Count Your Blessings #41 – Having a Living Redeemer

‘Living Redeemer’ – “What kind of language is that? What is Graham going on about today?”

Give me 30 seconds and let me explain.

It’s actually not that difficult a thing to understand.

I hope all of us understand the ‘living’ part, but what about this ‘redeemer’ part. All of us have received a voucher or a token in our time – “50p of your next purchase of smelly stuff that you don’t really need”, “£10 Book Token”. When we take advantage of these offers we call it redeeming. It make sense, then, that the person who is doing the redeeming is a redeemer. So putting the two things back together we get a person who redeems things who is alive. But what does that mean to me? What difference does it make to my life?

As a Christian I believe that Jesus is my Living Redeemer. In other words I believe that Jesus has handed in the token and redeemed the offer on my life. This is no ‘spend a load to get completely irrelevant and worthless in return’ offer though; this is the real deal. Jesus did indeed pay a huge price. When He died on the cross He paid with His life in the most horrible way. The reward for this price was my life, and the life of millions of other believers.

What does it mean to have a life that has been bought and payed for? Does that make me a slave? No, amazingly it makes me a son; a son of God. Son’s have rights, but they also have responsibilities. As a son of God the rights are fabulous, I get access to the Father. There isn’t anything like enough room to fully explain what that means here, I may write more about it another time, actually I could probably write forever and still have things to say. To explain a little though I have a Father who knows and understands; I have a Father who can and does; I have a Father who gives me freedom; I have a Father who is infinite grace; I have a father who loves me. Compared to this the responsibilities are small; they are simple to share the love that is given, that’s all. Part of my reason for writing is to share some of the love with you.

You are our Father. Abraham and Israel are long dead. They wouldn’t know us from Adam. But you’re our living Father, our Redeemer, famous from eternity!

Isaiah 63:16 (The Message)