The Soiled Landscape of Redemption

Following Judah's Lion ^ | Rick Frueh

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The process of redemption has always been messy. Think on the cross and see the gruesome visage and scarlet body, hanging and writhing in agony over the soiled landscape beneath this figure draped in horror. There is nothing antiseptic here, nothing that presents a neat, little package waiting to be opened beneath Rockwell’s Christmas tree. This is the soiled landscape of redemption, arrayed in all its gory glory, and lifted up for all to breathe in the smell of sweat and to behold the ghastly vision of a tortured God. This is the crimson mirror in which we see both ourselves and the love of God, but this mirror is smeared with the treachery of humanity mingled with the divine embrace of redemptive love. Messy, repulsive, and captivating.

...Sinners, demonstrative and open sinners, were drawn to Christ in His incarnation...

The hearts of sinners heard the story and saw this cross, and by revelation and the message of grace they were introduced to Hope.

...By the millions they have come from every corner of the world, filled with the baggage of sin and the wounds that accompany those transgressions. As they come the landscape is soiled with the oozing wounds of their own hopelessness and the overflowing blood of the Son of God.

Those that have already walked through the Door should rejoice in the scarlet flow that both messes and cleanses its new recipients.

The redemption process is messy indeed as sinners go forward and fall back, and as their wounds heal and are reopened, and as their past and present imperfections and sins continue to soil the ecclesiastical atmosphere. The journey of the church is filled with the messiness of believing sinners and the redemptive slaughterhouse of the blood of the Lamb.

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But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. ~ Isaiah 53:5