The enormity of God's accomplishments in Jesus' death is often hidden from today's Christian for two reasons: (1) time [2000 years have passed]; (2) slavery [this is not a common, everyday experience in our society]. Purchasing freedom from slavery was a common, understood reality in the first century world. It was such a common occurrence that specific words existed to refer to the ransom paid to end slavery and provide freedom. In the English language, those words are reflected in the words "redeem" and "redemption."
One enormous challenge today's Christian confronts in gaining an in-depth understanding of biblical concepts involves the language challenge. That challenge centers in understanding the meaning of a word or concept when it was used in the first century. The understanding existing then is the understanding Christians want now.
In the first century people become slaves in many ways. Common ways included birth, prisoners of war, indebtedness, selling yourself, selling your children, abandoned infants, punishment for criminal acts, and kidnapping. Many who were slaves from birth longed to experience freedom. Many who experienced freedom prior to slavery longed to experience freedom again. For slaves, hope for freedom rested in payment of a ransom. A slave could be free only if a price was paid.
For most American Christians today, slavery is neither an understood nor a common concept. While the slavery forced on African Americans in this nation's earlier history shared many common injustices and forms of degradation with first century slavery, first century slavery had distinctly different elements to slavery in this nation's earlier history.
Evil is terrible. It is never harmless. While evil enslaves people's minds and bodies, it does more than that. God is the origin of human life (Genesis 1:26-28). Human life is designed in God's likeness and image. Humans by design are to share parts of God's nature. Evil destroys the design God gave us. Evil perverts human existence in the physical world and brings disaster on human existence beyond death. People deserve everything evil does to us. When we surrender to temptation, we sell ourselves to Satan (John 8:34). As Satan's slaves, we are powerless to free ourselves.
The Christian must understand that evil, in any form, is an enslaving force. Evil, in any form, destroys God's design for human life and existence. Evil, in any form, is a perverting influence. People are so accustomed to evil's presence that we do not recognize many of evil's influences. No human is capable of imagining what people would be like or what life would be like if evil did not exist within us.
In his letter to Titus, Paul spoke of the Christian's ransom from evil's slavery (Titus 2:11-14). God's goodness fully expressed itself. Because evil no longer is able to limit God's expression of goodness, salvation is available to all people. As children who receive complete guidance, Christians are instructed to do two things. First, they are directed to deny ungodliness and the desires that oppose God. Second, they are directed to live sensible [self-restrained], upright, godly lives on a daily basis in their actual circumstances. As they live such lives, they are sustained by a certain expectation of Jesus Christ's return and the revealing of God. They appreciate the fact that Jesus gave himself for us. He paid the price to set us free. He redeemed us. Because he paid the price to set us free, he expects two things from us. First, he redeemed us to set us free from lawless acts we committed. He expects us to abandon those lawless acts. Second, he redeemed us in order that we could be exclusively his people, purified by him, committed to his good works. He expects us to be committed to his purposes without reservation. Note the emphasis on the ransom, the price.
A key understanding for grasping the Bible's concept of redemption comes from grasping the essential link between redemption and ransom. One could not be redeemed unless a ransom was paid. Without the payment of a price, there was no liberation from slavery. The first century slave knew that. The Christian must know that. We can be liberated from our slavery to evil only if God pays the price for our freedom. That understanding is essential if we are to grasp the necessity of Jesus' death.
Christians are ransomed from their slavery to evil because of one truth: Jesus Christ paid the price to release us.
In his letter to Ephesian Christians, Paul spoke of the Christian's ransom from evil's slavery (Ephesians 1:7,8). In Jesus Christ the Christian has redemption. Jesus Christ redeemed (freed) the Christian from his or her slavery to evil. The ransom price was Jesus' own blood. The result: Jesus used his blood to pay our ransom so we could have forgiveness for our violations of God's expectations. We are free, the ransom was paid because God is good, not because we are good. God provided us the wealth of His goodness through Jesus Christ, and He gave us His goodness in enormous abundance.
Paul stressed Jewish people, idol worshippers, and people who acknowledged no god could be liberated from evil's slavery because God paid their price for liberation. God expressed His incredible goodness by allowing the innocent Jesus to give his life blood as payment for the price of all people's liberation. Any slave to sin can accept the price God paid in Jesus' blood and be liberated from the eternal consequences of his or her sin.
In a letter to Corinthian Christians, Paul spoke about the meaning of the Christian's ransom from evil's slavery (1 Corinthians 6:19,20; 7:21-23). When the Christian accepts the ransom, his or her body becomes the Holy Spirit's temple. The Holy Spirit lives in the Christian. God places him there. The Christian no longer belongs to self. God bought the Christian by paying his or her price of release from evil's slavery. Because (1) God paid the price and (2) Christians are ransomed from evil, the purpose for the Christian's body totally changes. The ransomed Christian now uses his or her body to honor (glorify) God. Note again the emphasis on the price.
Because God paid the price for our liberation, we belong to God. In slavery to evil, our bodies were used by evil for its purposes. In liberation from evil's slavery, a Christian's body belongs to God to be used for His purposes. There is an essential difference. Evil exploits us without regard to our best interests. Evil destroys its slaves. God never exploits us. He always seeks our best interests. God gives life to those who serve Him.
God regards the actual physical circumstances of a person's life [at the moment he or she accepts ransom paid by Jesus] as insignificant. God did not care if the Corinthian was a slave or freeman. Accepting the Lord's ransom gave a slave a new form of freedom. The same acceptance made the freeman the Lord's slave. When one becomes a Christian, he becomes God's slave. God frees him from evil's slavery. God paid the ransom required for freedom to exist. The Christian's responsibility is to serve God as God's slave. Note again the emphasis on the price.
In redemption, the essential understanding is this: the liberation price was paid. In the first century, it was understood that technically one belonged to the person [or temple] who paid the liberating price. One was freed by redemption, but in his or her freedom, responsibilities were gratefully acknowledged.
The person writing Hebrews combined Jesus Christ, the role of the high priest, sacrifice, and the payment of a ransom price that is eternal. In Hebrews 9:11, 12 Jesus Christ is presented as the Christian's high priest. A Jewish high priest served as mediator between the pure God and sinful people. However, Jesus Christ was quite different from a Jewish high priest. The Jewish high priesthood began by a high priest serving in a physical sacred tent [the tabernacle]. Jesus served as high priest in the eternal sacred tent [God's sanctuary in heaven]. A Jewish high priest took animal blood in the physical sacred tent to mediate before God (see Leviticus 16). Not only did he use animal blood, but the necessary process was repeated on an annual basis. Jesus took his own blood as a sacrifice into the eternal sacred tent. He did so only once. One sacrifice of Jesus' blood paid the price (made the ransom) and solved the problem. His blood produced eternal redemption. All have access to Jesus' blood. Those who accept his blood obtain eternal redemption.
Note the emphasis on the fact that Jesus' blood was a permanent solution to the problem created by evil's slavery. Jesus' blood was the "one time for all" sacrifice that established eternal redemption by paying the perfect ransom for liberation from evil. Consider Hebrews 7:26-28; 9:11,12; and 10:1-14.
End note:
Abraham's descendants through Isaac were slaves in Egypt (Exodus 1:6-14). They spent many generations as slaves. God through powerful acts (Exodus 7-11) freed them from slavery. That fact was to be the basis of their new relationship with God, new existence, and their new view of themselves (Exodus 19:4; 20:2; Leviticus 11:45; Deuteronomy 5:15; Psalms 81:10; etc.)
While they were slaves, they thought like slaves, they behaved like slaves, they lived like slaves, and they had the morals and ethics of slaves. Even though God delivered them (redeemed them), for generations they still thought, behaved, acted, and lived as slaves did. Neither their thoughts nor behavior changed, not in the incident of the idol of the golden calf, or their rebellion against God when they first came to Canaan, or their behavior of rebellion against God in Judges, or their existence in the last of Saul's and Solomon's rules, nor in the direction the ten tribes took and clung to when they appointed Jereboam king. The result: God was horribly displeased with them. He did not redeem those slaves to continue their slave mentality and behavior.
Note the way God functions. First, He redeems; He rescues from slavery. He has to do that. The slaves cannot deliver themselves. Second, He expects the redeemed to think and behave like liberated, redeemed people With Israel, first came deliverance from Egypt, then came the law. With us, first came deliverance from sin in the cross of Jesus, the comes "reconciled to God" behavior.
God did not permit and accept Jesus' sacrifice for us to continue "enslaved to sin" behavior. God paid the price to end our slavery to sin (Romans 5:6-11). He expects those who accept release from sin in Christ to think and behave like people released from evil's slavery (Romans 12-15). That point is repeatedly made in the New Testament. The Galatian Christians were not to live in the desires of the flesh but in the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:13-26). The Ephesian Christians were not to live in their former lusts of the flesh (Ephesians 2:1-3) but to exist as God's new creation (Ephesians 4:20-24). God redeems us from slavery to evil to live as those who through redemption belong to God. It is impossible to understand redemption and continue a deliberate lifestyle of evil and rebellion against God.
Questions to think about and discuss:
The origin of the redemption concept was rooted in the realities of slavery. A slave could be liberated [redeemed] only if a ransom price for his liberation [redemption] was paid.
All people are enslaved to evil. All people need to be liberated [redeemed] from evil's slavery. We can be freed from evil's slavery by trusting and accepting the price God paid in Jesus' death. The price of Jesus' innocent blood has the power to free us from evil's slavery.
God's objective in liberating us from evil's slavery is to motivate us to move away from evil's influence toward His influence. God did not liberate me from evil's slavery for me to re-involve my mind, heart, and body in evil. Today's Christian seeks to flee evil's influences in his or her life, not indulge evil's influences in his or her life.
God's grace brings salvation to everyone. Jesus' death in becoming the Christ permitted God's grace to offer salvation universally. Jesus sacrificed himself to redeem us from our ungodly existence and to purify us to be a people who belong uniquely to him doing good. In Christ we escaped an ungodly existence with its ungodly desires to assume a godly existence with its righteous desires.
Our redemption is possible only because of Jesus' blood. We can be forgiven because Jesus' paid the price of redemption with his blood. His sacrifice released God's goodness. God can express His goodness without restriction. Therefore God lavishes His goodness on us.
Because God paid the price of our liberation, we belong to Him, not to ourselves. Our bodies are to be used to glorify Him as our bodies serve as the Holy Spirit's temple. The specific context is that a Christian must not continue acts of prostitution.
The person liberated from evil's slavery welcomes the role of slave to God. Evil destroys. God gives life.
Jesus took his own innocent blood into God's sanctuary in heaven to pay permanently the price [ransom] that would provide us eternal escape from evil's slavery. Jesus' blood solved my problem.
We should value our escape from evil's slavery above everything else. Gratitude for what God and Jesus did for us should possess us. We dedicate ourselves to maturing in Christ. As we mature, we move away from evil's influences in our lives and move toward God's influences in our lives. We never forget that we are free from evil's slavery because God paid the price for our freedom in Jesus' death.
Link to Student Guide
Lesson 3