Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works. Titus 2:14
What do a pawn shop and a hospital have in common? Today’s text! The message in our text is a simple one, how our Lord Jesus became a sacrifice to obtain for Himself a special people. But two of the words in the text have special meanings from which we can draw lovely pictures of the work of our Saviour.
The first word is ‘redeem’, a word that is very important in a pawn shop. People go to a pawn shop to buy back items that had been placed in hock. Isn’t that exactly what the Lord Jesus did for us? Beginning with our first parents in Eden, we were sold out to sin, in hock so deep that we were without any resources to redeem ourselves. Oftentimes in a pawn shop, the original owner of an item cannot afford to redeem it, or may have no interest in doing so. In that case, someone else can come along and redeem that item for themselves. That is what our Lord did for us. And that is why 1 Corinthians 6:19-20 tells us ‘Ye are not your own. For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.’
The other word we are looking at in our text is ‘purify’, which is the translation from the Greek word ‘katharise’; and anybody who works at any hospital can tell you what the word ‘catharize’ means. It means to purge from impurities, or purify. Isn’t that exactly what the Lord Jesus did for us? Our salvation transformed us from our old sinful state into a child of God. Our sins are all gone forever, forgiven and cleansed by the precious blood of Christ. God can never and will never bring us into judgment for them. While it is true that we can still sin, and do sin every day, all of those sins are gone from our record, and we are free to perform the good works that our Lord wants us to do.
Redeemed and purified; how wonderful that our Saviour has done this for us! – Jim MacIntosh