Jesus is our redeemer. Ephesians says that “in Him we have redemption.”
Redemption is such a powerful word because it speaks of making things new. I would say it actually carries the idea of making our stories new, regardless of the mess or the cause of the mess He inherits from us. Let me offer this definition of redemption; “to restore, and overrule for good all the loss occasioned by sin; our own sin, or the effect of the sins of others on our lives.”
In the book of Ruth we have the story of redemption and Boaz, who is a type of Christ as our Kinsman Redeemer. Ruth’s first husband was a man named Mahlon, whom she married while he was in Moab. He died early in their marriage, and when her mother in-law Naomi, having lost her husband and her two sons, decides to go back to Israel, Ruth goes with her. They were both impoverished. Ruth meets Boaz who was a very wealthy and influential man (He also became the great grandfather of David) and Naomi instructs her to ask Boaz to marry her and redeem her situation. Boaz says yes, and Ruth becomes a very wealthy and influential woman, and the ancestor of David, and of course, Jesus.
All of that is to say this one simple thing about our great Redeemer Jesus. In the midst of the tragedy of losing the husband of her youth, she ends up marrying Boaz, which propelled her into an extravagant destiny in God she could have never imagined. Here is the power of redemption. This is a transcendent truth to discover; “The trauma, or mess in our lives that either we helped create by our own actions or because of the actions of others that we had no control over, doesn’t disqualify us from the extravagant destiny God has ordained for us; instead, somehow, miraculously, in His redemptive hands, God uses it to actually position us for the extravagant destiny He has for us and we had feared was lost forever.”