You Are a Redeemed Sinner
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”
Galatians 3:13
Have you ever redeemed something? Have you ever bought back something valuable that once belonged to you? What sacrifice were you willing to make to get it back? What price were you willing to pay to initiate its redemption? Spiritual redemption is the act of God whereby he purchased wayward sinners from the slave market of sin and the dominion of the devil in order to bring us into his family. The purchase price was the life of his only Son. Peter reminds us of this ultimate sacrifice: “you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18-19, NASB).
In an earlier post, you learned what the Bible means when it calls you a saint. You are set apart by God and to God. However, learning to practice your new position in Christ is a lifelong process. Today, we look through another lens: You are a redeemed sinner; that is, you are a saint who still sins. Nevertheless, by learning to apply the reality of your redemption you’ll sin less and less, becoming more like the Savior. This is because Jesus broke Satan’s back and sin’s shackles when he purchased you.
Today’s Scripture triumphantly announces that Jesus redeemed you “from the curse of the law by becoming a curse” for you; that is, by being willing to be cursed in your place. Jesus became the object upon which the curse was laid. So great was that first sin—the sin of the first man and woman—that all the earth was cursed (see Gen. 3:14-19; Rom. 8:20-22). Consequently, every man and woman was brought under the sentence of death and condemnation. Your sins, and mine, are such an affront to the holy standards of God and so diminishing to his incomparable glory that we deserve to be accursed; we deserve to be the objects of his righteous anger, to be sentenced to eternal damnation.
But God!
“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8, nasb). God so loved us that he cursed his own Son instead of cursing us. Jesus became a curse for you by willingly assuming your guilt and the punishment imposed by God’s law. The law of God exposes our sin and, thereby, becomes our teacher, a “tutor to lead us to Christ” (Gal. 3:24, nasb). It is the light that exposes the darkness of sin and leads sinners to the only One who ever met its demands perfectly: “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom. 8:3). This he did on the cross, in order to fulfill the Law of Moses which pronounced the judgment: “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree” (Deut. 21:23). By becoming a curse for us, Jesus forever changed our relationship with God and sin. So we sing:
Sin’s curse has lost its grip on me
For I am His and He is mine
Bought with the precious blood of Christ.[1]
[1] In Christ Alone, Keith and Kristyn Getty.
