Mechanics

 There are three crucial components to redemption: a willing redeemer, something or someone that is redeemed, and a price, which not only is the redeemer willing to pay but is capable of paying. I know plenty of people who daydream of doing good in the world but don’t have the means. Good intentions are great and all, but if you don’t have the wherewithal to carry out what you intend, it remains in the realm of fantasy.

Not only was God willing to pay the price for your redemption, but He also had the means. He’s not going to back out of the deal, or say He needs a few days, or be sad to inform you that His credit provider decided against giving Him the loan. Every fear men have regarding God not being able to carry out His promise of redemption is unfounded. Either that, or it’s a defense mechanism and a way to procrastinate and put off true repentance and brokenness of heart.

You’d be surprised at the lengths to which men will go to put off that make-or-break moment in their lives. Their flesh is pulling them one way, their spiritual man another, and one must win the tug of war at some point. Even though they have concluded that they are slaves rather than the masters of their sin, even though they concluded they are in need of a redeemer, the flesh does what the flesh does and whispers, “tomorrow.”

Imagine the power a sin or a vice exerts over an individual when they look in the mirror, are wholly disgusted with themselves, abhor what they’ve become, and within the hour, they go back to doing what disgusted them in the first place, only to repeat the cycle anew.

Tomorrow is one of the most dangerous words in the English vocabulary. More often than not, tomorrow turns into next week, then next month, and given enough tomorrows, you find yourself breathing your last, hoping for one more tomorrow to make everything right.

If the devil can get someone to delay repentance once, chances are he can do it twice, then a third time. Then it becomes a pattern that the devil can exploit. All the while, the addiction, the perversion, the sin bores itself deeper into the heart. It is far easier to pluck a weed from the earth than it is a tree, and the enemy of your soul knows this.

Everybody serves somebody. That’s as succinct a way as I can put it. The tragedy is that some men won’t acknowledge their bondage; they will not acknowledge their slavery and revel in their chains as though they were free.

John 8:31-36, “Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” They answered Him, “We are Abraham’s descendants, and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can You say, ‘You will be made free?’” Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. And a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.’”

What did you serve once upon a time? What were you a slave of? Was it anger, fear, greed, lust, drink, drugs, hate, or ignorance? You may have thought, as the Jews of Christ’s day did, that you were solid, that you’d never been in bondage to anyone until you were redeemed, made free indeed, then realized how much of a slave you were.

You can’t describe light to the man who’s always been in darkness. You can’t describe the truth to those who’ve always lived a lie. They have to experience it firsthand; they have to feel the sun on their face and see the light thereof; they have to hear the truth and be struck by its beauty.

Why do you think it’s so difficult for someone who’s been saved to explain it to someone who hasn’t? Why do you think they look at you as though you just went off your meds or throw you into the same basket as those who claim to have been probed by aliens or gotten a piggyback right from Big Foot?

You were estranged and alienated. You did not know the depth of God’s love nor the price that was paid for you. You were lost, wandering, empty, rudderless, and purposeless, then He found you. Nobody’s ever at their best when God finds them. We’re not a diamond tiara in a shop window with a hefty price tag; we’re more like a broken toy, covered with grime, sitting on a blanket in an out-of-the-way parking lot.

That’s where the gratitude ought to stem from. Self-awareness is key when processing how far we’ve come from where we were and that it was all due to His love and grace. He first loved us. He paid the price for our redemption, and we’ve become His twice over.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.