Theology @ Work – Redemption

Do you want to know why your daily work is important? Think redemption!

We Christians talk a great deal about “redemption”, we call Christ our Redeemer, and some of us also talk about God’s plan to redeem Creation. But what do we mean by redemption? Interestingly, although all these themes are found in Scripture, they often use words different from redeem or redemption. These words are almost legal terms – speaking of buying back something that had been pledged (in a time of poverty, for example), or of the buying back and freeing of slaves.

Paul probably speaks more about this image of Christ’s working being the price for our being bought back, and most Christians focus on the individual aspect of freedom from slavery to sin that is a key part of our salvation. This is vital of course, but if we look at the whole sweep of Scripture, it may have even more to do with God’s plan to buy back all of Creation. We’ve seen in these posts how God created a heaven and earth, and creatures within them, that were “very good”. We’ve seen that the corruption of sin, typified in the Fall, has moved all of Creation away from God’s purposes. Israel was created and chosen as God’s people, with the goal of “blessing” all nations – I believe in large part that means pointing them back to God’s intent for them, and working on the restoration of what He had made. Israel failed (largely) but from them came the Messiah, Jesus the Christ, who became the “ransom” or redemption price for all who would turn to Him, so that from Him the Church would be created and take over the task of “blessing all nations” – that is the task of working in partnership with God to restore, to recover, to redeem all of God’s Creation.

That’s what our daily work is all about. We’re on a mission of redemption, made possible because we have individually and corporately been redeemed through the sacrifice of Jesus. When Paul says that “we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10) he is saying that as new creatures, redeemed and restored to His original intent for us, we are to do “good works” (restoring a “good” Creation) in His Name. Every daily activity is a part of this call. It is our job to bring back the lost, to recover the potential God put in all of us, to restore the beauty of Creation – in short to build the Kingdom, the work in progress that will become the “new heaven and new earth” (see Isaiah chapters 65 and 66 and Revelation 21 and 22).

Is that important enough for you?