Redeemed

This morning we worked as volunteers at a home for women coming out of addiction. One woman told us her story. After surviving a car accident that took the life of her father, she struggled to find her place in life, all the while battling loneliness and depression. She confessed that she looked in all the wrong places to find the love denied her by her father’s death. She had children out of wedlock and could not support them or properly care for them. She became increasingly dependent on drugs and was constantly in and out of jail. All the while she knew that she needed God to redeem her. Finally she was desperate enough to own her need for a Redeemer and gave her life to Jesus Christ. She claims to be a brand new person, completely different from her old self.

I think we all find a little bit of ourselves in a story like that of this young woman. We are all trying to fill the holes left buried within us by the circumstances of our lives. We all have basic needs that have gone unmet and leave us struggling to find wholeness. Unfortunately we don’t recognize that we cannot fix these problems on our own, and our efforts just drive us further away from redemption.

Romans 3:23-25 says, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.” The dictionary defines redemption as the action of regaining or gaining possession of something in exchange for payment, or clearing a debt. God has made a way for our redemption. The sacrifice and blood of His Son is the act of God’s mercy and grace to make us whole, filling what is missing within us. Sin made the hole by driving us away from God to go our own way. The blood of Jesus Christ redeems us from death to life, from darkness to light, from our old self to new life, and from slavery in sin to freedom in Christ.

But God’s gift of redemption must be received to be activated. Don’t wait another minute to receive the redemption you are looking for and desperately need.