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Redeemed

             For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. (I Peter 1:18-19)

Imagine a world in which every person had to redeem him/herself. How much of a “fine” should you have to pay for the sins you’ve committed? How much should Jack the Ripper or Adolph Hitler have to pay? How about the folks in countries where the average income is fifty cents a day or less? Should it be 10% of one’s income for the worst sins? Should we divide that by a thousand for a little white lie? So, if rich person and poor person both tell the same lie with the same results, one pays a million dollars, and the other one dollar? How would that be fair? How would it be fair to reverse it and charge the rich person a dollar, and the poor person everything he/she has?

As the sins mount up with a deceit here, an cheat there, and selfishness everywhere, at what point do we give up on a person and declare them lost? Is it based on their income? Is each person granted a certain number of points that, once they exceed them, they’re irredeemable? Are we graded on a curve? Whose curve? What if (to return us more directly to today’s passage) we were redeemed by silver or gold? What if someone thinks they’re doing the world a favor by exterminating a group of people or a sort of animal or plant? Does it really matter whether what’s eradicated is the mosquito or a group of people?

This is the problem we face with manmade religions, and manmade solutions to the problem of humanity. They either find ways for people to earn salvation/heaven (usually based on our own preferences for who should be allowed in) or we pretend that nothing anyone does matters. Everyone gets the prize of salvation for participating in the game called life.

Fortunately, according to today’s verses, we weren’t saved by things like silver, gold, or even our own good works. We were redeemed by the blood of Christ. 

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