God Redeemed Man

“For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus; who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds. These things speak and exhort and reprove with all authority. Let no one disregard you.” Titus 2:11-15

It’s a routine fly ball. The outfielder pulls down his shades and lazily lifts his glove for the final out of the inning. The team prepares for a quick dash to the dugout.

However, what they see is the ball sliding out of the embarrassed center-fielder’s glove onto the turf, letting two runs cross the plate. When he approaches the plate the next inning, the announcer remarks that the player is “looking to redeem himself” with a positive bat.

The cultural meaning of redemption is alien to the spiritual context. Redemption in the spiritual sense requires far more than working to overcome previous faults and behavioral miscues.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, author Chuck Colson identified the fundamental problem that redemption must solve.

Futile attempts to upright our sunken values “reveal how deluded we are about the most pernicious myth of this century, that man is good and that with technology and education we can achieve utopian societies...Our founders were not so naive. They understood the Judeo-Christian truth that man is a sinner.”

God redeemed man and paid his sin debt through Christ’s death. That is the only ground for transforming a sinner into a saint.