Redemption isn’t a clear term for most twenty-first-century North Americans. The word could bring to mind a Goth rock band or several other bands, or more than one movie title, or a few television shows, or some software, or a term referring to the establishment of democracy in the United States, or the titles of several books and songs, or the name of a recording company.
The definitions in Wikipedia for the religious meanings of this word do not get an exact grasp on its biblical implications either. It says redemption is about “being saved from or liberated from something, such as suffering or the punishment of sin – also called deliverance.”
The Bible’s use of the word might be more accurately compared to someone being kidnaped. The kidnappers ask for money or a ransom, saying if they get it, they will release their captive, yet even that idea isn’t quite what the Bible is talking about when it uses redemption as a gospel term.
In Scripture redemption is about a payment paid to redeem or purchase someone (a slave) from bondage. This deliverance is from a taskmaster, not from suffering per se, or from punishment, or from a kidnapper. This payment is called a ransom. It may have been given to free a prisoner of war but was more often about someone purchasing a slave from another person and setting that slave free. This action is called redemption and it required a payment, a ransom. When describing the gospel and what Jesus did on the cross, redemption is about a different kind of prisoner, one who is enslaved by sin.
God says that every person has been kidnaped by sin and is held in bondage to it. However, we are not unwilling participants. We quite easily fall into sin’s rule and then become, as the Bible says, actually a slave to it. Outwardly, this bondage may be expressed in varying degrees, but nevertheless, no one can free himself from it.
Sin holds us captive because it is not an entity “out there” but part of our human condition. From Adam and Eve, every person answers the call of this internal master. Even the “good” that we think we are doing, God calls “filthy rags” because those actions are tainted by selfish motives. All this is part of what sin does to us.
Because of our inability to deliver ourselves, God sent His Son. Matthew 20:28 says, “The Son of Man (Jesus) did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Jesus came to pay the redemption price that sets sinners free from bondage to sin. Yes, He also came that we could be forgiven and delivered from sin’s punishment, but redemption is more about being delivered from the bondage or the hold that sin has over us.
After we are saved or delivered, God expects us to live in the freedom of no longer belonging to our former taskmaster. In 1 Peter 1:17-19, He says, “And if you call on the Father, who without partiality judges according to each one’s work, conduct yourselves throughout the time of your stay here in fear; knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.”
My devotional reading today says that we see most clearly what Jesus did for us when we stay at the foot of the Cross, eyes upward to the Lamb of God dying for our sin, dying so we might be set free from sin’s grip on our souls.
He is right. When I let my mind rest in this place, then I begin to remember and appreciate all the more that I am no longer a slave to sin. In fact, when in my mind’s eye I see Jesus dying for me, sin becomes more and more horrible, a nasty thing to be rejected. Any thoughts that sin is tantalizing or desirable are driven away by looking at Jesus.
Author C. J. Mahaney in The Cross Centered Life, says, “If there’s anything in life that we should be passionate about it’s the gospel. And I don’t mean passionate only about sharing it with others. I mean passionate about thinking about it, dwelling on it, rejoicing in it, allowing it to color the way that we look at the world. Only one thing can be of first importance to each of us. And only the gospel ought to be.”
The contrast is clear: sin produces an “aimless conduct” that seems reasonable only for a short while but eventually makes us its slave, while redemption means freedom from sin and its hold on us, a deep awe for God, and a life that is passionate for Him and what He has done!
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