(Written to go with a sermon from Romans 3:21-31)

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed to raise some money quickly? Perhaps there is a family emergency and you have to make an unexpected trip out of town. Or perhaps a pipe breaks in the house and you are left without water until you can make repairs. The problem is that all of your credit cards are already maxed out. Your friends don’t have any ready cash they can loan you. There isn’t time to sell any securities or borrow against a retirement fund. What can you do?

There is a time-honored way to raise cash in a hurry. You can put up some of your possessions as security and receive a loan at a pawn shop. True, you only receive a fraction of what the items are worth, but at least you get something. It may even be enough money to tide you over.

Along with the cash, the pawn shop gives you a ticket for the items you put up for security. The idea is that within a specified period of time you can come back and redeem or buy back the items you pawned. For a fee, of course!

But what happens if the time limit expires and you don’t have enough money to redeem the items you put up for security? The shop takes possession and will sell your things for whatever price it can get.

We find this concept of redeeming or buying back throughout the Bible, in both the Old and New Testaments. It’s often used in reference to material possessions, just like in the illustration of the pawn shop. People put up something for security and have the opportunity to buy it back. For example, redemption of property is a major plot point in the story of Ruth.

However, redemption of property is also a metaphor for the redemption of our souls. The Bible likens what happens when we sin to selling our souls into slavery (Romans 7:14). We can think of it as giving our souls for security in exchange for the pleasure we receive when we sin. The problem is that once we have sinned, we don’t have anything with which to redeem or buy back our souls.

It follows that if I can’t redeem myself, I can’t redeem you either. Nor can you redeem me. The Psalmist put it this way, “No man can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for him – the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough – that he should live on forever and not see decay.” (Psalm 49:7-9 NIV)

Since man is incapable of redeeming himself, God decided to pay the price Himself. He came to earth in the form of Jesus Christ and paid the price we never could. The Apostle Paul writes in Titus chapter 2, “For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” (Titus 2:11-14 NIV)

One of the reasons we come together each week is to remember how God redeemed us. Since we couldn’t do it, He paid the price to buy us back from sin.

The bread we eat reminds us of Jesus’ body which He gave in exchange for ours. The juice we drink reminds us of His blood which paid the price sin demanded. As we eat and drink let’s give thanks for our Redeemer! If we belong to Christ, we are no longer in the Devil’s pawn shop!