Its Called Redemption, not Prevention for a Reason
Sometimes we have a hard time accepting that we are forgiven and I believe that is because we don’t understand what happened.
As a human having been created by God, we all sin because of the fall that occurred in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve. (Genesis Chapters 2-3, Romans 5:12) That sin comes with a death penalty and punishment. (Romans 6:23, John 3:16) So once we understand that we all have sinned and have earned a death penalty and punishment for that sin, we can now understand how we are redeemed.
Jesus illustrated the punishment we all live in daily with His teachings on the prodigal son. (Luke 15:11-32) We all have taken what we could in this world, squandered it and ended up eating slop with pigs. This is our daily life. A hell of our own creation, a prison sentence we don’t even know we are living out every day of our lives. One needs to understand that prison and bondage we are under because of our sin.
Sin is like a debt. And we are forced to “pay off” that debt for our entire lives and entire eternity. (2 Thessalonians 1:19) Clearly we can’t pay off that debt, so this would mean we would have no way to achieve freedom and would be stuck in a perpetual prison or hell. But God.
God had a plan for this and that is Jesus Christ. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is what removes that death penalty and punishment penalty from our lives. This is where most people get confused.
We have already sinned and incurred the penalties. We are already living with this penalty. So we would need redemption, not prevention.
There is no way to prevent someone from sinning. Even if you were raised attending church and know the Lord, you will still sin. It is part of our human condition. Not how we were designed from the beginning, but how we are because of the fall of mankind. So we are always trying to realign ourselves with God instead of our human nature because our human nature is filled with sin and God has no sin.
When we are redeemed, we are now free to focus on that realignment instead of being punished. That redemption is what gives us freedom from sin. Not freedom to sin, but freedom from the shackles of sin that got put on us through the sins of Adam and Eve.
We need to always keep the mindset that we have been freed from the death penalty, meaning we will be resurrected and live for eternity and that we have been freed from our eternal punishment penalty so that we can live in freedom pursuing our relationship with God. Understanding these concepts produces the fruit of humility and gratitude in us and makes our hearts soft. (Hebrews 13:15-16, Galatians 5:22-23, Psalm 51:10, Philippians 4:7)
When we understand what we lost to sin, our relationship with God, we can then be overjoyed that God has given us a way to be close to Him again…by believing that Jesus Christ took on our suffering, died for all of our sins, and then was resurrected so that we may have eternal life with God. Where we were once condemned, we are now free. ( Romans 8:1) We are Redeemed!
