The Ransomed One

Who we have become in Christ comes with a cost.  Maybe, price is a better word.  The Apostle Peter brings this issue to the forefront as he writes his first letter to the church.  In I Peter 1:18-19 we hear the Word of God saying, "You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from you ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish."  We do not live in Christ because we woke up one morning, or went down to an altar at the end of some worship service, and cried tears of sorrow.  It is not something we do which enables us to live in Christ, but something God has done for us through Christ.    

The Apostle Paul speaks of it as a transformation which begins with divine grace.  We know all too well that Word which says, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God..." (Ephesians 2:8)  Peter, the Apostle, speaks of this initial act of God with the word "ransomed."  We are enabled to live in Christ only because of the plan of God which called for the precious blood of Christ to be shed for each one of us as a way of restoring us from our lost condition.  As we allowed sin to enter into our lives, we lost our awareness that we were created to live with the image of the holy reflected in us.    

It is surely true that our faith response is an important part of this equation of deliverance, but our faith is not the primal enabling factor in the divine equation of grace and faith.  Grace always has come first.  Our sin makes us one who has sold our soul to the power of evil and the transaction which enables us to be set free and restored is through the ransoming act of God through Jesus Christ.  Semantics is not the important issue here.  Whether we speak of grace, or being ransomed, or being adopted, it is all possible because of God's unending love for us and the sacrificial act of the Son on the cross which shows us that love as well as the difference it makes in our living.