The Essence of Redemption

But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

And if God does not extend redemption to His enemies, then He Himself does not follow His own teachings. The word “enemies” should always emanate from someone else and not believing followers of Jesus Christ. Some consider us as their enemy, but we must always approach them redemptively. Redemption must be our heart’s passion and motivation, and nothing must constrict or dilute that redemptive passion. God has loved the world and Jesus suffered for the sins of the entire human race. And armed with the grace of that gospel message we must extend an uncommon and dangerous love to the vilest of sinners…just as our Master has done.

To those who commit the horror of abortion we must extend redemption.
To those who live lives of immorality we must extend redemption.
To those who desire to fly planes into buildings we must extend redemption.
To those who worship Satan we must extend redemption.
To those who abuse and are abused we must extend redemption.
To those who enter America illegally we must extend redemption.
To those who are in cults we must extend redemption.
To those who wish to legislate immorality we must extend redemption.
To everyone who seeks to humiliate us, and take advantage of us, and misrepresent us, and point out our failures, and blaspheme our Savior, and restrict our freedoms, and mock our beliefs and lives, to all these and more we must extend redemption. Why? Besides the legions of teachings from our Master’s lips, let us never forget that redemption was extended to you and me…a most vile and unworthy sinner. That kind of unspeakable and immeasurable grace demands a life that is lived within that same redemptive framework
A life which is a theological conduit that channels a powerful and luminescent expression of a Person and not just a set of rules and doctrines. This redemption does not return power for power as the world measures power. This Redemption, and in fact this Redeemer, accepts the lashes upon our backs, and receives the pummels from violent hands, and even allows the spit of wicked mouths to drench our believing faces, and rejoices in all of it without revenge. Persecution is an honor and an opportunity to more fully reveal a humility and selflessness that cannot but draw curiosity from those who have placed themselves as our enemies.
The world understands the battle for rights and even differing perspectives on morality. What they can not understand, and what they still have not seen lately, is a throng of people willing to lose in order to attract an audience that sees us en masse point to Jesus Himself. You think that winning is passing legislation, or combating evolution, or in a struggle to make darkness accept traditional marriage? Your eyes are pointed in the wrong direction. You wish to see genuine victory?
Turn your eyes to capture a bloody corpse nailed to a wooden stake just outside the gates of Jerusalem and within that event you will not only find eternal victory, but you have now seen the only template for the lives of those who believe in this wondrous mystery. Redemption can only be found in death, this death, and redemption can only be shared by death…ours.