Redeemed

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

REDEEMED

Luke 1:67-80

67 His father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:

 68 "Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. 69 He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David 70(as he said through his holy prophets of long ago),  71 salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us— 72 to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath he swore to our father Abraham: 74 to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. 76 And you, my child, will be called a prophet of the Most High; for you will go on before the Lord to prepare the way for him, 77 to give his people the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of their sins, 78 because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the rising sun will come to us from heaven 79 to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace."

80 And the child grew and became strong in spirit; and he lived in the desert until he appeared publicly to Israel.

NIV

The reason that Zechariah prophesied was because he was filled with the Holy Spirit, and as he praised the God of Israel, he continued to prophesy why. God has come to redeem his people, raising up a horn of salvation. We need to stop here for our thoughts are turning to our redemption through Jesus Christ who went to the cross for us. Paul makes it clear in his letter to the Galatians that we have been redeemed from the curse of the law, becoming a curse himself, as it is said. “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a tree”. Our redemption has given us the blessing given to Abraham. This is the blessing that came to Abraham as he was a man of faith and his faith was counted to him as righteousness. Because we live by faith in Jesus Christ, who is our righteousness, we are righteous because of our faith, and not by anything we can do, as works just don’t cut it went it comes to our salvation. It is interesting that we seem to hear the word redemption or redeemed but we think it does not invoke the true meaning within us. Let us consider that in the form Luke used, redeemed in Greek is a combined word meaning to make, redeemed. The word redeemed carries this meaning of ransom, thus Jesus paid the ransom to buy us from the clutches of Satan. We were in the devil’s grip, imprisoned, bound for execution, dead men walking. However, Jesus redeemed us all by paying the price. When we think of paying a ransom, it brings the idea of a wealthy family whose child has been kidnapped, they are willing to pay the child’s capturers price to buy their own child back. This is our story, for we have always been God’s children, but we went astray and were kidnapped by the devil. God sent Jesus to pay the ransom to buy back his own children. How wonderful it is to be back in the family we always have been in. The problem is that when we are being held captive to sin, by the devil, we embrace our sin, it is sort of like captives developing Stockholm syndrome. We identified with our capture, the devil, enjoying our evil works. Praise God, He redeemed us, and now we are back in the family of God, under his influence through the working of the Spirit who dwells within us. We have been redeemed, we have been redeemed, by the blood of the Lamb, we have been redeemed.