THE MESSAGE OF HOPE - VII

Titus 3:5b-7
Bob Bonner
July 12, 2009

In West Africa in 1927, a blood specimen was taken from a native named Asibi, who was sick with yellow fever. While thousands of others died, Asibi recovered naturally. All the yellow fever vaccine manufactured since 1927 by the Rockefeller Foundation, the government, and other agencies derives from the original strain of virus obtained from this humble African native, Asibi.  Carried down to the present day from one laboratory to another through repeated cultures and by enormous multiplication, his original blood specimen has offered immunity to yellow fever to millions of people in many countries. Through the creative imagination of science, the blood of one man in West Africa has been made to serve the whole human race.

So it is with the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ. The blood of Christ is the only spiritual vaccine to the inherent disease of sin in the human race. The Gospel, the message of hope, explains how this spiritual “vaccine” works so that one’s eternal destiny is secure and life today can be made full. As we continue our study this morning looking at the practical implications of the Gospel for everyday Christian life, we are going to see more clearly the significance of Christ’s shed blood on behalf of the entire human race.

By way of review, for the past three weeks we have been looking at God’s answer to the false belief that so many of us Christians unwittingly hold to or revert to when we fail or when others fail us. It is that false belief that, “Those who fail (including me) are unworthy of love and deserve to be punished.”

When we succumb to this false belief, the negative consequences in our lives are that we live in fear of punishment from God or others, we become quick to criticize or condemn, and we demand or hand out punishment to those we believe are deserving.  When this false belief is operating in our lives, we are typically quick to blame or beat up ourselves or others for our personal failure, rather than simply acknowledging our failure, accepting Christ’s forgiveness, and loving and moving on. When this false belief governs our lives, we tend to withdraw from God and fellow believers in order to avoid further punishment should we fail. Sometimes when this belief is working in the background of our thinking, we may even find ourselves blaming God for not quickly enough punishing evildoers, or just the opposite, we blaming God for too harshly punishing others. 

If our spiritual enemy, Satan, can continue to deceive us with this false belief, he can steal our joy, our effectiveness in serving Christ, and our confidence in waking up to face a new day.

In the past three weeks, we have learned that there are two Biblical terms that are God’s corrective answer to this false belief.  Furthermore, these terms make up two pillars that are foundational to the Gospel and how it applies to our lives as Christians today.                          

Those two terms that work together in concert to answer this false belief are propitiation and redemption. Propitiation resolves the problem for the need of punishment when we or others do wrong or fail. Propitiation, according to the Bible, declares that because of Jesus Christ’s dying on the cross in my place for all my wrong doing, God’s righteous wrath against me, a wrath that could destroy me, has been satisfied. It has been so satisfied by Christ’s death in my place, that now God is free to forever wrap His loving arms around me, even when I still fail. Hence, I will never be punished or rejected by God.

The second term further explains how this propitiating work was made possible by Jesus Christ’s death on the cross. It is the term we started looking at last week and we will finish looking at this morning. It is redemption, which is originally a commercial or business term. It means to loose, untie, deliver, free up, or purchase something for a specified purpose.

 Redemption as used in the New Testament has four different aspects to it that we must keep in mind to fully understand and appreciate its implications in our everyday lives. The first aspect of redemption, which we covered last week, was that as Christians who have been redeemed, we are a people set free, loosed, and delivered from something because of an act of God on our behalf.

From what were we delivered? The Scriptures show us that we were delivered from the hopeless state of being under the mastery of sin in our lives. Before we come to Christ, the Bible teaches that our lives are controlled by the slave master of sin. Even if we want to do good, we cannot consistently find victory over troublesome sins, past hurts, addictive habits, and other things that get us hung up and incapable of moving forward in our lives. We are destined to live under hopeless failure.

But when we get saved, Jesus Christ literally enters our lives, our very being, and resides within us. His very life-giving resurrection power is a treasure that we carry around with us everywhere we go. It is a treasure we can draw upon to find freedom from the slave master of sin. We are never without Him, our Treasure, or His power. As a result, when we face temptation to sin, if we so choose, we can turn to Him and depend upon Him by faith, and He will supernaturally enable us to overcome the temptation. We will find victory over it. But apart from deliberately trusting in Him, we don’t have any hope of overcoming temptation.

Hence, the big difference between being saved and not being saved is that before salvation we had no hope of ever being transformed to find victory over our hurts, habits, and hang-ups. But after being saved, and as we depend upon Jesus Christ, we can find His enabling power to deliver us and give us victory over temptation.

The second thing we saw last time that Christ’s redemption brought to the Christian is that Christ has set us free from the power of the flesh. We defined the Biblical use of this term “the flesh” as that drive in each person to live independently from God. This drive to live as though God does not exist is revealed in two ways according to the Bible. First, the flesh makes itself known when we deliberately choose to disobey God. Although saved, Christians can and do deliberately choose to sin or disobey God. When we do, we are not living in submission to our Lord Jesus Christ. 

But just as hideous, and in some ways even worse than the flesh demonstrating itself in blatant disobedience against God, is the more subtle act of the flesh realized when we depend upon our own strength to do good or to live as God has called us to live. If God tells us to love someone who is difficult to love, or if He presents us with an opportunity to counsel a fellow believer, consider the fact that in order for us to do so, God’s Word declares we must by conscious faith abide in or depend upon Jesus to work in and through us. But so often we don’t. We think that simply because we love God and want to honor Him, we can do good. But Jesus and the Apostle Paul make it very clear that in ourselves, we are inadequate to do any truly life-changing good apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus declared to the believer in John 15:5, “Apart from Me, you can do nothing.” But somehow we forget that or don’t believe it, and we try to live a spiritual life under our own power, independent from God, in “the flesh,” failing miserably.

 Sadly, most good-willed, good-intentioned Christians live this way. We don’t know any better, and we live and minister in the flesh, apart from Jesus Christ. But once we understand the truth about the flesh and our tendency to try to live a spiritual life under our own power, Jesus frees us and does His supernatural work through us, as we moment by moment learn to trust His living His life through us, and as we consciously acknowledge Him in our lives.

Up to this point this morning, we have simply reviewed what we looked at in depth the past three weeks. If you need more clarification, I encourage you to pick up a copy of the three previous weeks’ messages. 

This morning we want to tackle the other three aspects of redemption.  Let’s continue in our study by looking at what Romans 3:24-25 has to tell us about a second aspect of redemption. Just following verse 23, in which the Apostle Paul tells us that everyone of us “have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” he tells us we have been “justified [meaning being declared accepted, approved of, and worthy or right before God] as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed.” 

These verses introduce to us the fact that Jesus is the one who redeemed us, but they do not fully explain how Jesus did this. How were we redeemed?  How were we purchased and set free? And what was the cost or price paid for our release from the slave master of sin and the flesh?

Let’s look at what the Apostle John adds to this discussion and clarifies concerning the concept of “redemption” in Revelation 5:9. There we read, “And they sang [meaning the hosts in heaven] a new song [about Jesus], saying, ‘Worthy are You . . . for you were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.’”  Do you see it? How were we released from our slave master? What was the cost? The answer is Jesus. He voluntarily submitted to crucifixion for us so that by his death and the payment of His blood we were bought and paid for and released from our old slave master.

Jesus Himself prophesied of His own upcoming arrest and crucifixion before it ever happened in Matthew 20:28, saying, "Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Notice, nobody took Jesus Christ’s life. Jesus was not forced by God to give up His life for us. Jesus voluntarily gave up His life for us. 

The Apostle Peter, in 1 Peter 1:18-19, further explains how precious this payment of Christ’s blood was. He writes, "Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold . . . but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ."

So the question was, “How was it that we were redeemed? What did it cost God to free us from our old slave master?” And the answer from God’s Word is that we were redeemed by the payment price of the blood of Christ.

Here is one additional thought about the extent to which Christ's death paid for our freedom: When Jesus was on the cross, His final words just before he died were, "It is finished." Like the term "redemption," the term for "finished" is also a commercial and financial term used in secular business to refer to a debt being paid in full. Christ death and blood paid it all. It's finished. Nothing needs to be nor can be added to Christ’s work on the cross. He did all that was necessary to free us from God’s wrath and the fear of punishment, so that we will forever be deserving of God’s love. Everything we needed to be set free so that we could live for Christ and fulfill the purpose for which we were created was paid for once and for all with the blood of Christ.

So, we were redeemed or set free from something and we were redeemed or set free by something. Now we are going to learn that we were redeemed to something, this third aspect of our redemption.

Please look at 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. “Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price [What was that price? Christ’s blood!], therefore glorify God in your body.” 

Hence, the third concept that redemption includes is that we are redeemed to something, namely, to a state of freedom under God. This is not a freedom to do whatever we please, but a freedom to do what we were created for, to serve Him. We human beings were created to always serve someone, and that is God. And it is only in serving Him as our master that we find our wholeness, peace, satisfaction, and sense of true freedom to be who we were created to be. Freedom is not the ability to do what you please, but rather the ability to do what you know is right, and the ability to do and live in the manner you were created by God to do and to live.

Before we were saved, we could not fulfill the purpose for which we were created. In fact, we couldn’t even figure out why we were created. The Bible makes it clear that we were created to serve somebody--God. But only after we have been reconciled or rightly related to God through the redemption of Jesus Christ can we choose to serve Him. And once saved, we still have a daily choice as to who will be our master: Jesus or sin. Before we came to Christ, we had no choice. But now we do. Paul verifies this concept that we were created to serve somebody and that we have the ability as Christians to choose rightly in Romans 6:12-23. 

Therefore do not let sin reign [rule or master] in your mortal body so that

you obey its lusts, and do not go on presenting the members of your

body to sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves

to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments

of righteousness to God. For sin shall not be master over you, for you

are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because

we are not under law but under grace? May it never be! Do you not

know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for

obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin

resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? 

But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became

obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were

committed, and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of

righteousness. . . . For just as you presented your members as slaves to

impurity and to lawlessness, resulting in further lawlessness, so now

present your members as slaves to righteousness, resulting in

sanctification. . . . But now having been freed from sin and enslaved to

God, you derive your benefit, resulting in sanctification, and the

outcome, eternal life.  For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of

God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

One cannot read those verses without seeing the reality that we are created slaves, designed to serve somebody. Now as Christians, we have a choice. Am I or are you going to choose to serve God and to abide in Christ do what is right? Or am I or are you going to choose to return to the slave master of sin? If I choose God, it is life. If I choose sin, it is death and the absence of abundant living that Jesus Christ promised to those who submit their lives to Him. The choice belongs to each Christian. You are going to serve somebody. Who will it be? Jesus or the slave master, sin?

Now we return to 1 Corinthians 6:19-20. I challenge you to take those two verses, write them out, and put them someplace where you will see them every day for a week. Slowly read them at least once a day. Think about their implications for your life. Paul writes, "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you [that means all of you: your mind, emotions, will, body, soul, spirit, reputation, personal possessions, goals, dreams, personal agendas, hopes, expectations, your loved ones, your portfolios, your business--all that pertains to you or your life] have been bought with a price [by whom? God. Who owns you, then? He does! How much of you has He purchased? How much of your life does He want? All of it!] therefore glorify God in your body."  In other words, make it evident to all who observe your life that, on the whole, you have chosen for God to be your master by the choice you make not to allow sin to be your master, and that you have willingly submitted to the circumstances He has allowed to take place in your life.

Look a little further down in 1 Corinthians to 1 Corinthians 7:22. It reads, "For he who was called in the Lord while a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called while free is Christ's slave. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men."

Freedom in Christ means to be able to rightly serve the One who created us and died for us, so that we might know Him and enjoy Him today and forever.

The fourth aspect of redemption we have already mentioned, but with the risk of overstating the case, allow me to repeat it here. We have been set free from something, by something, to something, and now, for something. For what purpose has Jesus Christ set us free and placed us here on earth?

To answer this question, we return to the book we have been studying that sent us down this rabbit trail concerning the Gospel. The Apostle Paul reminds us of our purpose as slaves in Titus 2:14, where he explains that Christ “gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.” And as I have mentioned during our study of Titus, that expression “good deeds” is a Biblical expression referring to those deeds that have eternal consequences, and there are many of them spelled out in Scripture. For example: Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20: 

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself

through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation, namely, that

God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their

trespasses against them, and He has committed to us the word of

reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ. 

In other words, as ones saved by God’s grace, our assignment is to share with anyone who will listen the good news of the Gospel and how they can be reconciled with God. And our assignment is to share with those who are reconciled but confused about their own salvation that the Gospel can make a difference in their lives today. We are to reach the lost and encourage the saved with the truth of the Gospel. That’s the “ministry of reconciliation.” 

Hence, Christians are redeemed for something, namely, for the purpose to do good deeds as ambassadors for Christ. By way of illustration, allow me to bring all four of these aspects of “redemption” together so that they can reveal the whole picture, and then I will restate what it means to you in your walk with Christ.

My wife and I have a credit card that earns air miles with every purchase. Recently, our credit card company sent me an email to let me know how many air miles we have accumulated and to remind me how I could “redeem my air miles for travel.” So when I choose to use them, I do four things. By having so many air miles I can now take a trip from here to there, for the purpose of enjoying a vacation. Those four prepositions, by, from, to, and for, explain the full concept of redemption.

As it relates to my relationship with God, it is by the precious blood of Christ I have been freed from the slave master of sin to freedom to serve my new master, Jesus Christ, for the purpose of doing His bidding, that He would be lifted up for all to see. As I do this, I will then experience the abundant life in the midst of a world filled with physical disease, hurts, hang-ups, evil, and so on. Although I face trials and unpleasantness in life, I still experience hope and find meaning, even in the midst of challenging times or even when I fail.

So God’s answer to the false belief, “Those who fail (including me) are unworthy of love and deserve to be punished,” should be clear. If you have put your trust in Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord, then because of Christ’s propitiating work on your behalf, you never deserve nor will you ever be punished by God when you fail. You may be lovingly disciplined for instructional purposes, but never with anger, hatred, rejection, or punishment. And Christ’s redeeming work means that you have been bought with His blood, because He loves you and has a purpose for your life, regardless of past or future failures. Hence, we never need to live in fear of God’s punishment or rejection, thanks to Jesus Christ’s permanent redeeming work on our behalf.

1 Corinthians 6:19-20 teaches us that God owns us and everything about us. What does that “everything” include in your life? If God owns something about your life, such as your expectations, and your expectations fail to be realized, how do you respond? If you get angry, depressed, or frustrated by your unrealized expectations, what are you demonstrating by your frustration? 

Keeping in mind 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, if we demand “our rights,” what are we forgetting? Could demanding our “rights” as redeemed people be considered stealing something from God? If so, explain.

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