The other week Sotheby’s auction house put under the hammer one of Banksy’s best known images: the Girl With Balloon. Every year its estimated value had been increasing by %20 and at the actual sale the anonymous bidder purchased the item for £1m.
However, as the hammer went down everyone was in for a sudden shock, as a phone video clearly shows, for only seconds later the artwork started beeping and the priceless picture began descending down its golden frame emerging halfway out having been vertically shredded.
And so, in typical Banksy style, he left everyone wondering whether he was making some statement about the temporary nature of supposedly timeless works of art or whether he was simply poking fun at people who spend big bucks on works of art.
I don’t know whether it has ever occurred to you that God considers each one of us to be a priceless masterpiece. The Bible frequently uses the language of purchase when it speaks about what has happened when a person is returned to God through Christ by salvation.
This is how a song in Revelation Chapter 5 describes the work that Jesus accomplished on the cross for us:
“…they sang a new song: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.'”
The strange thing is that despite the amazing price paid for our purchase on the cross, many people can still look upon this as the moment when they believe that all of their hopes and aspirations and joys and pleasures will get shredded!
Surely not. God’s not poking fun. Jesus purchases our lives, then adds in life to the full and only then do our sins get marvellously shredded.
Pastor Hedley
