Redemption Ch4

In the beginning, when Adam and Eve ate the fruits, they should heave died. However, since God loves his people, he clothed his sinners (Adam and Eve) by garments, which symbolized the mercy of God. For the following stories, God gave aged Abraham his son and guided Moses to lead Israelites out of Egypt. The Bible told so many stories about how graceful God is to his children. Even though we are keeping breaking his law, God is still holding his covenant with us. Later, he sent his only son Jesus to the earth to save our falling lives through his (Jesus) flesh and blood. God let his only son suffered on earth in order to deliver the message from heaven and prepare the coming of his kingdom.
I like Calvin said that “Jesus Christ did not rise alone. He rose as the head of a whole body of people elected to have faith in him” We don’t need to die physically, since Jesus has died for us. “All that he possesses is nothing to us until we grow into one body with him. When we believed in God, we are not feeling alone anymore. We are in a union.

As everyone can imagine, there is a long distance between earth and heaven. It is so hard for human to go to heaven without any help. However, Jesus came, because of our sin, he died for us on the cross; the cross became the bridge between heaven and earth. If we want to go to the heaven, we must walk through the bridge. In other words, we have to believe that Jesus Christ came to earth in human form and saved us.
For each Christian, we all agree with this concept. But dose that mean if once we are baptized, our sin is forgiven and we can do whatever we want to do now? As Plantinga said, “God doesn’t save people and then cut them loose to do what they want, because without the guidance of God ‘doing what we want’ is a recipe for failing right back into slavery.” There are some “Christians”, they tried so hard to please God before they got baptized. However, after the baptism, they stopped going church, refused reading Bible anymore. They thought they were saved; after they were saved, they can do whatever they want. They thought no matter what happen later, they would go to heaven for sure. From my understanding, redemption is a life-long process for every true Christian. Jesus Christ is not a tool to save people. It is not like a can opener, after you opened the can, you threw it away. Rather, we should use our faith which was given from Jesus Christ as a weapon to defend us from Devil. When we say that we are saved, we say that our minds are saved too. We get a new mind with Jesus Christ in it. We think in a new way to serve and honor God through our whole life. Redemption is not instantaneous, it is constant.