What is redemption?

Question 07029.

Redemption in Christ is a word borrowed from the slave market and the auction block, and I think we lose most of its force because we have never stood in either. When Paul writes about being bought with a price, his first readers did not need the metaphor explained. Many of them had watched human beings sold, and some of them had been sold themselves. The word carried the smell of chains about it.

So this is not an abstract term for something spiritual and vague. It is a commercial and legal word describing the payment of a ransom to secure the release of somebody who could not free themselves, and every part of that definition matters when we come to apply it.

Three Greek words worth knowing

The first is agorazo, to buy in the marketplace. Paul uses it when he says you were bought with a price, and John uses it in Revelation when the redeemed sing that Jesus ransomed people for God from every tribe and tongue. The picture is a purchase, straightforwardly and unashamedly commercial.

The second is lutron, the ransom price itself, which appears on the lips of Jesus when He says the Son of Man came to give His life as a ransom for many (Mark 10:45). The preposition Jesus uses carries the sense of in the place of, which is why I take substitution to be built into the sentence rather than read into it.

The third is apolutrosis, the release that follows the payment. This is the word Paul reaches for when he says that in Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. Payment made, release granted. That triple movement is the shape of redemption in Christ.

What we were held by

Scripture describes the unbeliever as enslaved in several directions at once. There is slavery to sin, of which Jesus said everyone who practises sin is a slave to sin. There is bondage under the law’s condemnation, which Paul says held us captive. There is the fear of death, which Hebrews says kept people in lifelong slavery. And behind all of it stands an enemy who holds people in a snare.

This is not a flattering picture of the human condition, and modern people resent it. We prefer to think of ourselves as free agents who occasionally make poor choices. But the honest observation of any pastor, or of any addict, is that the will is not as free as the advertising suggests. We choose according to what we love, and what we love has us.

Redemption in Christ addresses precisely that. It does not offer good advice to slaves; it pays for their release. If you want the wider background, I have written on this in the reach of sin in the unbeliever.

The price that was paid

Peter is emphatic that the currency was not ordinary: you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ (1 Peter 1:18-19). Nothing in the created order was of sufficient value. The price had to be the life of the Son.

People sometimes ask to whom the ransom was paid, and some early writers suggested it was paid to the devil, as though God had struck a bargain with the enemy. I do not think Scripture supports that. The debt was owed to God’s own justice, and it was to that justice, not to Satan, that the payment was made.

The satisfying thing about redemption in Christ is that God pays what God requires. He does not lower the price and He does not leave it unpaid. He meets it Himself in the person of His Son, which is why grace and justice do not have to be traded off against each other.

Redemption in Christ is complete, not partial

The tense of the verbs matters. Paul writes that in Him we have redemption, present possession, on the basis of a finished work. Hebrews says that Jesus entered once for all into the holy places, thus securing an eternal redemption (Hebrews 9:12). Once for all and eternal are not words that leave room for topping up.

This is why I have no place for any system in which the believer must keep paying, whether through penance, through ritual, or through the endless self-punishment that some sincere Christians inflict on themselves. If the price is paid, then it is paid. Adding to it is not humility; it is an insult to the payer.

It also means that no failure of mine can reverse the transaction. A slave who has been bought and freed does not become the property of his old master again because he has a bad week.

Bought for, not simply bought from

Redemption has a destination as well as an origin. Paul says you are not your own, for you were bought with a price, so glorify God in your body (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). The purchase transfers ownership. We are released from one master and brought under another, and this second ownership is the substance of Christian freedom rather than a limit on it.

Titus makes the same connection: He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession who are zealous for good works. Redeemed from, redeemed for. Anyone who takes the first half and drops the second has taken a receipt and walked off without the goods.

That is why holiness is not an optional extra bolted on to salvation. It is what redemption in Christ was aiming at all along.

The part still outstanding

Paul speaks of the Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, and of waiting for the redemption of our bodies. So there is a portion of this that has been applied and a portion still to come. My guilt is dealt with now; my body is not yet what it will be.

That helps enormously with the frustrations of the Christian life. Believers get ill, grow old, struggle with temperament and carry the effects of a fallen world in their nervous systems. None of that means the purchase failed. It means the delivery is in two stages.

Ephesians calls this waiting period a sealing, until the day of redemption. The seal marks ownership and guarantees safe arrival. The parcel is stamped and paid for even while it is still in transit.

What it looked like in Israel

The Old Testament background gives the word its texture. A kinsman-redeemer, the goel, was a near relative with the right and the means to buy back a family member from slavery or to recover property that had been lost. Boaz plays that role for Ruth, and the whole book turns on it.

Two conditions had to be met. The redeemer had to be a genuine relative, and he had to be able to pay. That is a striking anticipation of the incarnation. Jesus becomes our kinsman by taking real humanity, and He alone has the means to meet the price.

The Passover adds another layer. Israel was redeemed out of Egypt by the blood of a lamb, which is exactly the language John the Baptist uses when he points at Jesus. Scripture has been telling this story from very early on.

Redemption in Christ and the fear of relapse

One of the questions I am asked most often is whether a person who falls badly has somehow undone their redemption in Christ. The answer is no, and the reason lies in who made the payment.

If I had bought myself out, my failures would put the transaction at risk. Since the price was paid by another, and paid in full, my failures are family matters rather than legal ones. They grieve God, they cost me fellowship and reward, and they need confessing. They do not reverse a purchase made with the blood of the Son.

That is why I keep pressing people back to the price rather than to their performance. A believer who understands redemption in Christ will fight sin harder, not less, because gratitude is a stronger engine than fear.

Redemption in Christ shapes how we treat others

If I have been bought out of slavery at that cost, I cannot then be casual about people who are still in chains. The New Testament assumes this connection and Paul draws it repeatedly, particularly in his handling of Onesimus, a runaway slave he sends back as a beloved brother.

It also affects how I treat believers who annoy me. Every difficult Christian in your church was purchased at the same price as you. That is a sobering thought to hold during a badly run church meeting, and I have needed it more than once.

So redemption in Christ has social consequences. It gives every believer a value that has nothing to do with their usefulness, and it obliges the rest of us to treat them accordingly. On the wider point see reconciliation.

So, now what?

Stop living like an unransomed person. If you keep going back to old chains as though they still had a legal claim on you, remind yourself out loud that the price has been paid and the ownership has changed. Freedom that is not believed is rarely enjoyed.

And take the second half of the doctrine as seriously as the first. You were bought for a purpose. Is there an area of your life that you are still managing as though it belonged to you? Bring it to Him this week and hand over the deeds. What might change if you lived as someone genuinely owned by Jesus?

In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us.

Ephesians 1:7-8 (ESV)