Self-Redemption

Redemption is a word almost no one who isn’t a Christian uses anymore. When I was a kid to encourage customers to buy at their store merchants offered Green Stamps. For every dollar you spent they’d give you an actual green stamp. My mother would save them up in a drawer until we had a lot of them then we licked them and glued in a little book with a dozen pages. When we had enough books she would drive to the Green Stamp Store and she would “redeem them” to “buy” merchandise.

However, that process wasn’t really redemption in the truest sense of the word because my mother earned those stamps. The more she spent the more stamps she got.

There was a practice decades ago by well meaning people to redeem slaves. Princess Diana raised millions of dollars which the organization she supported used to buy people out of slavery largely in Africa. Once the slave owner received the money the slave was redeemed, or set free. The problem was that slave owners began capturing more slaves so they could be sold at a profit and so the practice was strongly discouraged by the United Nations and others.

But that idea of redemption is much closer to the biblical idea of redemption. A price was paid by a total stranger to free a slave who had no hope of ever being set free. I remember videos of freed slaves pouring out of a bus just weeping with joy, thankful beyond words for a freedom they did not earn. That’s the essence of what Christ did on the cross. He paid a price to redeem anyone who was willing to confess that they were slaves to sin and trust that he was God. If and when anyone does that they are redeemed, or saved.

“Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us…” Galatians 3:13

However, the title of this blog is “self-redemption.” That discribes any attempt by anyone to earn their own salvation by being “good enough.” We had adult friends 30-40 years ago who attended a very conservative church who appeared to love the Lord and believed in his finished work on the cross who had never taken communion because they felt themselves to not be worthy. Granted that’s a rare example.

But I’ve met with scores of other men who refused to believe Jesus died for their salvation who chose instead to just be “a good person.” Self-redemption. We see the self-redemption idea in movies all the time. Some good person, often the hero of the story with no apparent intrest in Jesus dies and someone will say, “He, (or she) will get their reward, or they’re an angel now.” Maybe that describes someone close to you who believes that theological urban legend as well- that good people go to heaven and bad people go to hell based on how they lived on earth. So how do you speak truth to a person who believes in self-redemption?

I’ve made this observation for decades. “My job is to explain the gospel and live out the gospel. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to convince people it’s true.” However part of “explaining the gospel,” is this: we need to clearly address this idea of self-redemption as a false gospel. It’s not enough to simply present Jesus as Savior. We need to be bold enough to to address the myth of self-redemption. If people don’t understand they are lost regardless of how “good they are,” then why would they ever think they need a savior at all?

So here are a few diagnostic questions I will often ask. “Do you believe in heaven and hell? If you do, how do people end up there?” (They will almost always answer that good people go to heaven and evil people go to heaven.) Then I will almost always ask, “Where did you get that idea because the Bible doesn’t teach that.” That’s where I generally find they just picked up that notion from the popular culture. I will then often go to verses like these to show them.

“He (Jesus) saved us not because of the righteous things we have done, but because of his great mercy.” Titus 3:5

“For it is my grace you have been saved, through faith- and this is not from yourself, it is a gift of God- not by works, so that no one can brag about it.” Ephesians 2:8,9

The thing I always admired about Billy Graham was that he was never afraid to tell people they were not sinners because they did sinful things. They were sinners because we are born with sin natures that alienates us from God and we can only be healed spiritually by trusting Christ for our salvation. There is no Plan B. Please don’t let the friends in your life doe believing in “self-redemption” myth.

Next week I’ll address a question non-Christians ask all the time. “If God loves the world why doesn’t he just forgive everyone?”