05. The Supreme Price For Your Redemption

5 -- THE SUPREME PRICE FOR YOUR REDEMPTION

Anything worthwhile usually has a price associated with it. It costs something if it is worth something. The price paid is usually indicative of its value to the one paying the price. The cost involved usually suggests to us something of the purchaser’s expectations of the thing paid for. Certainly no greater cost has ever gone into anything such as was involved in your redemption and mine. God paid in coin that no stamping plant could manufacture; He paid the cost in a way that sinks all other costs into insignificance. God gave the very treasure of heaven to purchase a lost and perishing world.

I believe this is suggested to us in that great golden text of the Bible where it says, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Doubtless this verse is about as familiar to the average individual as any text in the Bible, yet I wonder if we haven’t repeated it all too often without taking time to give full consideration to it. In fact, there is so much to be found in this text that I have been reluctant to even begin trying to fathom its depths. I feel my own limitations as I try to write to you concerning it. O! The depth of the riches of God’s grace that is revealed to us in this tremendous text.

How much is involved in that word "so"? God "so" loved. I wonder if that little word "so" does not have a measureless meaning; I wonder if it does not express something that our language is too poverty-stricken to interpret? I would suggest to you that the word involves all that has been revealed concerning the selfless sacrifice of Christ in behalf of a world on its way to perdition. All the grief and the groanings of Gethsemane along with all the agonies of the cross are wrapped up in that one lone expression. Beside this I believe that all the wretchedness of man and all the darkness of heathenism is wrapped up in that little word "so."

God’s love moved Him to do something about it; His love moved Him to give. And when He gave, He gave the very best that he had to give. I do not feel we would be overstating the case to say that God bankrupted heaven to provide a plan of salvation for lost and perishing souls. He took from heaven its fairest jewel and placed it in the mire of humanity; He took the richest treasure heaven could afford and robed it in garments of flesh and blood.

I notice here that the expressed love of God was not for any select few nor for a certain segment of society; He did not send forth His son to any predetermined country or people. The love expressed by God is a Universal love. It extends beyond the broad borders of our Atlantic or Pacific shores; it reaches deep into the heart of heathendom; it extends to all men everywhere. There is no race nor color excluded from the provisions of Calvary.

I am conscious of the fact that we think of Christ as paying one single price for our redemption, and I’m sure this is a proper concept of His sufferings, yet I believe there is a sense in which He paid a price over and over again while in the days of His flesh. He paid a price in regard to His own people. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. He was an outcast in His own world. The world His hands had created was hostile to His presence in it. Think of the price paid in His rejection by His own disciples; think of how He was wounded in the house of His friends. Yes, the price is paid over and over again in many different ways. Time would fail us to tell of the mental sufferings, the emotional upheaval, the nervous strain, the temporal poverty, and the compound physical sufferings -- all of this and more also. Perhaps the climax of it all is the feeling of rejection as He hangs between heaven and earth crying out the sinner’s prayer, "My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me." O! How it ought to shock us into a wide-awake condition; how it ought to break our hearts until we would never be the same again. The thing that ought to shock us most is the fact that the price He was paying was the price you and I deserved to pay; Jesus Christ was taking our place by paying a debt that you and I actually owed. My friend, let this truth grip your heart with a fresh consciousness of the debt of gratitude you owe to God for taking your place on the cross. We need to think of His Gethsemane as our Gethsemane; His cruel trial and mockery as ours; His crucifixion as our crucifixion. It was you and I who deserved to be spit upon, mocked, and rejected. O! The tremendous price that God has paid in giving heaven’s brightest treasure to purchase earth’s most degraded member of human society.

I wonder if you can envision with me the awful traumatic experience that was Christ’s as He passed from one human crisis to another in His effort to purchase our redemption. Think of the fact that the one who made the world had no place to lay His head in that world. His own lips tell us that the foxes have holes and the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man hath no place to lay His head. What tragedy; what a pathetic situation! Think of Him as He presses His way into the garden feeling the awful pressure of man’s guilt and sin. Think of Him as He sweats as it were great drops of blood on your behalf and mine. Now go with me to the judgment hall and witness the cruel mockings and the ugly lacerations laid open by the scourge of cords. With open and bleeding wounds on His back, there is a cross placed upon it to heighten the suffering that was even then practically unbearable. With the weight of man’s sins upon His heart and the weight of the cross upon His back, He fell beneath the tremendous load until another had to be found to bear the cross up Calvary’s rugged brow. Can you think of all this pain and suffering inflicted without one act of kindness being shown to the one suffering it? Can you imagine what agony must have been involved in the compounding of that suffering by driving spikes into His hands and feet? The thought of such sufferings seems totally intolerable to the human mind. We just naturally recoil from such barbarous cruelty regardless of the seriousness of the crime committed. Yet in this case it was no crime of His own. It was my crime and yours; it was my sin and your sin that caused heaven to pay so tremendous a price for redemption. O! How I pray that God shall use this truth to stir your heart afresh as you give consideration to the cost of your own redemption. The song writer tried to put his feelings into words when he stated, "From Calvary a cry was heard, A bitter and heart-rending cry; My Saviour’s every mournful word, Bespeaks thy soul’s deep agony. A horror of great darkness fell, On thee, thou spotless, holy one! And all the swarming hosts of hell, conspired to tempt God’s only son. The scourge, the thorns, the deep disgrace, These thou couldst bear, nor once repine; But when Jehovah veiled His face, unutterable pangs were thine. Let the dumb world its silence break; Let pealing anthems rend the sky; Awake, my sluggish soul, awake! He died, that we might never die. Lord, on thy cross I fix mine eye: If e’er I lose its strong control, O let that dying, piercing cry, Melt and reclaim my wandering soul." Another tried to put feelings into words when he said, "’Tis finished! The Messiah dies, Cut off for sins, but not His own; Accomplished is the sacrifice, The great redeeming work is done. ’Tis finished! All the debt is paid; Justice divine is satisfied; The grand and full atonement made; Christ for a guilty world hath died. Death, hell, and sin are now subdued; all grace is now to sinners given; And, Lo, I plead the atoning blood, And in thy right I claim my heaven."

O! Can you not see in this the greatness of the price paid? Can you not see in some measure what it cost God to make redemption possible? I suppose if I could hear your answer just now, you would be agreeing with me stating that you do see God’s cost, and you do see the tremendous price paid by Jesus Christ. Doubtless, you would be glad to tell me that you have accepted that price paid and have come into the knowledge of sins forgiven. You are a child of God; you are a Christian. Certainly that would be a wonderful testimony, yet I wonder if we are sharing this tremendous message with others as we ought to share it? Are you entering fully into the cost that yet needs to be paid by God’s children in advancing the Gospel of Jesus Christ? Certainly God is not asking us to be crucified on a cross, but He is calling upon us to take up our cross. And I believe that cross is the obligation of telling others of the good news of redemption. God wants the price He paid to grip us until there will be a price we are willing to pay. Jesus paid the price of bringing salvation into the world, and we must pay the price of spreading it to the ends of the earth. Are you joining with us in this tremendous effort?

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