“You are not your own; you were bought at a price.”
From 1 Corinthians 6:19 & 20 (NIV)
I am currently on a work trip in Maryland, and I was fortunate to be able to bring Steph along with me to do a quasi-work/vacation trip together. We drove out to Maryland and made it a point to see several places along the way that neither of us have ever been to, one of these being Gettysburg National Park in Pennsylvania. In early July of 1883 this was the site of one of the most pivotal battles in the history of the Civil War and it was also one of the costliest. As we stood at the top of Cemetery Ridge, I kept trying to imagine thousands of Confederate soldiers pouring out of the tree line only three-quarters of a mile away and charging at the dug-in, artillery-backed, and well-fortified Union soldiers. One cannot help but think through whether the cost they paid that day was worth it in the end. What was it that they were really trying to accomplish?
Cost. When you really think about it, we measure cost in almost everything that we do in life. We compare costs when we go shopping to try and gain the best value and we compare the cost of our time in doing one activity over another. However, all these costs are temporary and even the cost of over 7,000 men killed on the fields of Gettysburg eventually fades into the annals of history as a sad tragedy, a decisive victory, or an epic moment of heroism, depending on which lens of history you want to look through.
However, there is one cost that was ultimately paid that does not need to justify itself to historians or feel the need to be explained away by scholars. This cost was calculated, decisive, and most importantly, final. This was the cost of Christ’s death on the cross. A cost so high and so unattainable by any human being that we struggle sometimes to understand why God would send his own Son to die for any of us, let alone all of us! Christ looked into the eyes of those who spit on Him, beat Him, mocked Him, and eventually nailed Him to the cross and still He went willingly to His death because He loves all of us and knew His death was the only redeeming action that could be done to rectify us with an almighty God. As it says in Corinthians, all of us were bought at a price. Let us never forget this and use the knowledge of Christ’s sacrifice to show love, patience, and grace with others.
Justin