Project Description

2018/01

The Year of Our Redemption

‘The year of my redeemed is come’
Isaiah 63:3

The year of His redeemed is the great joy of the Redeemer’s heart. With pleasure He sends forth His messengers to proclaim His salvation unto the ends of the earth.

The redemption of the soul is so precious that nothing save a ransom of infinite value can redeem it. No less a ransom price than that of blood will do, ‘for without shedding of blood there is no remission’ (Hebrews 9:22). Yet no ordinary blood is worthy. The blood of a mere creature can never satisfy Divine justice nor expiate the guilt of the least sin. It must be that of a chosen Redeemer, sinless in His Person, and matchless in His perfection and power.

God the Father speaks of One in the words: ‘I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people’ (Psalm 89:19). His chosen is of the seed of the woman and in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead. Who can declare His generation? Without father as to His human nature and without mother as to His divine nature, He is the heir of all things, our Redeemer and ‘in him shall all the seed of Israel be justified, and shall glory’ (Isaiah45:25).

In the Mosaic economy the nearest of kin was to be the avenger of his kinsman’s blood. Christ who is our Kinsman-Redeemer, bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, came in the greatness of His strength to engage and destroy the powers of Hell and dominion of Satan. The year of the redeemed was purposed in eternity. The plan of redemption was in God’s heart from before the foundation of the world. There, in the counsels of the Godhead, it was agreed that the eternal Son would come forth as our glorious Redeemer undertaking man’s redemption. Made of a woman, He brought in the year of everlasting righteousness by His life and death. The Creator and Lawgiver voluntarily subjected Himself to His own law; and His obedience to it unto death placed upon it a glory and honour that no creature could have done. Had ever the law such a subject? In this year of redemption the covenant of grace, or the testament of Christ, was confirmed and certified by His own blood. That testament now prevails, hence the shadows of all the Jewish ceremonies are fled away forever. Christ the substance of them all has come.

The year of His redeemed is the great joy of the Redeemer’s heart. With pleasure He sends forth His messengers to proclaim His salvation unto the ends of the earth. The occasion of His applied redemption in effectual calling and conversion is ‘the day of the gladness of his heart’ (Song of Solomon 3:11).

Let us then celebrate the praises of the One who had the year of our redemption so much upon His heart. His redeemed remember that He has said: ‘This people have I formed for myself, that they should show forth my praise’ (Isaiah 43:21). Israel of old was obliged to remember her typical and temporal redemption. Shall we not then continually praise Him throughout this New Year for our spiritual and eternal redemption?

Rev Leslie Curran.