Redemption is the process whereby an individual guilty of sin before God is saved from the just punishment of sin, namely death, through the vicarious death of Jesus. There are some particulars regarding redemption that are worth teasing out because they provide an abundance of joy and greater understanding of the particular love God shows to us. As we mine God’s word, the gold we find does not become scarcer the deeper we dig. Quite the contrary, the veins become thicker and richer the deeper we find ourselves searching God’s word.
We may start with some basic understanding of the Gospel to begin with, as is fitting. We learn about the historic death of the Lord Jesus on our behalf and we are called to repent and place our faith in Jesus. Going hand-in-hand with this, we seek to obey the call to live a holy life. All the while we have a vague idea that this world is not our home, but ultimately heaven is.
This basic grasp of the gospel is mostly focused on our present situation with some view to the future and it is also mostly focused on us. There is nothing wrong with this, after all, these are our concerns in the infancy of faith. We hear the call of God, we repent and believe in Jesus, we are justified, sanctified, and look forward (vaguely) to being glorified – not that we would use this language ourselves. All this is cause for endless rejoicing in itself!
But what happens as we dig a little further? If the veins grow thicker the deeper we dive then we will find ourselves with greater joys and greater blessings. I think we discover a few more articles of interest which we must assimilate with all we’ve already learnt. Underneath the surface layer, we discover that yes, everyone is called to believe in the gospel (universal calling performed by Christians through evangelism) and yet not all believe. It takes God to call individuals to himself (known as effectual calling). Closely associated with this is the doctrine of regeneration. As we think about how we journeyed along this path we think about the person who told us the gospel and then immediately think about the part where we repented and believed. But in between these two steps is the incredible work of regeneration by the Holy Spirit. At first we never saw this. But we might have wondered why it is that some people believe the gospel and others do not. Well, we must know that it is the Lord who effectually calls and his call is effectual because it brings dead people to life spiritually (regeneration).
Shortly after, we learn that we are now included in the family of God (adoption). The gravity of the doctrine of adoption takes quite some time to grasp (in my own experience). Likewise, the implications of the doctrine take some time to seep into our consciousness. Oppositely, consider justification. We are regularly reminded of our justification (I hope) due to the fact that we sadly fail to live a holy life. For every moment of failure, the gospel reminds us that in fact we are already declared righteous in Christ. As for the heights of adoption, seldom might we consider this despite the fact that it likewise affects the way we carry ourselves throughout life. Just like justification, adoption is a legal declaration. On the one hand, justification takes us out of the shackles of death. But adoption brings us into the family of God. One takes us out of the depths of despair while the other takes us to the heights of joy. So it is that a Christian’s identity is not only ‘innocent and free’, but greater still, ‘child of God’. If you feel the warmth of the love of God in your justification, how much greater ought you to feel the fires of the love of God in the way he has brought you into his adopted family. Having dug a bit further to see what is happening in our redemption, we are reaping great rewards of joy.
This leads me to another thought somewhat linked. God has a particular love for his children. God loves the world and all in it (in one sense of the word, ‘love’). But God particularly loves those whom he saves. I think we come to appreciate this much later in our Christian journey. Everything that we’ve considered so far (effectual calling, regeneration, faith and repentance, justified, adopted, sanctified) we experience in time, particularly our lifetime. But what about in eternity past? Well, in eternity past God has shown you particularly a kind of love that only a Christian gets to experience. Before time you were chosen and predestined to salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ. This all too easily grates us, but stop and consider, it’s this kind of distinction that we enjoy in the doctrine of adoption. So just as we experience a special kind of love from our adoption as children of God born by the Spirit of God, so too before that distinguishing love came God’s loving predestination of your salvation. And now our focus has very much left ourselves, I hope. For what at all do we see ourselves doing in the act of God’s predestination and choosing before time? We are simply looking back and enjoying the grandeur of God’s work on our behalf.
As I recently re-read John Murry’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied, the great intricacies of God’s work in saving us struck me: the scope of his love reaches through time, condescends through all the levels of humility and is more certain than any reality we might consider. It is a beautiful work the Lord has done, and a wonder to behold in all its detail and grandeur.
Bigvai and Shiphrah 