redeemed by the blood
“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 forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.”
1 Peter 1:18-19
The word redeem means to “buy back”—to recover by paying a price. Not only the first man, but every man since then has plunged headlong into Satan’s trap of sin. Man had to be recovered, delivered, and bought back.
The word redeemed can be illustrated by the position of a slave who had been captured or enticed into serving one who was not his legal master, but whose real master, intent on recovering the slave’s love and service, buys him back at great personal cost. That is what God did for us.
Captured by Satan and enticed into his service, mankind in his disobedience and unfaithfulness did not dismay God nor diminish His love for us. Instead, on the cross, He paid the price for our deliverance, a price unthinkably greater than our true value. He did this because He loved us. We were redeemed, recovered, restored, not with corruptible things of silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ.
A loving mother once saved her little girl from a burning house, but suffered severe burns on her hands and arms. When the girl grew up, not knowing how her mother’s arms became so seared, she was ashamed of the scarred, gnarled hands and always insisted that her mother wear long gloves to cover up that ugliness.
But one day the daughter asked her mother how her hands became so scarred. For the first time the mother told her the story of how she had saved her life with those hands. The daughter wept tears of gratitude and said, “Oh Mother, those are beautiful hands, the most beautiful in the world. Don’t ever hide them again.”
The blood of Christ may seem to be a grim and abhorrent subject to those who do not realize its true significance, but to those who have accepted His redemption and have been set free from the slavery of sin, the blood of Christ is precious. The freed slave never forgets the overwhelming cost of his liberty and freedom.
