Bought Back From the Record

In the 2012 film Les Misérables, there is a scene that should stop every Christian mid-breath. Jean Valjean, played by Hugh Jackman, has just been caught stealing silver from a bishop who showed him kindness. The police drag him back, certain he will be returned to prison. But the Bishop does something stunning — he tells the officers the silver was a gift, then hands Valjean two silver candlesticks he had not even taken. "I have bought your soul for God," the Bishop tells him.

What follows is Valjean alone, shattered, holding those candlesticks and realizing that someone has looked past his prison number — 24601 — and seen a man worth redeeming. He tears up his yellow parole ticket and weeps. The number that had defined him for nineteen years falls to the ground in pieces.

That is the gospel in a single scene. So many of us walk through life clutching the yellow ticket of our worst moments — the addiction, the divorce, the failure everyone remembers. We introduce ourselves by our shame. But the Almighty does what the Bishop did. He looks at the record the world uses to define us and says, "That is not who you are. I have purchased something greater for you."

Second Corinthians 5:17 declares it plainly: if anyone is in Christ, the old is gone. Your yellow ticket has been torn up. You are not your number. You are His.