Redeemed

READ: GENESIS 3; ROMANS 8:19-39; GALATIANS 3:13-14

I love trees. They’re strong, and beautiful, and their shade feels great on a hot day. The real reason I like them so much, though, has nothing to do with their physical characteristics. I love trees because they remind me of God’s redemption. How do they do that? Well, to explain we have to go back to the very beginning.

When God created the world, everything was perfect and life-giving. He told the first man and woman they could eat from any tree, except one. If they ate from that one tree, they would be choosing to disobey God and reject His good ways. Sadly, they made the wrong choice, and the world has been broken ever since. Through one tree and one decision, death, pain, and disease entered creation and affected everything. But thankfully, that’s not the end of the story.

Generations after that first sin, Jesus, the perfect Son of God, was born into our broken world and lived among us. Then, He died on a wooden cross and rose again, destroying the curse of sin and death completely. Peter, one of Jesus’s followers, described it this way: “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree” (1 Peter 2:24). Do you see it? God’s plan was to take the very thing through which sin had entered the world in the first place—a tree—and use it to defeat sin and brokenness forever. In Jesus’s death on the cross, we see God’s redemption.

To redeem literally means “to buy back.” When Jesus died on the cross, He paid the ultimate price to buy back all of His creation—including us. He is restoring creation into something beautiful for His good purposes. However, until the day Jesus returns, we all have parts of our lives that are still broken or painful—a relationship, an illness, a mistake we’ve made—and often, we just want those things to go away. But Jesus promises to be with us, even in the pain, giving us comfort, strength, and hope. We can trust that God’s plans are so much bigger and better than ours. No matter what you’ve been through, He can redeem it and use it for His glory and your good. • Faith Lewis

• Today, consider talking to God about some of the hard situations in your life, and don’t be afraid to ask Him to show you how He is redeeming them. In addition to talking to God, is there a trusted Christian (such as a parent, friend, or pastor) who could help you see some of the ways God might be working through your circumstances, and maybe help you in other ways too?

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree; so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. “By his wounds you have been healed.” 1 Peter 2:24 (CSB)