March 5, 2023

Redemption

A redeemer is defined as someone who intervenes and pays a necessary price tor win the release of another from bondage or slavery. Romans 3:23-24 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” In His humanity, Jesus qualified and established His right to redeem us. He paid the price to free us from the bondage of sin. This is a miraculous Truth, but one we must believe with all our heart and live by this fact.

Trevin Wax said, “The church faces her biggest challenge not when new errors start to win but when old truths no longer wow. Familiarity is the enemy of wonder.”

A brief history referenced by Chuck Colson:

Mary Midgley developed “the Escalator Myth”. Christianity teaches that history is moving toward the kingdom of God, while the Escalator Myth reassures us that we are evolving toward an earthly utopia that is the product of human effort.

This thought originally came from George Friedrich Hegel. Hegel tilted the ladder of life on its side, so that instead of being a list of all the things that exist in the world at any one time, it became a series of stages through which the world passes during the course of history. As a result of Hegel’s influence, everything was seen as subject to evolution- not just living things but also customs, cultures, and concepts. Philosophers and thinkers began vying with one another to be the one to unveil the path to the earthly heaven, the means of redemption.

Karl Marx was Hegel’s best known disciple. In classic Marxism, the proletariat (the common man, the working class) will rise up against their oppressors (the capitalists). Marxism may be discredited as a political theory in most parts of the world today, but it lives on in updated form in various liberation movements.

Marx eventually came up with a full-blown alternative religion. Matter was in itself the creator. In Marxism, the universe is a self-originating, self-operating machine, generating its own power and running by its own internal force toward a final goal- the classless, communistic society.

In the updated form of Marxism, people of various colors and genders are called to harness their rage and do battle against their oppressors. Students are being taught to apply Marxist categories to law, politics, education, family studies, and other fields. So, although the economic view of Marxism has been discredited, it is still alive and well.

Lenin was a disciple of Marx, and he put the philosophy in a religious context when he said, “We may regard the material and cosmic world as the supreme being, as the cause of all causes, as the creator of heaven and earth. For Lenin, the Garden of Eden was primitive communism and the original sin was the creation of private property and the division of labor, which caused humanity to move from innocence into slavery and oppression. His redeemer is the lower class, who will rise up against the capitalist oppressors and destroy the private ownership of the means of production. The Day of Judgment, in Marxist theology, is the day of revolution.

You see, Marx regarded man as inherently good, which is why mankind didn’t need a redeemer in his eyes. The world needed revolution, not repentance.

Marxist philosophy is still around not because it works, but because it aims at an essentially religious need, tapping into humanity’s hunger for redemption.

This is the origin of CRT. It is a flawed worldview that creates division between people based on race, gender, class, etc. It divides society into oppressors and oppressed, and the oppressed are challenged to rise up and overthrow the oppressors, in essence becoming the oppressors themselves. It doesn’t make sense.

Colossians 1:13-14 says, ” He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”

The world needs Jesus. He puts us all on the same level. We are sinners in need of redemption, and Jesus is our redeemer. Every other worldview falls short.