“I’ve Been Redeemed”

Galatians 4:4-7

4) But when the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law,

5) To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.

6) And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father.

7) Wherefore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ.

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his declaration must come from the individual. Man has been given a plan of redemption that he might be set free from bondage; “bought back” from bondage to sin. Therefore, having redemption (declaring oneself free) must mean for the individual that he must not sin.

A persistent problem plaguing our churches and our society is the feeling that one can live life however he chooses. Doing whatever one wants, whenever and however he wants, instead of granting freedom, strips one of all freedom. For “freedom” is really having the right and ability to say “no” to those things one really would choose not to do. In bondage to Satan, we have the obligation to sin. In service to Jesus, we have the freedom not to sin.

It is what one chooses to do after being freed which can bind him again, for as scripture proclaims, we are servants to whom or whatever we choose to obey. The freedom conferred upon us by the Holy Ghost frees us to not sin anymore—not to sin if we choose to.

Bondage is not confined to sin, only. Too easily, we become bound to our own mentality and attitudes. Undoubtedly, this is one of the worst types of bondage—perhaps the worst.

Interestingly enough, most people truly enslaved to something (be it mental or physical), proclaim they can quit whenever they’re ready. However, few are able to prove this, even when the “habit” directly affects their health.

Anyone not redeemed is under the law and it is the law which condemns the individual. Since we are redeemed, we ought to want the rest of the world to know that our “death sentence” has been rescinded and we ought to fully appreciate our freedom.

So, how do we show others that we’ve been redeemed? For one thing, when someone confronts us, we need not tell them that we are redeemed. The fact you have redemption will be more evident as you pass your trials and tests. This is how God proves Himself in us and how we show who we are. One who wants others to know that he has been redeemed does not act “funny” because he is being tested.

If one could get to Heaven on the strength of excuses, most of us could make it. In this day and age, more excuses are being made for not acting like saints of God than there are people actually being saved.

Avoiding tests and trials does nothing for the one who avoids them and nothing for the Lord. It is in and through these that we glorify the Lord.

Anyone who has been redeemed has a reason to shout all day, every day. But too many times, we will find ourselves focusing on how we feel that someone is to treat us. The favorite excuse, “But he’s supposed to be saved,” can be used on no one but ourselves. We are responsible for how we treat others, not how they treat us.

The only reason more people have not accepted the call to redemption is that they have not become “sick” enough of “self.” To get saved, one must be sick of himself. To be saved, one must be sick of himself. To stay saved, one must be sick of himself. It was only “when the fullness of time had come, when men became sick of themselves and realized their need of a savior, that Jesus came.

Jesus did for us what no one else would ever have been able to do. Through His death, he purchased a “freedom” for us we could have obtained no other way—the freedom from sin. No amount of money, no influence and no “familial connections” would have been able to change our fate. Being doomed to spiritual death, it was important for Man to be adopted into a new family—the family of Jesus Christ. With Him in our “family tree” we can say “I’ve been redeemed” and these words will be sweeter than any genealogy we could ever recite.