(Read Chapter 1 – The Wreck here)
Over the past 30+ years I’ve purchased and renovated six homes. All of them needed a lot of work, but three were over a hundred years old and were total wrecks. On the popular HGTV shows, they buy houses, renovate them and then sell them to people who make them their homes. The difference for some of us, as real life home buyers, is that the run down wreck becomes our home from day one, like it or not. When the keys are handed over, so is the mortgage obligation, and there are no work crews lined up to come in and work their magic in four to six weeks.
When I purchased my first fixer upper home at the age of twenty four, I had no idea what I was in for at the signing of the documents. The interest rate on the mortgage, back in 1981, was at an all time high of eighteen and a quarter percent! But surprisingly, homes were still selling. Having lived in apartments all my life, home ownership was something I had longed for and now the time had come to sign the papers.
When buying a house, you need to become familiar with the language of the deal. Things like balloon loans, conversion options, and loan to value ratios were a foreign language to me at that time. And Google didn’t even exist yet! With each purchase or sale, the terminology came more familiar, and the process less intimadating. I got my real estate education one contract at a time.
The word mortgage actually comes from the root mort, which means to kill off. When I glanced at the amortization table for my $40,000 loan, I saw that the total payments over thirty year life of the loan would be $219,960.47. I thought I might be dying off before that loan balance!
Signing mortgage documents puts you in a covenant relationship with your bank. The definition of covenant an a noun is an agreement, contract, commitment, pledge, pact or promise. As a verb, it means to agree, commit oneself or bind oneself.
Those last words – to bind oneself – were especially disturbing, and my hand shook as I signed more than fifty times, binding myself to that huge debt. I wanted to own a home, and even though it was a scary proposition, in the words of Elisabeth Elliott, “Sometimes fear does not subside and one must choose to do it afraid.”
The word covenant reminds me of what Ray the elder had explained to me in the Friendship Room about the Old Covenant and the New Covenant in the Bible. The Old Covenant required the blood sacrifice of an animal without spot or blemish to pay the penalty for sin. Under the New Covenant, Jesus became the spotless and pure sacrificial lamb. “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21)
The Bible uses the word covenant over 300 times. In both the Old and New Testaments, there are many references to us being bought, or purchased.
“Fear and dread will fall on them; By the greatness of Your arm They will be as still as a stone, Till Your people pass over, O Lord, Till the people pass over whom You have purchased.” (Exodus 15:16)
“Do you thus deal with the Lord, O foolish and unwise people? Is He not your Father, who bought you? Has He not made you and established you?” (Deuteronomy 32:6)
“Remember Your congregation, which You have purchased of old, The tribe of Your inheritance, which You have redeemed— This Mount Zion where You have dwelt.” (Psalm 74: 2)
“Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.” (Acts 20:28)
“Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own? For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.” (1 Cor. 6: 19-20)
“You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.” (1 Cor. 7:23)
“But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.” (2 Peter 2:1)
“And they sang a new song, saying: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased for God persons from every tribe and language and people and nation.'” (Revelation 5:9)
“They follow the Lamb wherever he goes. They were purchased from among mankind and offered as firstfruits to God and the Lamb.” (Revelation 14:4)
These verses make it clear that we are not the ones in the position of purchasing anything from God. We do not purchase our salvation through our good works. The forgiveness of our sins can not be bought for any amount of money. We are not the buyers in this transaction – we have been bought. Our debt has been paid. Our freedom has been purchased by God, at the expense of His own Son. Jesus tells his disciples in John 15:16, “You didn’t choose me, remember; I chose you.”
I have heard it said that grace is getting something good which you don’t deserve, and mercy is not getting the punishment which you do deserve. In the case of Christ dying for our sins, God offers us His grace, which we did not earn and do we not deserve, and His mercy in sparing us the penalty which we do deserve.
So are we chosen, or do we choose? Nelson Mandella said, “Only free men can negotiate. A prisoner cannot enter into contracts.”
The purchase contract is on the table. Jesus died to take away our sins, but there is still a transaction to be made and we have to choose whether we make it or not. We are free to walk away from the deal.
NEXT POST: Chapter Two – THE PURCHASE CONTRACT (Part Two)
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