Redemption

Wednesday night started with buzz of uncertainty. I deviated from my normal teaching pattern to follow an experiential walk through of the life of Christ. How do I take what so many teens are familiar with and teach it in such a way that is fresh and exciting? This is a constant question and struggle for me. I love the Gospel. I love the Bible. I think it is a sin to bore students with the Bible. It is the Greatest Story ever told and within the Story is the Key to true Life.

In our four part series on Creation, Fall, Redemption and Restoration, we are looking at the Big Story running through the Bible. We had already done Creation and The Fall. So for Redemption I planed on a walk through of the Story at 13 Stations. Honestly I thought it would take maybe 45 minutes to and hour max. I figured most would quickly walk through and move to the next stop, almost missing the importance of what they were doing. Thankfully I was wrong!

It was amazing to watch as the teens, even the new visitors, embraced the idea of silently walking through the church and reading the story and doing activities. The idea is that they might pause and reflect on what it might have been like to be present during the life of Christ, the Last Supper, the betrayal, the trials, His death, burial and resurrection. I was blessed to see that the teens would pause, think, write and pray before moving on.

One of my favorite, and the teens that I talked to, was the Cross. The teens wrote down areas of sins and struggles on a piece of paper. They folded it and nailed it to the cross! If you pause and think about it yourself, maybe grab a piece of paper right now. Write down your sin struggles. Remember that Christ nailed it to the cross and shed His blood as payment for you! You may not have a cross handy to nail it into, but you can simply burn it and reflect on how Jesus forgives our sins and no longer holds it against us.

A Scandalous Story

The third movement of the four-part meta-narrative is offensive and scandalous. It does not resonate with human logic or preference. We, by nature, desire to earn our way. We want to prove our worth. We make transactions everyday based on what benefits us most. Philosophically we desire the survival of the fittest mentality. Good people should get good things and bad people should pay.

The story of Redemption is the story of an Innocent receiving punishment on behalf of the guilty. It strikes of injustice. It brings us face to face with our inadequacy. We are confronted with our own guilt and shame. It compels a choice.

The Son of God was willing to take our place and pay our price that we might receive life. Perhaps no greater lyric of love has ever been written then, “But God demonstrated His love for us in this, while we were still sinning, Christ died for us!” (Romans 5:8).

The truth of this story is you are faced with an enormous debt that you cannot pay. It’s as if you ran a credit card bill up past a billion dollars. It would take hundreds of lifetimes to pay, if that were even possible. Yet a benefactor stepped in and paid it for you, free and clear. All you had to do was admit your spending habits were out of control, that you needed help, accept the payment and live in the freedom that was paid for you.  To refuse Christ is as if you refused to allow the payment to be credited to this account and try to pay it off yourself. You will fail and reap the consequences.

The Gospel is this, God created you to be in a relationship with Him. Yet when faced with a choice, we chose to rebel and sinned against God. Our sins separated us from God and created a debt so big that we could never pay it off. Yet God loved us so much that He came as a man and paid our sin debt on the cross and rose again. He freely offers forgiveness of sins and life, true life, to all who trust in Him alone. Have you decided to follow Jesus?