Alone in early AM hours I walked into a place of business unfamiliar to me
to post bail bond for a friend. Treated with little courtesy and veiled
contempt I wondered how much worse it was for my friend who sat in a cell block
two days before he had courage to ask for help. I became his kinsman, his bondsman
and would pay the price to redeem him from incarceration until he was sentenced
for his misdemeanor crime.
Soul-searching I considered the payment for release of prisoners of sin, the
cost of ransom for the souls of men and women.
God’s generosity to us is beyond our imaginations. Paul writes a damning
prescription - We were sick unto death with sin, we were sabotaged by Satan and
sentenced to hell. We were in desperate need of a Savior.
Jesus died to ransom us
from sin, from the power of Satan, to reconcile us with God. He is our redeemer
kinsman risen from the grave interceding for us. Every wrong thing we have done
can be forgiven. We can have new life, a gift free to us, though costly to God
who gave us His Son. We can’t buy this new life, we can’t donate to the cost,
It’s all a gift!
We begin to understand
what John the Revelator wrote of “the wrath of the Lamb,” the indignation of
the Son and the Father against those who spurned His gift and rejected His
love. Revelation 6:16.
“Beneath are the everlasting arms -- and they
bear the print of the nails, no matter how far I have sunk, He descends to lift
me up. He has plumbed all the hells of this world that He may lift us upwards.”
David
Adam - The Edge of Glory
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