Redemption only complete in sanctification.
"Plenteous redemption" is here described. It is a redeeming of Israel from all his iniquities. It is not a delivering of Israel out of all his disasters. That might be important enough in its way; but no kind of material redemption can ever be of supreme interest to God. To deliver Israel from his iniquities is the Divine thought. To deliver Israel from all his iniquities is the supreme Divine thought. When is a man saved? The answer depends upon a right idea of what the salvation or redemption of a man is. To save a drowning man and to save a city waif are not the same thing. You have clone saving the drowned man when you have brought him ashore alive. You have not saved the waif when you have got him inside the doors of the Boys' Home. It needs to be set in the strongest and clearest light possible that the object of God's redemption is the man—not the man's circumstances, nor the man's perils. It is a fiction of man's theology that God's salvation is satisfied with removing penalty. When the penalty is gone, we hear the Divine voice saying, "And now what about the man?"
I. REDEMPTION GETS ALL HINDRANCES OUT OF THE WAY OF ITS WORK. Never confuse the preliminary with the real work. Getting hindrances out of the way may be quite necessary; and it may be vigorous and prolonged work, calling for much energy and self-denial; but it is God's pioneer work. It is God getting his sphere, clearing for himself the sphere in which he may do his true redemptive work. If this had been worthily apprehended, we should never have been worried by being called to believe in a work, in a plan of salvation, in a removing of our penalty. Our faith is demanded for a Redeemer who, having done such and such things, is able to do what he now wants to do in our minds and hearts and lives; i.e. redeem us from our iniquities.
II. REDEMPTION WORKS FREELY IN THE SPACE IT HAS CLEARED. And a plentiful and most glorious work it has in view—deliverance from the power, fascination, and snare of sin; redemption from all iniquities. Work like getting the threading weed-roots out of the soul, and making a lovely, clean lawn. Work like getting out every tiny fiber of the spreading cancer, and giving a clean and hopeful bill of health. No man is saved as God would save him until he is "clean every whit."—R.T.
HOMILIES BY C. SHORT