fall prey to the secret desires of your heart and sin against no one but God above, nothing you own or could offer would ever make your guilt disappear.
But Jesus had something else – something better – to offer. As Peter puts it:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.[3]
Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for your sins. The payment he made couldn’t be counted in dollars or grams or bitcoin. The price he paid was his own blood.
Isaiah writes about this in his prophecy:
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.[4]
This is a prophecy about Jesus’ crucifixion 700 years before it happened, complete with references to the nails that would pierce Jesus’ hands and feet, the wounds that would stretch across his body from hateful Jewish fists and brutal Roman whips.
Isaiah goes on: We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way – we are the ones who have been disobedient and foolish, but – the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.[5] Jesus was our substitute, i.e. the one who took our place and our punishment, who carried our guilt and shame to the cross so that we could be forgiven – so that you could be redeemed.
Jesus intervened to rescue us and to ransom us “not with gold or silver but with his holy, precious blood and with his innocent suffering and death.” The spotless Lamb of God paid for your sin with his life because he loves you, because he didn’t want you to be a lost and condemned creature, because he wanted to forgive you and redeem you.
And now you are redeemed. You have been purchased and won. You have been set free “from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil,” as we confess in the Second Article. And that’s not just a historic fact. That’s a life-changing reality today and every day.
Jesus has purchased and won you from all sins. That means that you are forgiven. God does not hold your sin against you anymore.
You know, we can sometimes hold grudges. We forgive but we don’t forget. We don’t let others forget the wrongs they’ve done to us.
But not God. Because Jesus died for you, your guilt is gone. As far as the east is from the west, so far has God removed your transgressions from you.[6]
Or, as Paul said just after telling us about his personal struggle with sin: There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.[7]
That means that we live in grace, not guilt. We live in freedom, not fear. We are liberated and motivated not to avoid possible punishment, but to live in the peace that comes from Jesus’ love. He paid the price for our sin; there’s no more burden on you to pay for it, because he’s purchased and won you from all sins.
Jesus has also purchased and won you from death. Death is the wages of sin. Death is what we all deserve for our disobedience to God. But we have been redeemed from death.
Now, that doesn’t mean that we will never die, but it does mean that death doesn’t have to be so scary. Death isn’t defeat. Death isn’t the end. Death, now, in Jesus, is just the beginning.
Jesus was the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Jesus was killed on a cross, but not even death could keep him down. He won the victory over death and rose from the grave 3 days after he was buried. And now, 2,000 years later, you can celebrate at a Christian’s funeral, because on that day you can know that anyone who dies in faith, joins in the victory of Jesus, because he has purchased and won you from death.
And finally, we confess that Jesus has also purchased and won us from the power of the devil.
We read about Paul’s personal struggle with sin earlier (“The good I want to do I do not do. The evil I do not want to do – this I keep on doing.”). Even though we’ve been forgiven, set free, redeemed from sin, we still struggle with sin, but not in vain. When you resist the devil’s temptations, you are not fighting a losing battle. Sin is not a foregone conclusion. You can resist. You can fight back, because Jesus has purchased and won you from the power of the devil.
Paul talks about this in his letter to the Corinthians: God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.[8]
God is greater than the devil. If you’re afraid of the power and influence that Satan and his demons can exert on your soul, then marvel at the far greater power and influence that God exerts on you in Christ. Jesus defeated the devil when he died on the cross. And now, Jesus gives you the power to fight back too.
He gives you his Word to teach you what sin is and how to recognize temptation when it arises. He gives you his Spirit to live in you by faith and to give you the strength to tell the devil where he can go. God even manufactures escape routes in your life so that the devil cannot trap you or force you to sin.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found myself embroiled in a battle with temptation, feeling my willpower weaken, ready to give in and do that sinful thing… and then the phone rings. It’s my dad or a fellow Christian. I wasn’t expecting the call, but suddenly there’s a Christian who I know would cheer me on if they knew my struggle. And sometimes that’s all I need to break the spell. Suddenly I have the presence of mind and strength of will to walk away.
God promises to provide a way out of temptation when it arises. Look for those escape routes. Take them. Resist the devil and he will flee from you, because Jesus has redeemed you from the power of the devil.
You’re not a thoroughbred. You’re not a washed up racehorse doomed to become a glue source. Your situation was much worse. You were a lost and condemned creature, doomed to hell for your sin, until Jesus redeemed you. Rejoice in his rescue. Live in his grace. Resist temptation and look forward with the eyes of faith to life everlasting in Jesus’ name, the Lamb of God, your sacrifice for sin and your Redeemer. Amen.
[1] Romans 7:18,19,22-24
[2] Ephesians 2:1
[3] 1 Peter 1:18,19
[4] Isaiah 53:5
[5] Isaiah 53
[6] Psalm 103:12
[7] Romans 8:1
[8] 1 Corinthians 10:13