Redeem the Times You have Left - Pastor Gerhard Penner
God is a good, merciful, gracious, loving God who loves to give new things. God gives new mornings, new days, new weeks, and new years, but Christ gives something far greater: a new birth and a new life. The new birth matters because no one inherits the kingdom of heaven without being born again. God also promises a new transformed body and a new heaven, yet the time for receiving and living out that life is now.
Time is short, and it does not belong only to the old. Scripture warns that life can end suddenly, whether at fifty-one, in youth, or at any moment nobody expects. Psalm 39 calls life a breath, and Psalm 90 says even seventy or eighty years quickly pass away. The question is not how many years a person assumes remain, but what that person will do with the time God has given.
The human heart has not changed, even though technology and knowledge have changed fast. Jeremiah calls the heart deceitful and desperately wicked, and human strength cannot fix that problem. Christ alone supplies the power that sinful people do not have in themselves. Salvation is still through the precious blood of Jesus Christ, and the call remains the same: be born again, wake up, and redeem the time.
Ephesians 5 calls God’s people to live carefully, wisely, and according to the Lord’s will because the days are evil. Redeeming time means buying it up, and that costs something. Christ calls His people to take off dark deeds like dirty clothes, put on the shining armor of right living, and clothe themselves with His presence. Jesus Himself lived with that urgency, saying that He had to be about His Father’s business and that the fields were already ripe for harvest.
The heart must know Christ, not merely the head. The warning about missing heaven by eighteen inches presses the need for real transformation rather than religious words, good works, or a past profession without present fruit. Mistakes happen, but a settled lifestyle of sin should bring serious concern. A transformed heart seeks freedom, pursues help against bondage, and depends on Christ’s strength rather than personal willpower.
Paul’s example gives a way forward. Paul left past guilt, past grudges, and past victories behind him, pressing toward the goal in Christ Jesus. God’s grace does not merely demand harder effort. God’s grace teaches surrendered people to trust more, rely more, and choose nothing less than God’s best today, right where they live.