During a flag football playoff game, I was installed as a linebacker on defense. My job was to make sure the quarterback or running back didn’t take off running with the ball. But then, the running back went out for the pass, and I neglected to defend him. It was an easy touchdown pass for the other team, and I had made a costly mistake.
Towards the end of the game, we were losing but had the ball. Normally, I didn’t play offense, but I was a wide receiver on this particular play. To the surprise of everyone, the pass for the win came to me. I dropped it – No! I caught it and we won! Touchdown!
Afterwards one of my friends came up to me and yelled ‘Redemption!’ He remembered my costly mistake on defense but how I made up for it by the end of the game.
And as great as that moment and that feeling was, I realize years later that was not redemption. At best, it was a small taste of the great redemption that I have as a believer in Jesus Christ.
We’re not really familiar with redemption as in the Bible times. We might connect it with sports, like with my football game. Or with pawnshops. But neither of those give us the incredible weight of the term as used in Scripture.
1 Peter 1:18-19 give us an excellent introduction:
18 knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers,
19 but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.
Redemption is the idea of purchasing the freedom of someone. Say you are a slave. Or a prisoner of war, or a criminal. In all three of these scenarios, you are in chains, and aside from an escape, you cannot get free. But, someone comes and pays the high price, and you are set free! How tremendous is that!
But the purchase of your soul wasn’t with silver or gold or anything that is temporary. As valuable as those are, they don’t hold a candle to the precious blood of Jesus Christ! In Bible times, redemption often involved significant effort to accomplish. It was viewed as consuming time, money, and energy. Jesus did this willingly for you, to the point of paying the price with His own life blood. All so that you may go free!
Redemption is so much more than a touchdown; it is new life, free life in Jesus Christ!