Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. — 1 Peter 1:18-19
I have always been fascinated with the idea of redemption. By definition, to redeem means to compensate for the faults or the bad aspects of something. It’s the idea that someone owes a price for something that is so large they are unable to pay it for themselves.
Enter the redeemer. It’s the person who pays the debt for the person. We have often heard stories like this in our day where someone pays a financial obligation for someone. Perhaps they pay off a house, a car, or they pay off some other form of a large debt.
It is even more amazing when they do it for someone that is not family. When a stranger pays the debt of someone who they do not know, it is an amazing form of sacrifice and giving to that person.
Such was the case with Jesus Christ and His redeeming sacrifice on the cross. We had a horrible amount of sin debt that we could not pay. Those were our faults, not His. It was not something that He should have been forced to deal with at all. We made those mistakes.
Instead, He willingly laid down His life as a sinless sacrifice for our sins. His blood was shed and His life taken so that we might have life. While some may have been willing to try and sacrifice for us, their attempts would have been in vain.
Instead, it took something extraordinary to redeem us. As the Scripture puts it, it was something precious, meaning extremely valuable and not to be wasted. There is no value that can be placed on the blood of Christ that was shed for us.
In His extraordinary sacrifice and through the shedding of His precious blood, Jesus Christ did what we could not do. He atoned for our sins. He redeemed us when we could not redeem ourselves. How precious is the wonderful gift of redemption to you? It should mean everything.