Bought?

Welcome to this Super Short Thought.

What do you think of the idea that you were bought?

Now hang on a minute — it’s a metaphor. But it’s a striking one.

There’s a line in an ancient song — a song sung in a vision of heaven — that has stayed with me for years:

“By your blood you purchased people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.”

That’s a wonderful picture.

Everybody In?

Potentially!

Every tribe. Every language. Every people. Every nation.

The words come from Revelation 5:9, and the term translated “purchased” is really a marketplace word. It’s the language of buying something, paying the full price, making it yours.

And the claim being made is enormous.

The death of Jesus is presented not merely as a tragedy, a moral example, or simply a historical event. It is described as something transactional - a purchase.

Human beings, from every ethnicity, every language, and every cultural background on the planet, are portrayed as being bought back from a kind of slavery they barely realised they were in.

Bought not into servitude - but into belonging.

Into a family where they no longer need to feel trapped. Into a dignity that cannot be granted or revoked by any human institution.

You see ... here’s what especially strikes me about the song: it says every tribe and language and people and nation.

Not merely the people who already had religion sorted out. Not the culturally respectable. Not the people whose lives appeared perfectly put together.

Every tribe. Every tongue. Every background.

And that includes whatever background you or I come from.

You just need to shake on the deal.

Now that’s worth thinking about.

And if you’d like to explore it further, please check out our free offer of a canter through Gospel of Mark use the ...

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