Redemption in the New Testament
1 Peter 1:17–19
Opening Prayer
“Our Father, it’s due to Your
magnificent grace, Your unmerited kindness to us, Your undeserved favor that
You have provided so much for us. Not that we have ever done one little thing
that merits any goodness from You but that You have done this out of Your own
intrinsic goodness, Your righteousness, and Your love for Your creatures.
Father, we thank You that You have
provided us so much in our salvation and pray that we might not take lightly
that which we have in Christ.
Father, as we study tonight help
us that we might come to a greater understanding of our redemption and what
that cost and what it means to us. We pray this in Christ’s name. Amen.”
Last time we primarily went
through most of the material related to redemption in the Old Testament. There
are a couple of things we need to sort of mop up before we finish the Old
Testament and then we’ll go into the New Testament.
Redemption is the topic of 1 Peter
1:18–19. In case you’re jumping into the middle of this series, yes, indeed,
this is 1 Peter but we’re taking time out for a little topical study due to the
fact that this is at the core of this section of 1 Peter 1, “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.”
In this language Paul is
masterfully contrasting what he is saying with the Jewish tradition. That’s
what he means by “tradition from your fathers”, not the Old Testament tradition
of biblical orthodoxy but its distortion under the authority of the rabbinic
fathers.
When you get to terms like this,
“tradition of your fathers”, this is talking about the rabbis. This is talking
about what’s been handed down in terms of the oral law and their interpretation
of the written Law.
Then he identifies Christ as the
Passover lamb, the lamb that is without spot or blemish.
The word that’s used here is this
word LUTROO. We’ll get a brief review of the Greek words that are used, but the
core meaning of both words has to do with paying a purchase price, something
that is paid.
We looked at the Doctrine of the
Barrier. A good review for everyone: There is a barrier of sin that separates
every man from God. That is not how man was originally created. He was
originally created with perfect righteousness. He was untested but nevertheless
it was perfect righteousness.
God had perfect fellowship with
man and the woman in the Garden. When Adam sinned this barrier was erected.
There are different facets as we look at the different doctrine related to
salvation.
There are different facets to the
sin barrier. There’s sin itself, the penalty of sin, the character of God, and
our own spiritual death. The first three are objective in nature. The last
three have to do with our personal condition. We’re spiritually dead. We lack
righteousness and we have a position in Adam.
Each of these is resolved by
something that happens on the cross. Each facet is dealt with specifically by
what Christ did for us. The sin penalty was resolved by unlimited atonement.
The extent of Christ’s death is for all. He redeemed all mankind. He died in
our place. He’s a substitute for all. This is an extremely important doctrine.
Then the second is resolved
through redemption and expiation. Expiation is somewhat synonymous to
redemption and has to do with the removal or the cancelling of a debt. That is
part of what takes place with redemption.
In the last couple of lessons
we’ve looked at the words that are used. In the Old Testament there were two
words: padah
and ga’al.
Each captures a different aspect, slightly different aspect, of this payment.
Padah emphasizes the payment of a price with the idea that
something is set free. The ownership changes and shifts, someone is free from a
specific state, such as slavery, death, or destruction.
The second word is the one that is
used most often in the Old Testament. That is the word group from the verb ga’al. This
emphasizes the aspect of a kinsman-redeemer. We studied this last time. In the
Mosaic Law this go’el,
the kinsman-redeemer, has a nuance to it that’s important. It is this
kinsman-redeemer that provides security and protection to the person who is
redeemed.
We covered last time how the go’el imagery of
the kinsman-redeemer is fulfilled in the Lord Jesus Christ.
We saw in our study of the Old
Testament that the Old Testament picture of redemption is primarily based on
the Exodus event but it is also based in Ruth in this idea of the
kinsman-redeemer. We looked at those passages last time.
Exodus 6:6 talks about how the
Lord says, “I will bring you out from
under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage.
I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.”
This redemption price as we saw in
1 Peter 1:18–19, “the lamb without spot
or blemish” is also alluded to by Paul in 1 Corinthians 5:7 that Christ is
“our Pesach [our Passover] offering.”
The lamb who dies in our place. He is sacrificed for us.
The kinsman-redeemer idea is
depicted by Boaz. This is going to bring us to a point we’ll talk a little bit
about in our study tonight. That is the idea of the hypostatic union that Jesus
in His deity existed forever and ever in eternity past. He is eternal. He had
no beginning.
At the time of the incarnation He
enters into human history, willingly. He adds to His deity. He doesn’t limit
His deity except in its operation. He does not have a reduced form of deity. He
limits its function but He adds to His deity full and true humanity so that He
is 100% human and 100% divine.
He is fully God and fully man
united together in one Person. That unity will never end. It is an eternal
unity so that the Creator is connected in the 2nd Person of the
Trinity to the creature.
We looked at one of many of the
uses of the word ga’al
translated close relatives in Ruth.
So Yahweh is referred to again and again, especially in Isaiah, as the
go’el. He
is the “Redeemer who is the Holy One of Israel.” That’s said again and again.
That’s connected to His payment
for sin. Isaiah 44:22, “I have wiped out
your transgressions like a thick cloud, and your sins like a heavy mist. Return
to Me, for I have redeemed you.” This depicts His protection over Israel in
the provision of redemption.
A couple of other things to point
out in terms of the application of the go’el, the kinsman-redeemer, to the Person of Christ:
Jesus had to be genetically
related to the human race. “Like” had to substitute for “like”. This idea of
substitution was one that took a while to be fully understood and appreciated
by the early church fathers.
There were a number of guesses up
through the Middle Ages as to the nature of Christ’s work on the cross.
Although they talked about it in general terms, that Christ died for us but
they asked, what does it mean that Christ died FOR us? In what sense does He die FOR us?
One of the first guesses in Church
history was one that was made by a man named Abelard, a Roman Catholic. He said
it was a moral atonement, that He was simply showing God’s love for the people
so that when they looked at the Cross they would understand how much Christ
loved us and they would be drawn to the cross.
Very few, if any, conservatives
would ever hold to that view. That view was rejected by another man, the
Archbishop of Canterbury. His name was Anselm. Anselm wrote a book called Cur Deus Homo: Why God Became Man.
Although he’s not the first to say it but he was the first to really develop it
and articulate the reasons why, he said that Christ had to both fully God and
fully man.
He had been preceded in that idea
by Athanasius. If you remember anything about church history there was a huge
battle in the early part of the church around AD 300 to 375 over the relationship between
Christ, the Son, and the Father. Was He created at some time in the past? Is
Jesus eternally God? Athanasius was the defender of orthodoxy.
The man who was promoting heresy
was a man known as Arius. Arius was a composer of little poems and ditties and
of contemporary Christian music that would be very memorable. They sang this
throughout the Roman Empire, “There was a time when Christ was not”.
People were being influenced and
it was causing a huge, huge rift and division within the Roman Empire.
Constantine, who was the Roman Emperor at the time, called together a council
of all the major bishops and leaders of the church to hash it out so his empire
would not be rent asunder by bickering Christians.
Now, the idea of bickering
Christians may seem strange to you but I have just returned from Jerusalem. One
of the things that always floors me is what goes on around the Church of the
Holy Sepulcher. This is a church that’s built over the site of the place where
it’s pretty close to where Christ was crucified and where Christ was buried.
It’s the traditional site and I think that the arguments are more in favor of
this site. It may not be the exact precise site but it’s probably within fifty
or seventy-five yards at the most of where the crucifixion and the resurrection
took place.
Part of the church is controlled
by the Armenian Patriarchate (not Arminian, but Armenian),
part of it is controlled by the Roman Catholics, part of it is controlled by
the Greek Orthodox, and then there are a few other groups like the Coptics and the Assyrian Christians and a couple of others
that all have their little tiny cupboard or closet here or there.
They’re all very jealous. They
used to break out in huge fights quite frequently back in earlier times. In
fact, they did the same thing down at the Church of the Nativity. There was a
war in the 1850s called the Crimean War. How many people know anything about
the Crimean War? How many people know where it started? It started in a
territorial dispute between a Russian Orthodox priest and a Roman Catholic
priest in the Church of the Nativity.
They were having a territorial
dispute and because the Russian Orthodox priest was the one who initiated it,
it was extrapolated that this was a sign of Russian belligerency and Russian
territorial aggression. Very few people know that, it is just one of those
minutia things in history. I got that from Cathy Yeamans
who is the fount of minutia in history. She’s straightens me out many times.
The Church of the Holy Sepulcher
had these huge fights and they’re still going. Finally, what happened is that
somewhere in the 1840s they reached a detente. They signed an agreement that is
still in effect, that everyone has their territory and it is clearly defined.
Every now and then what happens is like an incident that happened about three
or four years ago when a priest [I don’t remember what kind] on a hot day in
Jerusalem had his chair leaning back against the wall, and he was in the shade.
We all know that shade moves as
the sun moves and all of a sudden, he was in the sun. So he got up and moved
his chair over a couple of feet to be back in the shade. Immediately he was
accosted and assaulted and the crud was beat out of him because he had gone
from his territory and encroached upon someone else’s territory.
Sadly every year at certain events
that take place at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the IDF is called out
en masse in order to keep the Christians in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher
from killing each other. Isn’t that a good testimony?
Anyhow, back to Arius. He is the
heretic who is teaching that there was a time when Christ was not. There were
fights all over the empire, so they called together this council, the Council
of Nicaea that occurred in AD 325. They came out of that and wrote the Nicene
Creed that clearly states that Jesus was “very God of very God”, which means
“true God of true God”. It affirmed that, but that didn’t settle it.
It was battled for fifty years
through a couple more councils. Finally it was affirmed. That’s the way it’s
been since the 4th century.
That was over the deity of Christ.
Christ is eternally God. One of Athanasius’ key arguments was that Jesus had to
be fully God or His sacrifice would not have infinite value. But He also has to
be fully man or he couldn’t substitute for mankind.
We hear this all the time. We talk
about the hypostatic union but we don’t understand that much blood was shed to
come to those conclusions and work out that doctrine in the early church. So
Jesus as the Messiah had to be both fully God as well as fully man.
But this is prefigured in the
Scripture. For example we have the title “Son of David” which is indicated in
the Davidic Covenant in 2 Samuel 7:8–16 as well as in the echo of the Davidic
Covenant in Psalm 89:20–37. God promised that David would have a Son who would
live forever. This is part of an unconditional covenant so it must be
fulfilled.
The descendant, the one who
fulfills that, has to be One who can live forever. At the first coming, Jesus
is referred to as the Son of David, which we studied in Matthew. We’ve gone
through many different times in Matthew where Matthew uses that title to refer
to Jesus, pointing out that He is the physical descendant of David.
That means He has to be true
humanity. If you go to the Old Testament and you’re talking to someone who
doesn’t think the Messiah is anything but God, you can show him that “son of
David” indicates He’s going to be human. You can look at other things to refer
to His deity.
When Jesus Christ comes back at
the 2nd coming, He will fulfill that promise to David and take up
His throne in Jerusalem. He is a High Priest today. We know this from several
passages in Scripture, which is the foundation for our being a kingdom of
priests, 1 Peter 2:9, and that He is seated now at the right hand of the Father
in His humanity as our High Priest.
This is part of that doctrine of
the Kinsman-Redeemer. The Messiah had to enter into human history.
A priest by definition is a member
of the human race who stands as an intercessor between human beings and God.
His ministry is Godward, representing human beings,
whereas the prophet represents God toward man and is manward.
Third, He is our Savior and in
order to provide redemption for the whole world, He had to be fully human.
“Like” had to stand in the place of “like”. An angel could not have done it.
Some other creature could not have done it. A lamb certainly couldn’t have done
it. The blood of bulls and goats couldn’t take away sin.
Fourth, at the 1st
Advent, it was clearly recognized that He was not only the Son of God but He
was the Son of David. The apostles, when they preached on the Day of Pentecost,
always brought up this question of how Jesus Christ could be the Son of David
and at the same time be the Son of God. They always went to the fact that He’s
the God-man.
This is grounded in this
Kinsman-Redeemer doctrine of the Old Testament.
When we get into the New
Testament, looking at redemption in the New Testament we recognize that there
are several words that are used. I’ve gone through this before. I know this may
be tedious for some for me to go through this grocery list. I don’t want to
spend a lot of time on this because the key idea in all of this is the payment
of a price.
We have one group that is built
off of the root that we see in the slide LUTR. That’s the root. It’s part of many
different compounds. ANTILUTRON is one. The preposition at the beginning of each of
these words adds a different nuance. ANTI is the idea of substitute, so this is the
idea of a substitute payment.
You have the word APOLUTROSIS. This
is releasing a slave for the payment of a ransom. He is released from
something. That is the prefix APO. You have the same root for the payment of
a price.
Then you have a noun form, LUTRON. This also
refers to a payment of a price. The purpose is to set someone free, or to loose
him from some kind of a bond.
Then the verb form is LUTROO. In all
these words you have the same semantic root, LUTR. It all relates in some way to the payment
of a price, to liberate someone.
LUTROSIS
means redemption, deliverance, or freedom. Again a noun built on the same root.
LUTROTES
is a noun meaning a redeemer or deliverer. It’s used to refer to Moses in Acts 7:35.
Now the next set of words is built
on a different root. It’s built on the root AGORA, which is the word for the
marketplace. We have the verb AGORAZO, which means to buy something in the
marketplace. It was also used to refer to the slave market. We understand that
Christ is dying to free something or someone from the market place.
When you add the preposition EK it
becomes EXAGORAZO and this has the idea of purchasing something out
from the slave market, to completely and totally liberate a slave from the
slave market. It’s used two times to emphasize the completed payment that this
has been accomplished and we have been set free.
A couple of passages where these
words are used: Hebrews 9:14–15. The letter written to the Hebrews asks the
question, “How much more shall the blood
of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God,
cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? And for this
reason [deliverance to cleanse your conscience, to redeem you to serve the
Living God] He is the Mediator of the new
covenant by means of death, for the redemption [APOLUTROSIS] of
the transgressions under the first covenant.” The penalty is paid at the
cross. It’s not paid when you believe. It was a real transaction, a judicial
transaction that occurred at the cross.
That’s very important to
understand because in church history there’s been this argument between those
who believe that Christ died for all and those who believe Christ died only for
the elect. The issue in redemption is that He pays the penalty for sin for all
mankind. This sets the prisoner free.
The issue is are you going to
continue to act like a slave or are you going to leave the slave market? That
is the analogy to trusting in Christ for salvation.
In 1 Timothy 2:5–6, which I’ve
talked about nearly every lesson, it says, “For
there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus.”
Again this is emphasizing His humanity. He could only be a mediator if He was
truly and fully human. Only one who is true humanity could mediate between God
and man. A mediator has to come with something from both parties, and be
trusted by both parties. So Jesus had to be both God and man.
He is God and a Mediator between
God and man. This is one of the great passages emphasizing the deity of Christ.
“Who gave Himself [someone else
doesn’t give Him; He goes as a willing sacrifice to die on your behalf and on
my behalf, on the behalf of every human being] a ransom for the elect?”
Is that what it says? No. It says for all. All!
As I was reading today I ran
across a tremendous quote from John Calvin where Calvin says that Jesus Christ
died for all without exception. That changes with Calvin’s followers under his
successor, Theodore Beza, as they systemized Calvin’s
teachings. They were influenced by too much philosophy at the time and Beza decided that Calvin was wrong there. That if Christ
came to save the elect, He would only die for the elect, they said.
It is very clear that He was a
ransom for all. This was Calvin’s position. Calvin was not a five-point
Calvinist. He might have had a number of other problems, but he did not hold to
limited atonement.
What are the implications or
results of redemption?
1.
First
of all, because of redemption Paul says we are delivered from the curse of the
Law. I’ve often thought it’s an odd thing that we translate this word “curse”
because for most people curse carries with it the idea of ju-ju
black magic. You’ve got the picture of the witch, the old crony, leaning over
the cauldron stirring something and she’s going to put a spell on someone. She
puts a curse on someone.
That’s not the biblical idea of a
curse. The biblical idea is a curse is a judgment against someone. God is going
to judge someone for something.
We refer to Genesis chapter 3 as a
curse on man. God doesn’t put the evil eye on man. He announces what the
judgment is going to be because man disobeyed God and ate from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil. You have a judgment announced on the male. You have
a judgment announced on the serpent and the animals and you have a judgment
pronounced on the woman.
So Paul says, in Galatians 3:13, “Christ has redeemed us [purchased us
out from] the curse of the law.” The
Law put us under judgment. No one could obey the Law. In trying to keep the
Law, Paul says in Romans 7, that you demonstrate that you are incapable of
being righteous, being tzedakah.
No one can perfectly keep the Law.
So Christ redeemed us from the
curse of the Law and He became a curse for us. “For it is written ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’.”
What that’s talking about is that a person who hangs on a tree, a person who is
hung … Crucifixion wasn’t even known under the Mosaic Law. It was much, much
later.
Anyone who was crucified was the
worst sort of common criminal. Just think about the most horrid, the most
rancid, and the most evil wicked criminal you could possibly imagine and that’s
the idea. This was a punishment that was reserved only for the worst of the
worst, the worst rebels against the Roman Empire.
The Old Testament says that this
person is judged because it’s such an evil, wicked punishment. It means that
person’s crime must have been among the very worst.
Galatians 4:4 says, “But when the fullness of the time had come,
God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law.” So He is born
under the Law but He delivers us from the Law.
Galatians 4:5 goes on to say that
He was born under the law “To redeem
those that were under the law, that we might [if we believe in Him] receive the adoption as sons.” The word
for “sons” here is HUIOS, an adult son that has all of the rights and
privileges in the Roman Empire of a full heir.
We have those privileges in
Christ. We are adopted into God’s royal family.
The first result of redemption is
that we are delivered from the curse of the Law.
2.
We
have the forgiveness of all sin, positionally. We have it positionally because Christ
paid the penalty on the cross.
Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:14
say we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. That connects a couple of
ideas. The forgiveness also has the idea of the forgiveness of a debt, the
removal or cancelling of a debt.
The word redemption as the payment
price cancels debt. There was a debt against every human being. Colossians
1:12–14 talks about this as the certificate of death, that indictment against
us as human beings is nailed to the cross in AD 33, not the day you trusted Christ as
Savior.
In AD 33 it’s nailed to the cross so that
indictment is no longer against any human being, but they still have two
problems. They’re born spiritually dead. The eternal penalty is removed but
they’re born spiritually dead and they lack righteousness.
If someone never believes in
Jesus, like John 3:18 says that you’re condemned because you have not believed.
It’s not that you’re condemned because of what you did; you’re condemned
because you didn’t believe. Faith is the only way to be regenerate and receive
imputed righteousness, to become a new creature in Christ. That’s the only way
you can move from spiritual death to spiritual life, to trust in Christ and be
regenerate. The only way you can have perfect righteousness is for God to give
it to you.
We might say we have a judicial
forgiveness at the cross that forgives us, and every human, being of all sin.
The penalty’s paid. It’s a real payment.
Then we have a real forgiveness
that occurs at the point of faith in Christ. Every person positionally receives
real forgiveness or positional forgiveness.
Galatians 1:14, “In whom we have redemption through His
blood, the forgiveness of sins.” In both Ephesians 1:7 and Galatians 1:14
this word for “forgiveness”, APHESIS used for forgiveness, indicates the
eradication of a debt and redemption is the payment of the price. The reason the
debt is eradicated is because the payment is made.
3. Redemption then in Romans 3:24 is the
basis for our justification. If you’re breaking all of these things down, the
things that were done for us on the cross, then redemption logically precedes
justification. Redemption is accomplished on the cross in AD 33, but
justification is something that happens to each individual when they believe or
trust in Christ as Savior.
Paul says in Romans 3:24 that we
are “justified freely by His grace
through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. We can only be justified
because Christ paid the penalty for sin. Because He paid the penalty for sin
it’s a real payment and a real substitution at the cross. Then we can be
justified freely.
4.
Redemption, then, is the basis for our sanctification. There are two big words
and two big concepts that are important to understand in the Christian life.
One is the word “justification”.
The other is the word “sanctification”. Sanctification means to be set apart to
the service of God. It always has that idea, something that is set apart.
Justification has to do with being declared righteous. Justification is not
progressive. It doesn’t take place over time. We don’t progressively become
more and more justified. That’s Roman Catholic theology. They teach that the
more you partake of the sacraments, the more you confess, the more you do
penance, the more you partake of the mass, every time you do you get a few more
brownie points and eventually, no one knows when or how much, you have enough
to be justified.
Martin Luther, the Augustinian
monk who initiated the Protestant Reformation in 1517, said that was completely
wrong. He said that justification was by faith alone. He’s responsible for
recovering that crucial doctrine that we are justified by faith alone in
Christ’s work.
Redemption is the basis for our
sanctification in that because Christ paid the penalty we can be justified by
faith alone. But sanctification is a process. Sanctification is our spiritual
growth. We often speak of it as experiential sanctification. As we grow and
mature, we become more and more experientially set apart to the service of God.
The basis for experiential sanctification is also in redemption. Experiential
sanctification is predicated upon positional sanctification.
This is the analogy for husbands
in terms of our responsibilities towards our wives. Paul says, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ
also loved the church and gave Himself [as a substitute] for her that He might sanctify and cleanse
her with the washing of water by the Word.”
That’s why we take the time in
every single class to go through the process of confession of sin [1 John 1:9].
It reminds us that we have to be cleansed continuously. Because Christ died for
us we have to be cleansed continuously because we sin and it is done through
the Holy Spirit and then we advance by means of the Word of God.
5. This leads to redemption being the
basis for our eternal inheritance in Heaven. Hebrews 9:15, “And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means
of death, for the redemption [payment] of
the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called
[those who believe] may receive the
promise of the eternal inheritance.”
So redemption, the payment of the
price, is related to the eternal inheritance. This would be the “heirs of God”
category that all believers have in common throughout all eternity.
So redemption, just to review
those last three points, is the basis for our salvation [Phase One]. Redemption
is the basis for our sanctification [Phase Two]. Redemption is the basis for
our eternal inheritance [Phase Three].
6. Redemption is the basis for the
strategic victory of Jesus Christ in the angelic conflict. Remember, strategy
is your broad plan; tactics are your individual plan. How a believer applies
the Word of God in many different circumstances every day is part of tactics.
How God orchestrated the ultimate defeat of Satan and the payment of the sin
penalty is strategy.
Redemption is the basis for that
strategic victory of Christ which occurred at the cross. I put two passages up
there. Colossians 2:14–15. Some of you may remember hearing that every believer
is going to take out a demon when Jesus returns. That’s not in the passage, but
the passage that it came from was Hebrews 2:14–15, just in case you ever
wondered. If you go back and read it, you will scratch your head and say, “I
don’t see it.” (It’s not in the Greek either.)
Colossians 2:14, “Having wiped out the handwriting of
requirements [the certificate of debt] that
was against us, which was contrary to us. He has taken it out of the way,
having nailed it to the cross.” That indicates the complete removal of that
indictment. Even though we’re no longer under that indictment we’re still
spiritually dead. That’s why we need to believe in Jesus. Just because the
certificate of debt is taken out of the way, it doesn’t save us, it doesn’t
regenerate us, and it doesn’t give us perfect righteousness.
7.
Redemption of the soul in salvation, that is Phase One justification, results
in redemption of the body in resurrection. This is an important point because
there are a few times in Scripture when the object of redemption in terms of any
kind of soteriology isn’t in terms of what Christ did
on the cross, but the application of what Christ did on the cross.
So in these passages such as
Ephesians 1:14 and Romans 8:23 we read, The Spirit [the subject of Ephesians
1:14] “is the guarantee of our
inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession
[glorification, Phase Three], to the
praise of His glory.”
Romans 8:23 says, “Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit [that guarantee of our
inheritance], even we ourselves, groan
within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our
body.” Really this is a metaphor, putting the redemption for the effect for
the cause of the redemption. The redemption is the payment of the sin penalty
at the cross, but it is applied to our bodies when we are resurrected and
receive our resurrection body.
8. Redemption views salvation from the
standpoint of the complete payment of our sins. He didn’t pay it in part. He
paid it in full. John emphasizes this in his account of the crucifixion. He
said “When it was completed.” That is
a perfect tense verb in the Greek meaning when it had been completed. Jesus
said, “It has been completed.” Twice
you have that rare form of the verb TETELESTAI. When it was completed Jesus said it was
completed. That means nothing more can be paid for. It has the connotation of
paid in full. This is before Jesus died physically.
So redemption views salvation from
the standpoint of the complete payment. The price is paid for our sin and the
only option left over is to believe in Jesus Christ for eternal life.
9. That brings us to the ninth point: Since
Christ has bought the believer, and since we have realized that redemption, we
now belong to Christ and He is our master. We have been bought with a price.
We only have two masters in life;
we just think we’re in control. Not at all.
The first master is your sin
nature. The second is Christ. We are to take His yoke upon us because it is
easy and light. That is what He says to His disciples, “Take My yoke upon you.” That’s the idea.
So often what we find, as
believers, is that we want to go back to the yoke of our sin nature. We just
want to sin. We think it’s pleasure. We think it’s light. We think it’s fun. We
think it’s the easier way, out but it’s not. It’s the deception of the sin
nature thinking that’s what we really want.
We are to live as Christ would
have us to live. That is because He has paid the penalty, so He now owns us. He
is our Master. We have to learn to recognize that authority and that’s what the
spiritual life is all about.
1 Timothy 2:6 says: “Who gave Himself as a ransom for all, the
testimony borne at the proper time.” Ransom is ANTILUTRON, ransom or substitutionary redemption.
That’s embedded in this word ANTI plus the HUPER, “for all”.
1 Timothy 4:10 says He is the
Savior for all men. It’s universal. He pays the penalty for all. That does not
mean all are saved. You’ll run into people who think that. They’re convinced of
that. That’s what they’ve always heard. If Jesus really died for everyone, then
everyone would be saved.
The Bible never talks about anyone
being saved unless they believe. That’s the condition for salvation.
So that brings us back to a couple
of passages we’ve looked at already. There are those who are false teachers who
deny the Master who bought them. See it’s been paid for. It’s AGORAZO. They’ve
been redeemed but they deny “the Master
who bought them.”
Also 1 John 2:2, “He Himself is the propitiation for our
sins” [substitutionary] again. For is the Greek preposition PERI indicating one
in place of another.
That wraps up our understanding
for the background of 1 Peter 1:18–19, that we were not redeemed with
perishable things like silver or gold. It couldn’t be purchased. It’s not
something that any human being could do. Anything produced from our life is
characterized as this futile or empty or meaningless life.
That’s a hard one to get across,
but a lot of us think that we have things in our life that are meaningful and
are significant and we want to hold on to them. But the classification here is
that there’s no detail of life that is meaningful in an eternal sense. Nothing
that we have done in life has eternal value, it is all temporary. Peter says to
this Jewish background audience, “Your
empty manner of life which you inherited from your forefathers.”
See, it was a moral life following
all the dictates of the Mosaic Law according to the standards of the Pharisees.
We’re going to get into that in a few weeks in Matthew. In Matthew 23 Jesus
will excoriate the Pharisees. He just rips them up one side and down the other
because they are leading the people astray.
They’re the conservative
Biblicists of their day and they’re the ones who more than anyone else should
have accepted Jesus as Messiah. That’s one reason Jesus is so hard on them.
They should know better. They’re the ones who have memorized the Scripture.
They’re the ones who valued the Scripture.
They had turned it into something
just to generate more power and control for themselves.
We are redeemed with “precious
blood”, the value of His death. Now the idea of the “blood of Christ” is an
important metaphor.
Throughout Scripture we have the
idea of the shedding of blood as a metaphor or a figure of speech for a violent
death. You haven’t shed someone’s blood if they have a heart attack or a
stroke. You shed their blood if they are violently killed. This is what happens
on the cross.
The blood of Christ is a metaphor
for His death. It not only refers to His physical death, which is a result of
His spiritual death, but it primarily looks on His spiritual death. It is
between 12 noon and 3 P.M. that God the Father brought darkness on
the earth and He imputed the sins of the world to Jesus Christ before He died
physically.
He said, “It is completed” before He dies physically. It’s that spiritual
death that pays the redemption price. That’s not the end of His work on the cross.
By dying physically, He’s going to go into the grave. He will be raised from
the dead and that is the foundation for the spiritual life in the Church Age.
That’s Romans 1–6. We’ve been identified with His death, burial, and
resurrection.
He was raised to new life so we
too are raised to new life. The physical death is important, not for Phase One
justification, but to set the stage for the resurrection, which is the paradigm
for Phase Two spiritual life. He is the Lamb that is without spot or blemish
which takes us back to understanding the depiction of the Passover lamb that
was without spot or blemish.
It’s repeated again, the blood of
Christ. That is His death on the cross.
We’ll come back next time and we
will press forward into 1 Peter. Let’s bow our heads and close in prayer.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for this
opportunity to reflect on these things and what it means to be redeemed—the
value of the death of Christ on the cross. What He went through in order to pay
that penalty for each and every human being. To be our substitute, that all
that would be needed is for us to trust in Him.
That’s grace. We don’t do one
thing. He did everything. He paid it all. All that is necessary for us is to
accept that, to receive it, to make it our own.
There’s not one thing we can do to
make ourselves savable. Not one thing we can do to save ourselves. Jesus paid
it all.
Father, we pray you will challenge
us. Strengthen us spiritually as we think about these things. In Christ’s name.
Amen.”