Redemption Doesn't Cost Seven Pounds

The tagline for the movie Seven Pounds reads : An aerospace engineer with a fateful secret embarks on an extraordinary journey of redemption by forever changing the lives of seven strangers.

Extraordinary journey of redemption? Redemption?? That's redemption??

Will Smith is Tim Thomas, a gentle, gracious, kind hearted, burdened, tortured man who's got a past he can't forget. He meticulously plans a way to free himself from what he feels. As he steps into the bathtub in the final ten minutes, you realize he's ending his life to save seven complete strangers.. to account for the seven lives lost in the car accident he takes full responsibility for.

As the credits are rolling, I sit on the couch, devastated, thinking there was a better way.

I research the movie and words like atonement and debt jump out at me. The title is named for a reference in the Shakespeare play 'The Merchant of Venice,' in which the debtor must pay a pound of flesh. A pound for a pound. A gift for a mistake. A life for a life. Tim Thomas doesn't want to do it: he has to. He's bound by what happened. He shouts out the names of those who were killed to remind himself of the hurt. I'm a debtor and I've got to pay. I've wronged someone and I've got to atone. I've got to make up for what's been done. I've got a strike against me and I'm indebted to it.

Do I live a seven pounds kind of life?

We all have the secrets and the pasts and the really bad, no good, horrible things that we're almost positive obscure us from God and His love. We tackle them ourselves, spend more time doing good, more time being nice, more time being loving and caring. We make redemption and atonement our project, our assignment, and we work and work until we feel better. And then guilt hits us like an unexpected brick wall. Does the good ever outweigh the bad? That question gets exhausting.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS THAT JESUS SAYS COME TO ME ALL WHO ARE WEARY AND I WILL GIVE YOU REST.

The gospel says, let Me take all your sins and mistakes and things you wish you could take back.. and I'll show you a cross. I loved you so much I died FOR you. I died so you didn't have to. I am the spotless Lamb. I took away 'a pound for a pound' and I have given you life so that you may live it to the fullest! Throw off shame, throw off guilt and torture and burden and lift your hands and your life to Me. I sustain you and I preserve you and I have saved you. Stop trying to save yourself! I already did it! I forgive you, I love you, I created you. COME TO ME.

Jesus has freed us from a Seven Pounds life. We're no longer in chains, our sin doesn't bind us. We don't have to walk around with shame on our backs or devote our entire lives to making things right. He's cleared our debt : we've got clean slates! When we confess and repent and accept Jesus as Lord, He sets us free. And oh what a freedom that is.

So yes, we do give our lives. Jesus wants our lives, our hearts, our minds, our pasts, our regrets, our futures. He wants all of it. Yes, we die to ourselves, to others, to our sin. Yes, it's painful. Will Smith was right, it costs everything. But it costs everything earthly and gives you everything eternal. We don't end it; we give it. And there's a happy ending : it's when our new lives begin!

Here's some redemption:

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith." (Romans 3:23-25)

"In Him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth."(Ephesians 1:7-10)

"He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins." (Colossians 1:13-14)

"Most of us work and work trying to prove ourselves, to convince God, others, and ourselves that we are good people. That work is never over unless we rest in the gospel. On the cross Jesus was saying of the work underneath your work- the thing that makes you truly weary, this need to prove yourself because who you are and what you do are never good enough- that IT IS FINISHED. He has lived the life you should have lived, He has died the death you should have died. If you rely on Jesus' finished work, you know that God is satisfied with you. You can be satisfied with life." (Tim Keller, King's Cross)