04/12/2023
RHAPSODY OF REALITIES, DAILY DEVOTIONAL, MONDAY, 4TH DECEMBER 2023. Pastor Chris
TOPIC: ✨ REDEMPTION AND CHRISTIANITY✨
Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life (Romans 6:4).
Many don't realize that the Christian isn't actually the redeemed." If Christianity were all about redemption or salvation from sin, there wouldn't have been the need for Jesus to rise from the dead. His death on the Cross would have been enough; it paid for all our sins and guaranteed complete propitiation. But that's redemption and not Christianity.
Redemption refers to saving someone by paying a price. So when Jesus died, He paid the price for man's redemption with His own life; He did that for all humanity, not for Christians. The Christian is the result of Christ's resurrection, not His death.
This should make it clearer: when Jesus hung on the Cross, in the mind of God, every human person was hanging on the Cross too (in Him), for He was our substitute. When He cried out, "It is finished" and gave up the ghost, we also died in Him. Hallelujah! Now, when He came out of the grave, when He resurrected, we were also in Him.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ gave us something far beyond redemption; it ushered us into a newness of life. We've been raised up together with Christ (Ephesians 2:6).
Romans 10:9 lets us know that salvation comes by believing in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and the subsequent confession of His lordship. A Christian, therefore, is one who identifies with the resurrected Christ.
Thus, just as Christ was raised from the dead into a newness of life, the Christian has no past. That's why the Bible says in 2 Corinthians 5:17: "Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature..."; meaning that he is a new species, one that never existed before.
Being born again, therefore, you're not the "redeemed"; you're the fr
