The Announcement
Last Thursday night just before 9 o’clock, the Proteas were wrapping up their stunning victory against the visiting Indian cricket team at the Wanderers stadium. Not far away in the stately suburb of Houghton, 95 year old Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Nelson Mandela, was taking his last breaths. A few hours later our president, Jacob Zuma, announced to the nation that Madiba had died. That announcement unleashed a flood of tears and a torrent of tributes around the world.
Tributes from high and low, east and west, north and south—from kings, queens, princes and princesses; from presidents and prime ministers; from political and business leaders; from pop stars and sports stars; and from multitudes of ordinary people whose lives he touched, and who have a story to tell about their encounter with Madiba—maids and gardeners, security guards and street sweepers, friends and enemies, policemen and prison warders, and lots and lots and lots of children.
Since our president’s announcement, the world media has had round the clock coverage of Mr. Mandela’s life, death, and legacy. He has been hailed for his humanity, his humility, and his humour. He has been marvelled at for his courage, his sacrifice, his choice to forgive, and his lack of bitterness. He has been praised for his common touch and his ability to notice invisible people. He has been commended for his shrewdness as a politician and his quiet strength as a leader. He has been called “the greatest leader the world has ever known.”
The Man
All of us South Africans feel like we know him and own a little piece of him. We are thankful for him. We are proud to call him our own. And he will forever be the yardstick against which we will measure other leaders of our beloved country, present and future.
Most of us had never seen Mandela’s face until the day of his release from Victor Verster Prison in February 1990. We were largely unaware of all the behind-the- scenes pressures, negotiations, and discussions that led to his release, or of the preparations that were being made for him to step onto the stage of South African history.
But at last the day came! The picture of him walking to freedom, hand in hand with his wife, Winnie Madikezela Mandela, will be forever etched on our collective memory. Determination was written all over his face as he entered the world of South Africa in 1990. He was a man on a mission—the liberation of his people (of all South Africans) from the bondage of apartheid.
It was that mission that had landed him in prison 27 years earlier. It was that mission that had burned within him as he lay each night for eighteen years on the thin mat in his cold cell on Robben Island. It was that mission that occupied his mind as he studied his books and as he broke rocks day after day in the prison’s limestone quarry. It was that mission that shaped his comradeship with his fellow prisoners and his responses to the ill-treatment he received from some of his guards. It was that mission that, after his release, sustained and drove him through the next four tough years of negotiations. And it was that mission that triumphed when, four years later, after winning South Africa’s first democratic election and being elected president, he stood before his liberated people and the world in front of the Union Buildings in Pretoria and concluded his inaugural speech by saying,
“Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another and suffer the indignity of being the skunk of the world. Let freedom reign!”
The Sacrifice
Last Friday I heard an interview on Radio 702 with a photographer who had photographed Mandela in his pre-prison days, and often in the years following his release. He summed up Mandela’s lasting legacy in these words: “His sacrifice bought our freedom.” On one occasion Mandela said,
During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to this struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.
That quote reminds me of Another—One infinitely greater than Madiba—who was not only prepared to die for our freedom, but who in fact did offer up his life for our freedom—freedom from sin and the brokenness and bondage it brings, freedom from Satan, and from eternal death and hell. His name is Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the Son of God sent from heaven. At an infinitely higher level we can say of Jesus what the photographer said of Madiba:
“His sacrifice bought our freedom.”
The word used in the Bible for this action of Jesus is the word “redeem.” He gave his life by dying on the cross to redeem us. He is our Redeemer. He came into the world to provide redemption. What does redemption mean? The OT provides the background for our understanding, for the people of Israel were essentially a redeemed people. They had been slaves in Egypt, yet God had redeemed them, and by redemption they were made his people. The word “redeem” means “to loose, set free, or deliver”—by the payment of a price (a ransom).During NT times the Roman Empire had as many as six million slaves, and the buying and selling of them was a major business. If a person wanted to free a loved one or friend who was a slave, he would buy the slave for himself and then grant him freedom, testifying to the deliverance by a written certificate. So to redeem is to set free by the payment of a ransom.
Why is redemption needed? Why do you and I need to be redeemed? Every human being born since the Fall has come into the world enslaved to sin, under total bondage to a nature that is corrupt, evil, and separated from its Creator. No person is spiritually free. No human being is free of sin or free or its consequences, the ultimate consequence, or penalty, for which is death—eternal separation from God in hell. “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23).
Because death is the consequence of sin, death is the price that had to be paid for our redemption from sin. But who would pay that price? It had to be one who was not himself a sinner deserving of death himself. The only one qualified was God himself. Biblical redemption therefore refers to the act of God by which he himself paid as a ransom the price for sin.
As the hymn writer put it—
There was no other good enough
To pay the price of sin;
He only could unlock the gate
Of heaven and let us in.
At Christmas we remember that God became man. Jesus’ name Emmanuel means “God with us.” God the Son became man in order to pay the ransom price by his death. The Bible says, “In him we have redemption through his blood.” The price paid for man’s redemption from sin was costly beyond measure. It was the very lifeblood of Christ himself, poured out in death. What a price! What a price!
One of the results of redemption is forgiveness. The Bible says, “In him (Christ) we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” When we are forgiven we are set free (liberated).
How does this forgiveness and freedom become ours? By acknowledging sin and by placing our trust in Jesus alone. You can do this now by simply praying and asking him to forgive you and come into your life. Then you will be able to say, “His sacrifice bought my freedom.”
I’d like to invite you to attend a special service of remembrance and thanksgiving for Nelson Mandela that will be held at RUC on Wednesday from 5-6pm. Also do join us for our Christmas day services at 8 or 9.30.
God bless you!
Leigh Robinson