How You Gain Redemption!
Then they [Joseph’s brothers] said to one another,
“We are truly guilty concerning our brother, for we
saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with
us, and we would not hear; therefore this distress
has come upon us.”
Genesis 42:21
As Paul wrote to the Galatians, we always reap what
we sow (Galatians 6:7). Because the brothers of
Joseph
sinned by selling him into slavery to Egypt, there would be
this reckoning. Just as they sold Joseph into bondage, the
brothers had to prostrate themselves in fear and anguish
before the one they betrayed three decades earlier.
The consequences of sin aren’t solely retributive; they're meant
to be redemptive as well. Writing about the trials we experience
in life, even trials of our own making, the apostle James wrote
they produce perseverance. And the purpose of perseverance
is produce maturity in lives (James 1:2-4). That was the result
in Joseph’s brothers’ lives when they discovered that Joseph
was still alive and was ruler in Egypt. They repented of their
sin and were reunited with the one they had tried to be rid of.
When trials appear in your life, let them do their
redemptive work. The path to spiritual maturity
is paved with stones of repentance.
"None of us can come to the highest maturity
without enduring the summer heat of trials."
Charles H. Spurgeon
