God
as Redeemer
By
Stephen Terry
Sabbath
School Lesson Commentary for January 14 – 20, 2012
“They
remembered that God was their Rock, that God Most High was their Redeemer.”
Psalm 78:35, NIV
In the 1960s, it was common to see the irreverent graffiti
“Jesus saves Green Stamps” scrawled on walls in public areas. During that era,
S & H Green Stamps were given out by merchants based on the amount
purchased in their store by the customer. The merchants had purchased the
stamps from the Sperry & Hutchinson Company. Once the customers received
the stamps they would paste them into redemption booklets. When the booklets
were full, they were taken to various redemption centers where they could be
exchanged for premium items. The program was designed to ensure customer
loyalty to those merchants who participated. When the program became wide
spread, customer loyalty came to depend not on which merchant gave out the
stamps but which one gave out the most per dollar spent. With an economic
downturn in the 1970s, many redemption centers closed and Green Stamps fell out
of favor. Without the ability to be redeemed, the stamps lost their value.
While the graffiti artists meant to be irreverent and
shocking, the essence of what they were writing was symbolically true. Jesus is
responsible for our salvation. He is the One who makes it possible for us to be
redeemed. Like the Green Stamps, our redemption is what gives us value. The
value of the stamps was in the price the merchant paid to the stamp company.
Our value is in the price Christ paid for our redemption.
The Green Stamps were created by Sperry & Hutchinson,
who assigned the value of each stamp. We were created by God, and He determined
our value. That value was equivalent to the life of Jesus Christ for without
the gift of that Life, we could not be redeemed. Some would have us believe
that there is no special value to humanity beyond the organic and inorganic
chemicals that we are formed of. However, they cannot explain the esoteric
nature of thought beyond it being an electro-chemical reaction. They also cannot
explain why the sum total of what we are is greater than that of our
components. This is one of the mysteries of life. Why, when 2 + 2 = 4, does it
instead = 5? For example, there is nothing in our biology that explains why a
human being would lay down his or her life for an idea.
However, that is what men and women have been willing to
do for millennia. Whether it is Patrick Henry fomenting revolt against the
British Crown, Martin Luther King, Jr marching from Selma to Montgomery,
Alabama, or a protester facing down a tank in Tiananmen Square in Beijing,
China, our evolved biology cannot explain these actions. Charles Darwin believed
that natural selection selected for traits that were more conducive to survival
of a species. These actions seem to fly in the face of that assertion. After
what we are told is millions of years of evolution for survival traits, it
makes no sense to find humanity promoting actions that work against survival. Again,
2 + 2 should equal 4, but instead it equals 5. Science cannot explain it.
It only makes sense in a different paradigm than science
can offer. The Bible offers an alternate paradigm that accounts for that
discrepancy. It is found in the verse that says “…God said, `Let us make
mankind in our image…’” Genesis 1:26, NIV The Bible tells us that there is
something God like in man’s being. Some have said that this is man’s creative
ability. They may be right. But I suggest that it may also encompass man’s willingness
to give his life for an abstraction. An animal may instinctively give its life
for its young, but only man will use reason to abstractly deliberate those
things he is willing to die for. In this, perhaps, are the echoes of our own redemption
tracing themselves on our thought processes. If man is truly made in God’s
image then it is only reasonable to look for traces of God, the Redeemer, in
man.
Some might maintain that man is constantly evolving and
does not need a redeemer, and that he will evolve into his own redemption. As noble
as that might seem it has three problems that argue against it. First, such a
process does nothing for the present generation or even for many generations to
come. Second, it assumes that redemption is the goal of evolution. It is not.
Evolution is about survival not salvation. It is also a continuous process not
a road to a defined goal. Third, it assumes an evolving nobility of being not historically
in evidence. History has shown that rather than approaching step by step some
utopian existence, men have become ever more proficient at killing one another,
and ever more willing to do so.
This of course begs the question. If man is made in the image
of God, why does he have such a propensity to visit death and destruction on
his fellow man? Perhaps the Green Stamps can help us out here as well. One of
the problems that developed with Green Stamps was that since they had value,
some individuals decided to counterfeit the stamps so they could receive the
premiums without the need to participate in the program. They knew there were
stiff penalties if they were caught, but some ran the risk anyway.
The Bible tells us that the same thing happened to
mankind. It tells us that even though Adam and Eve knew the penalty for
replacing their trust in God with trust in someone else, they chose to do just
that. In a sense, they replaced the genuine with a counterfeit. (See Genesis 3)
Some think that they replaced their relationship with God with one with the
serpent. A closer examination though will reveal that is not the case, however.
There was a greater counterfeit that came into being in that story.
The real choice made on that day was “Am I going to
trust God, or am I going to trust my own understanding.” This has been the
fundamental principle of conflict through the ages since. It is a thread of
decision that runs throughout the Bible. It is perhaps put most succinctly in
Proverbs, “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own
understanding.” Proverbs 3:5, NIV There is a certain marvelous arrogance
in man that we can sometimes admit that we do not have all the answers yet feel
comfortable trusting in our own ability to make our way through life. Yet, at
the same time, we can deny the possibility of an alternative paradigm that
extends beyond our understanding.
That alternative paradigm was lost according to the late
2nd millennium BC, Genesis
account that describes an antediluvian fall. But two millennia ago on a hill
outside Jerusalem the restoration of that paradigm became possible again. That
possibility had been predicted for thousands of years before and was eagerly
anticipated by some. In its original form God had given the paradigm and all it
contained to mankind as a gift. In its restoration, it is also offered as a
gift, though it cost the Redeemer much. In this we begin to get a glimmer of
what it was in us that gave us God’s image. God has one supreme attribute to
His being that He passed on to mankind.
The Bible says, “…God is love…” 1 John 4:16, NIV We are told this is the reason that He made it
possible to restore the original paradigm. “For God so loved the world that he
gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but
have eternal life.” John 3:16, NIV This attribute not only made it
possible for Jesus to die on Calvary to provide a path to restoration. It is
also the reason that mankind can give his life for an abstraction like freedom,
equality, or liberty. This is the Geist
of that original relationship still speaking to our hearts and minds of the
loss and yearning for its return. It is an echo of the still greater yearning
felt by the heart of God who lost most of mankind. (See Matthew 23:37)
Many have come to know some small part of that pain
through relationships severed by divorce or death of a loved one. No matter how
much time expires there is still a torn place in our hearts that reminds us of
the pain associated with the loss. In the same way, there is a part of us that
is missing something when our relationship with God is broken. Fortunately, God
has made a way to repair that loss. We can return to leaning on God in all our
ways. There is nothing we need to do to accomplish this except to acknowledge to
Him that we want to come back and ask Him to make it happen. He is our
Redeemer.
This Commentary is a Service of Still
Waters Ministry
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