Redemption
Redemption
Redemption was originally not a theological but a commercial word. Often in the Old Testament (as today) we read about the redemption of land, which had been alienated from the owner’s possession, or mortgaged. There were people also who needed to be redeemed, such as slaves and prisoners. In each case something or somebody was bought, in fact bought back, from some state of alienation or bondage. To redeem was to purchase somebody’s freedom, to recover by payment of a price something which had been lost.
This is the word which came to be applied to God’s first act of grace towards his people. When they had somehow got lost, separated from him and from their homeland in exile or captivity, he delivered them from their bondage and restored them to their land. This pattern repeated itself three times in Israel’s history. First, he called Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees (not, strictly speaking, a redemption because Abraham had not yet been in Canaan), then he delivered Israel from their Egyptian bondage and finally the exiles from their Babylonian captivity. In each he called, he acted, he delivered and he brought them to the land of promise.
This is the Old Testament background to Jesus Christ’s great work of redemption. Now humankind’s alienation and bondage are spiritual. It is our sin—our rebellion against both our Creator’s authority and our neighbor’s welfare—which has enslaved us and separated us from God. And man in sin is man under judgment; we deserve nothing for our revolt but death.
Into this situation of helplessness and despair came Jesus Christ. He took upon him our nature when he was born and our guilt when he died. In the stark, unvarnished language of the New Testament he first “became flesh,” and then “was made sin,” and even “became a curse” for us (John 1:14; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 3:13). For the simple truth is that he took our place. He identified himself so completely with us in our predicament that he bore our sin and died our death. Our life was forfeit because of sin. He died instead of us, experiencing in our place the desolation of God-forsaken darkness.
The New Testament authors several times draw an analogy between the Passover, which initiated Israel’s redemption from Egypt, and the death of Christ which has secured our redemption from sin. The life of every firstborn in Egypt was forfeit, but God made provision for the life of a lamb to be acceptable instead, if its blood was first shed and then sprinkled on the lintel and side posts of the front door. When God saw the blood, he passed over the house to protect it from his own judgment.
The New Testament fulfillment is dramatic. John showed in his Gospel that by one reckoning Jesus was shedding his blood on the cross at the precise time when the Passover lambs were being killed (John 13:1; 18:28). Paul wrote that “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed” (1 Cor. 5:7), while Peter referred to “the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect,” which was shed to redeem us and must (symbolically, of course) be “sprinkled” upon us (1 Pet. 1:2, 18–19).
When Christ the Lamb of God had offered himself as our Passover sacrifice, had shed his blood and died, God raised him from the dead to vindicate him, and to demonstrate that his sacrifice for sin had not been offered in vain. Now he is described as “seated at God’s right hand,” resting from his finished work of redemption and crowned with glory and honor. He has won an “eternal redemption” (Heb. 9:12) for us. And throughout eternity the multitudes of heaven will sing, “Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain” (Rev. 5:12).