Most people think you are being redundant when you say Christ is our savior and redeemer. Because they see salvation and redemption as synonymous, but they’re wrong. There is a significant difference between them.

The best way to explain this is the parable of the Prodigal Son. Allow me to give a quick summary to refresh your memory. In the parable a son decides he can’t wait for his father to die, so he demands his inheritance. Which the father reluctantly gives. The son then goes off to a foreign land where he loses all his money to wine, women, and song. He is eventually reduced to working for a pig farmer who has him live in the pigsty and eat the slop the hogs eat.  As scriptures say, the son came to his senses and realized his father’s slaves ate better and lived better than he did. So, he decided to return to his father’s house and tell his father that he was no longer worthy to be called his son. The son then got up and went back home and asked his father to make him one of the slaves. The father refused, instead he but sandals on the boy’s feet, a clock over his shoulders, a ring on his finger and declared the young man his son again.

All the son wanted was salvation. He wanted to be rescued from his wretched existence, but the father redeemed him by taking him back as a son. This is what God does for us, he brings us back into the family of God where we were always meant to be. Recall that in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus’s genealogy is given, and the last entry is “Adam, son of God.” This was always God’s plan, for us to be in Eden as his sons and daughters, but our rebellion prevented it. A funny thing about the Hebrew word translated redemption. According to Strong’s concordance, it can also be defined as “acting as a kinsman.” That is what is going on with redemption, He is making us His kinsman.

Realize that redemption is higher than salvation. It is possible to be saved without being redeemed, but you cannot be redeemed without being saved. Salvation keeps us out of hell fire but doesn’t bring us to God, only redemption does that. There are places in the Bible where God forgave sins, so it could be possible to have salvation without redemption, but we would not be His children. It is only through the blood of Christ sacrifice that we can be redeemed and be His children!

#salvation, #redemption, #ProdicalSon, #God’sChildren