Redeemed

Sweet is the song I am singing today:
I’m redeemed! I’m redeemed!
Trouble and sorrow have vanished away:
I have been redeemed!

Refrain:
I’m redeemed (I’m redeemed) by love divine! (by love divine!)
Glory, glory! Christ is mine, Christ is mine! (Christ is mine!)
All to Him (All to Him) I now resign, resign (I now resign),
I have been (I have been) redeemed, redeemed!

Great is my joy now as onward I go:
I’m redeemed! I’m redeemed!
All the way homeward my praises shall flow:
I have been redeemed!

Precious indeed is my Savior to me;
I’m redeemed! I’m redeemed!
All the way homeward my praises shall flow;
I have been redeemed!

#277 in the Redback hymnal, “Redeemed” was written by James Rowe.  Mr. Rowe was a prolific hymn writer.  One of the sources I saw online indicated that he wrote over 19,000 hymns. One of his most famous and beloved hymns, and one of my personal favorites, is “Love lifted me.”  Don’t you love songs that focus on salvation?  Songs that are reminders of God’s mercy and grace to you and to me.  This particular song is a song of testimony about redemption.  If you aren’t familiar with it, it is one of those hymns that is written to be echoed throughout.  The song leader would sing “Sweet is the song….” and the congregation would echo back “Sweet is the song….” “I’m singing today…..I’m singing today.”  “I’m redeemed….I’m redeemed.”  But when you got to the end of each verse and at the end of the chorus, the entire congregation would sing one single word in unison “Redeemed!!!”  It is with exclamation that we sing about our Redeemer.  Because of His shed blood, we have been purchased, redeemed, and cleansed. We were bought with a price.  Praise the Lord!!! We have been redeemed!!!

There is something interesting about this song that you may not have noticed.  It seems that the author goes from living in the past, to living in the present, to thinking about the future.  For example, he writes “I have been redeemed.”  It is a statement of what God has done for him in the past.  Galatians 3:13 says “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law” – past tense.  I Peter 1:18-19 says “knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but (redeemed) with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”  Past tense. 

But He also states over and over and over again “I’m redeemed” meaning I am redeemed.  It is a present state of mind.  Yes, God saved us in the past.  We can look back on that day with thankfulness for what God did, but we can also walk in the truth that we are redeemed today.  We can live in the truth that God gives us the victory….today.  I Corinthians 15:57 says “But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Present tense.  I Corinthians 1:18 says “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”  Present tense. 

But there is also a future state of mind that you find in this song.  In verse one, the author writes “trouble and sorrow have vanished away.”  How do the words of this hymn square with Scripture and with real life experience?  I don’t know about you, but trouble and sorrow did not just vanished away when I became a Christian.  In the body of Christ, there is pain, suffering, disease, and tribulation.  Hebrews 11 tells us about those Christians that were tortured, scourged, imprisoned, and even sawn in two.  Does that sound like a life free from trouble and sorrow?  Jesus said “In this world you will have trouble.”  He wasn’t talking to unbelievers.  He was talking to His disciples.  So when can we testify that troubles and sorrows will vanish away?  When we all get to Heaven.  The Bible says in Revelation 21:4 “And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”  There will be a time in our future that we can testify not only about our redemption, but about how God has taken all our troubles and sorrows away.  How He has raptured us away from this world that has so many difficult experiences.  We will be redeemed.

Finally, I am going to date myself a little, but do you remember S&H Greenstamps from back in the day?  I don’t remember exactly what stores would give out greenstamps, but I remember as a kid we would collect the greenstamps from the stores, put them in the stamp books, and take them to redeem them/exchange them for….well…more junk.  These greenstamps had no value any place else other than in the S&H catalog.  The S&H catalog contained all kinds of great merchandise.  For 50,000 stamps you could get a new TV.  For 25,000 stamps a Record player.  Do you know how much you had to spend in groceries to have enough stamps to get a television?  My brother and I would get the catalog and dream about all the neat stuff we could get with these worthless green stamps Mom had stuffed in a drawer in the kitchen. 

I can remember this like it was yesterday.  We would lick the back of the green stamps to put them in the books….until the taste of them made you sick and turned your tongue green.  Then we would soak the stamps in water, and then our fingers would turn green.  Does anybody know what I am talking about?  We had green stamps stuffed in drawers all over the kitchen.  My mom could still probably find a few stamps hanging around in her house if she tried hard enough.  They were worthless pieces of paper, but we thought we could exchange a collection of worthless stamps for something of great value.  But it never really happened.  We never got anything that was worth much.  The green stamps would burn a hole in our pocket and we would take them in to get something cheap.  We never really got to redeem anything of value.

Can you see some parallels in what Christ has done for us?  God placed value in us.  He created us in His image.  Our righteousness however was worthless.  It was a filthy rags.  We were sinners.  We deserved judgement and eternal separation from God.  Yet He, in His mercy, redeemed us.  He paid the price for our sins with the blood of His Son.  The righteous for the unrighteous.  We bring God our sin and our baggage – our worthless greenstamps, and God exchanges it for abundant life.  For eternal life.  What an amazing deal!!!  No tricks.  No gimmicks.  No special offers for the privileged few.  No saver book to put the greenstamps in.  God’s redemption is not a booklet of good deeds we have to keep all our life.  It is not just available to those that will jump through all the hoops.  It is available to all.  It is a gift that we ought to be telling others about.  We ought to be singing the words of this great song to an unregenerate world “I’m redeemed…..I’m redeemed!!” and let me tell you more about this Jesus, my Redeemer.