redemption on Legalism

The 19th and 20th century Canadian-American pastor Harry Ironside once told a story of a new Christian who gave his testimony during a church service. Beaming with joy, the man spoke of how God had re...

Pastor: For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was no...

The story of the redemption will not stand examination. That man should redeem himself from the sin of eating an apple by committing a murder on Jesus Christ, is the strangest system of religion ever ...

We just philosophize, complain of boredom, or drink vodka. It's so clear, you see, that if we're to begin living in the present, we must first of all redeem our past and then be done with it f...

Since Jesus isn’t attached to the same things we are, he can take the God-view, which is about more than redeeming our individual lives. God means to redeem the world, which is going to require some m...

Leader: God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. All: Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it? Leader: The LORD...

If man had his way, the plan of redemption would be an endless and bloody conflict. In reality, salvation was bought not by Jesus' fist, but by His nail-pierced hands; not by muscle but by love; n...

Restored or Thrown Out? Having grown accustomed to the redemption theme that permeates Scripture, I find the answer that Jesus provides to his own question in v. 13 unexpected and unsettling—like get...

The language of redemption is the language of purchase and more specifically of ransom... [which] presupposes some kind of bondage or captivity.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in this present ag...

In Israel’s tribal society redemption was the act of a patriarch who put his own resources on the line to ransom a family member who had been driven to the margins of society by poverty, who had been ...

“But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you a...

It [salvation] is all of God; nothing is, in the ultimate analysis, of man. Man provides only the sinner to be saved: God provides the entire salvation.

Leader: He has shown his people the power of his works,     in giving them the heritage of the nations. The works of his hands are truth and justice.     All his precepts are sure. They are es...

Context: The Grumblers Jesus tells the three parables of Luke 15 to “the Pharisees and scribes” who were grumbling. Throughout Luke’s gospel account Jesus has been involved in controversy with the Ph...

Context: The Grumblers Jesus tells the three parables of Luke 15 to “the Pharisees and scribes” who were grumbling. Throughout Luke’s gospel account Jesus has been involved in controversy with the Ph...

May you have the sure knowledge, as you go into the world, that repentance is the only sure path to Blessing. Live your lives with the confidence that your are God’s redeemed people.

Cross-bearing is the long lesson of our mortal life. It is a part of God’s salvation, called sanctification. It is a lesson set before us every moment of every day.” “If life were an art lesson…we cou...

In my lifelong study of the Bible I have looked for an overarching theme, a summary statement of what the whole sprawling book is about. I have settled on this: “God gets his family back.” From the fi...

Of course, we do the righteous deed because of our redemption, not for our redemption.

Lamenting a Living Son This is God’s own lament: a brokenhearted father mourning the loss of a still-living son.  Throughout the book, God has led Hosea to draw from moments of Israel’s past.  Here, ...

Because of man’s fall into sin, a curse was pronounced over the creation. God now sent His Son into this world to redeem that creation from the results of sin. The work of Christ, therefore, is not ju...

Loving and faithful God, You are holy, righteous, and pure; You are compassionate and just; You are perfect in all of Your ways. But we have slipped away from Your will; we have been selfish and self-...

Leader: God’s people, hope in the Lord! For with the Lord there is steadfast love, and with Him is plentiful redemption. Through His Son, Jesus Christ, He has redeemed you from all your iniquities!

The deep economic crisis that occurred in Russia soon after the collapse of communism resulted in a new wave of resentment and hostility toward Russian Jews. In times of crisis people look for a scape...

All is of God; the only thing of my very own which I can contribute to my own redemption is the sin from which I need to be redeemed.

Leader: Praise the Lord! People: I will give thanks to the Lord with my whole heart, in the company of the upright, in the congregation. Leader: Great are the works of the Lord. People: They are st...

[The exodus] points beyond itself to a greater need for deliverance from the totality of evil and restoration to relationship with God than it achieved by itself. Such a deliverance was accomplished b...

O Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world, look upon us and have mercy on us; you who are yourself both victim and priest, yourself both reward and redeemer. Keep safe from all evils those who...

I take literally the statement in the Gospel of John that God loves the world. I believe that the world was created and approved by love, that it subsists, coheres, and endures by love, and that, inso...