Day 4: Are you a respectable sinner or a redeemed saint?

In Romans 7:14, Paul says we were sold as a slave to sin. Through our own sin, before we knew Christ, we were standing on a slave market, with a spear outstretched above our heads, the sin we had committed.

Now when a person was sold as a slave, he had no choice as to what occupation he would have to do. Some people might be compelled to take quite respectable occupations, like housekeepers or teachers or nurses, but others might be sold to very menial or immoral occupations, like the cleaner of a latrine or even a prostitute. The person who was a slave had no choice. It was simply the choice of the one who owned him.

And so it is with you as a sinner. We are all slaves of Satan by nature, but some of us are respectable sinners, and some of us are less respectable sinners. There is really no ultimate difference between the respectable and the non-respectable sinners. What happened when Jesus came to earth was that He walked into Satan's slave market, saw us there for sale, and paid the price to buy us out of Satan's dominion and out of Satan's slave market. The price that He paid was His precious blood.

In Ephesians 1:7, Paul says:

“In Him [Christ] we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of God's grace.”

Your redemption was paid for by the blood of Jesus which obtained the forgiveness of your sins. He bore the penalty of your sins in your place that you might be forgiven and thus qualified to inherit the kingdom of the saints in light. This is stated again in 1 Peter 1:17-19, a very beautiful Scripture.

“And if you address as Father the One who impartially judges according to each man's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your stay upon earth; knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”

It was the precious blood that Jesus shed on your behalf that paid the price of your redemption, delivered you from Satan's slave market and from the kingdom of darkness; obtained for you the forgiveness of sin and qualified you to enter the inheritance of the saints in light.

In the next couple of days, we will look more fully the outworking of redemption from two aspects: what we have been redeemed from and what we have been redeemed to.