So I recently started doing a correspondence type course for bible literature by Blue Letter Bible for a while now I have been wanting to learn more about God’s word in a formal educational realm but I can’t afford it because hello I already have debt from a Master’s Degree that I am trying to get sorted. So here we are…
I am currently in a class called Creation & Covenants. I recently completed a reading assignment on Redemption. Then I am required to write a blog type post about my reflections and recollections on the subject matter. Now there isn’t really a way for them to know that I did this but I value academic integrity and so I am writing my response here on my website so welcome to my journey through a biblical study course that I am hoping to include in my resume as a pastor albeit a worship pastor!
Please keep in mind the following things, I am not posting this to debate. I am posting this to discuss. So if you want to hit me up, I love hearing other perspectives and I believe this is how God’s word is illuminated to us when we take perspectives and affects of God’s word in other’s lives and then we apply the truth (which invariably floats to the top) because it’s God’s truth which is eternal, unshakeable, immutable and perfect. Making it incapable of being thwarted by human effort.
Now to my thoughts,
There were three key concepts about redemption I was left to digest along with scripture.
#1 – Redemption is a work, not merely an idea, that ties the books of the Bible together.
#2 – God does everything progressively, As His plan begins to unfold, we understand more of His ways. Since the days of Genesis, God has worked through trusting souls. His plan and program has been progressively revealed through Jesus Christ.
#3 – God is not random, He is going with purpose towards a goal.
I will take 2 paragraphs per-concept to express my own reflections to what was stated.
Redemption is a work, not merely an idea, that ties the books of the Bible together.
I agree with the premise that from the beginning of the bible the problem for God (I know this is a ridiculous statement) is presented, we humans chose our own path away from him. The problem really isn’t a problem for God but now a goal. God began from the start of a great story we couldn’t possibly fathom. For me the IDEA comes into my head when I put myself in God’s place (which I can’t but I try sometimes, which is why I need Christ.) God being all he is set about from the beginning that he would redeem what he created from the beginning of the Bible to the end of the Bible. The best things about this reading was the expression of and statement of God’s power and that if he didn’t do the work of redemption we would never see eternity or have a guarantee of it. Then at a minimum if he didn’t hold together the atoms the make up our existence we wouldn’t even have life. We then can assume that God by his work and power is holding all of it together so that he might work out redemption in all that he is holding together making it a work of his hand.
I am reasonably convinced after this reading that it’s a work that He is doing without my human ability to contribute to it. Yet God offered in the early stages of the bible the opportunity for those created in HIS image that ability to DO something that on this earth in this life to bring about redemption for our failures. This of course being set as a story of HIS work of redemption, and in the early stages we see that the offer of option, opportunity to do (animal sacrifices) something to atone for failures (sin). This option and opportunity is borne of a determined, designed and created process that God had established from the beginning. Our option, our opportunity to participate is merely a tangible contribution that ultimately is nothing. That is until the full realization of redemption in the personhood, diety, spirit of Christ.
God does everything progressively, As His plan begins to unfold, we understand more of His ways. Since the days of Genesis, God has worked through trusting souls. His plan and program has been progressively revealed through Jesus Christ.
I am in full agreement that God’s plan is being unfolded from the beginning pages of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The expression and desire for Redemption progresses and you see God use countless prophets, kings, judges and the like to reveal progressions of his redemptive process. But each of these pieces in the story of God’s redemptive process that he is holding together by his power, fail to fully realize it. Then enters Jesus, but even the full revelation isn’t simply because he died in our place, but because he lived also the life we were meant to live from the begin had their not been sin.
Jesus lived a life that embodied all that God was trying to teach us about living in the early stages of the Bible. Yet, the true revelation of this life living and redemptive process is an expression of the impossibility that it could be accomplished without God. Paul reveals this impossibility of living according to the outline of the Law in Romans 7 then goes a step further stating that the Law is meant to produce good in us, yet without Christ and our being bound to him in faith cannot be realized. Jesus himself expresses to us a simplification of the Law to what we call today the “GOLDEN RULE”. An interesting statement since gold requires a extremely difficult refining process. I feel this expresses that even this simplification of the Law is impossible for us to accomplish without the power of Jesus’ work and completion of the redemptive process of living, dying and being raising to life.
God is not random, He is going with purpose towards a goal.
I really appreciated this part of the reading assignment in that God is singular in goal and we drift in and out of his goal. But He is singularly focused in bring about and working the redemptive process. It’s fully realized nature being that the temple of God is with is as stated in revelation 21. But when we look at history and the periods of times where there is unrest in the middle east or powers of the earth begin unifying these moments seem random, scattered at first. Now they seem to be increasing in frequency and significance. If we believe God we see that the slow roll to a total redemption is fast approaching. The knowledge of who God is to world is becoming increasingly great and the excuse of ignorance for not believing God is who is becoming less and less an opportunity. Especially, because the un-random nature of God desires that we all would conform to the image of Christ, live like Christ on earth.
I loved reading the confession of Westminster having been their myself it was a fresh reminder that our goal as the church is to gather, because the word tells us that when we’re gathered he is in our midst. Making His efforts, His work to redeem us even more possible than if we were alone. This gathering also reveals to a world around us the redemption is possible through a God working it out, because it is visible in our gatherings; thereby proving God is alive. The hardest part for me to reconcile was the part when we fail and drift in and out of God’s will, but I suppose that is where the grace and mercy of God is most fully realized in those moments, when we fail as a community of believers.
These are my musings of my reading assignment for my Old Testament I: Creation and Covenants class being provided by Blue letter bible.
A. Geist Production 