A lexicon of faith Redemption
We can’t free ourselves—that’s done outside us by God T
he supermarket where I shop has an outer and inner set of entrance doors. In the foyer between the two is the recycling center where one can bring used cans
and bottles. It’s a noisy place. Patrons drag in plastic trash bags full of used beer bottles and aluminum cans. There they shove them into reverse vending machines that can’t wait to swallow and crush the glass and metal. A bad odor fills the space. It’s anyone’s guess as to what is
growing in some of those cans. The pungency explains the need for the second set of doors—and the placement of the floral department immediately to the inside. Suspended from the entryway ceiling is a sign that reads:
“Redemption Center,” indicating this is a buy-back enterprise. In return for the cans or bottles one brings, the store pays back the deposit fee that was slapped on the original purchase. The word “redemption” is derived from the practice of
buying back something that formerly belonged to the pur- chaser. In ancient slave cultures, this meant purchasing a slave from a slaveholder in order to set the slave free. It was the price paid for release and permanent freedom. Etymo- logically, redemption comes from the same root as ransom. The terms “redeem,” “redeemer”
and “redemption” appear some 130 times in the Hebrew Bible—the most notable act of redemption being God’s rescue of the Hebrew people from the pharaoh’s bondage. “I am the Lord, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment” (Exodus 6:6). By the time the New Testament rolls around, redemp-
energy we invest in the “boot- straps theory,” believing people can pull themselves up, God alone saves. Self-improvement strategies do not. Where Scrip- ture is concerned, salvation is always what God does. In a New Yorker magazine
cartoon, a sad and cracked Humpty Dumpty lays on the couch beside his therapist who says to him, “Eventually, I’d like to see you able to put yourself back together.” Christians who understand redemption know that only God can make us whole and put the world back together again. Second, there is costliness to divine redemption. What is
Christians who understand redemption know that only God can make us whole and put the world back together again.
the story of Scripture but God refusing to leave us to our own whims? Through an act of suffering love and shed blood, Christ buys us back from the filth of sin and the stench of guilt destroying our lives. Think here of those reverse vend- ing machines noisily sucking in all their smelly mess; only now consider the quiet love of a Savior whose very name implies saving people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Finally, redemption always comes
to us from the outside. It’s not a vague, spiritual feeling that wells up within us on a good day. Redeemed
people experience external rescue. In his 1535 lectures on Galatians, Martin Luther declared
tion becomes located in the person and activity of Jesus Christ. “You are not your own … you were bought with a price,” wrote Paul (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). “You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ances- tors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ ...” (1 Peter 1:18-19). We discover several clues about redemption from these
sample passages. First, there is the initiative of God, and it is voluntary. We can’t redeem ourselves. No matter how much
that the gospel of God “snatches us away from ourselves so that we do not depend on our own strength, conscience, experience, person, or works, but depend on that which is outside ourselves, that is, on the promise and truth of God.” German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer understood the
outside character of redemption as well as anyone. Suggesting that a prison cell is the best place to celebrate Easter, Bonhoeffer noted that it is inside this cell where one realizes “a complete dependence on the fact that the door to freedom can only be opened from the outside.”
Author bio: Marty is a speaker, author and ELCA pastor who writes monthly for The Lutheran.
March 2015 3
By Peter W. Marty Third in a series
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