Famous Last Words are never easy. Today’s are especially difficult because of the wonderful people of this beauteous isle to whom we must say good-bye. Brothers and sisters in Jamaica and Canada will remember some of them from our Seminars with great affection.
This moment vividly brings to mind another age and another island not so dissimilar in size. The islanders showed us unusual kindness. They welcomed us all. The chief official of the island welcomed us to his home. They honored us in many ways and when we were ready to sail, they furnished us with the supplies we needed (Acts 28).
How wonderfully true of us here in Cayman Brac has all that been — except that an airplane has replaced a ship! A few zealots defending their holy isle have tried to portray us as dangerous cultists, but most people have come to learn how misguided is this caricature.
We have just read Paul’s words to the Romans that we are justified freely by God’s grace (3:24). That is a marvelous concept, but one that can be very easily misunderstood and wrested, as Paul himself acknowledged (6:1). It does not mean, like so many in this island proclaim, that “the blood” just washes everything clean whatever our attitude and whatever we do — the “once saved always saved” delusion. Freedom in Christ is not freedom to sin.
In our times, unconditional liberty—especially since the American Revolution — is taken for granted as an inviolable human right. But for millennia this was never so. Right here in this island the mixture of races and languages confirms how recent is the “American dream.” And neither is it so in God’s economy.
Many of those to whom Paul wrote were the property of other men and women: among them Herodion, the household slaves of Aristobulus and Narcissus (16:10-11). These dearly beloved brothers and sisters were not legally “free.” But in Paul’s spirit-guided thought they had been “redeemed” by God through the blood of Christ.
Remember, this concept is only a figure, a picture of reality. The literal blood of Jesus had, and has, no magical powers. It was a bit healthier than ours no doubt, through abstemious living, but ordinary blood nonetheless. It is a figure based on the living experience of those to whom Paul wrote. When, for example, a young Christian slave girl — German and Ethiopian girls were the most highly valued — was freed in Rome or anywhere else, it was never accomplished with a mere wave of the hand. Somebody paid the price. It was just the same here in Cayman Brac until 1838, and for another sixty years after that in nearby Cuba. The price was called the “redemption money.” The slave girl was bought by the Christian brother who wished to free her (maybe so he could marry her legally) and then emancipated by him as an act of free grace.
Don’t push the figure too far. A legally acceptable price had to be paid for the girl. But in redeeming you and me, God only pays a price figuratively and emotionally. He owes nobody anything. He does not play games with the Devil, as some medieval schoolmen thought. But, so merciful and gracious is our God that Paul speaks as if He had to pay a fortune in redemption money to our slave master or mistress — Sin throughout Romans, the Devil in Hebrews — out of His own pocket as it were, and then removed our chains.
And what was the price in this extended figure? Romans 3 again: God presented [His Son Jesus] as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood. It was as if a merciful God, full of compassion for our cruel bondage, offered His beloved Son, crucified, tortured, bleeding, with a crown of thorns on his head, and a mocking sign on the tree to which he was impaled, for our release.
Buying a slave was no Wednesday market bargain. It is very significant that it was the Jewish priests, the very embodiment of Sin and the Devil, who paid out the exact redemption price for a healthy thirty year old male slave, only to have it flung back at them. In return, Judas handed over the Son of God, and they bound Jesus and led him away, just as if they had bought him in the slave market outside the Damascus Gate. Because Jesus was not a Roman citizen, he suffered the Roman treatment for rebellious slaves. He was stripped, whipped and crucified (Mark 15:24).
It occurs to me that the California wine we have been using here is totally inappropriate. It is cloyingly sweet. I am sure the wine the Master used was a tart and bitter cup. Can you drink the cup lam going to drink? (Matt. 20:22). Sure, we are able, the thunderous brothers responded. But are we able?
If we really appreciate the terrible price God ‘paid’ for our freedom, we would never abuse it. We have been bought with a price. Never let us be slaves of men again.
Moses refers to a loyal slave family that offers willingly to serve a beloved Master until death (Deut. 15:16-17). May we echo in our lives as we finally leave this blessed shore the words of Romans 6: Thanks be to God that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted. You have been set free from sin, and have become slaves to righteousness.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One