Basic Theology: Redemption
Redemption
➢ Creation of the work of God was Great.
➢ Redemption the work of God was greater!
o Creation was made by speaking of a word.
o Redemption there was shedding blood!
✓ Creation was the work of God's fingers.
✓ Redemption is the work of His arm!
It cost more to redeem us than to make us.
Mark 10:45, For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.”
Redemption is more specific than salvation. Redemption is the heart and soul of salvation and focuses by which salvation is achieved.
Redemption has to do with the purchase by payment of a price. Redemption then focuses on how God bought us from our bondage to sin and how God paid the price.
Man's condition as a prisoner and sees God coming to set the prisoner free by paying the full required price.
Sin calls for justice. Justice demands a price.
The price justice demand is death. Redemption then of the sinner must come through death.
Acts 20:28, Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.
In the Bible Christians are said to be redeemed or bought in reference to the death of Christ
1 Corinthians 6:20, For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s.
1 Corinthians 7:23, You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men.
2 Peter 2:1, But there were also false prophets among the people, even as there will be false teachers among you, who will secretly bring in destructive heresies, even denying the Lord who bought them, and bring on themselves swift destruction.
Revelation 5:9, And they sang a new song, saying: “You are worthy to take the scroll, And to open its seals; For You were slain, And have redeemed us to God by Your blood
Revelation 14:3-4, They sang as it were a new song before the throne, before the four living creatures, and the elders; and no one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from the earth. 4 These are the ones who were not defiled with women, for they are virgins. These are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. These were redeemed from among men, being firstfruits to God and to the Lamb.
Galatians 3:13, Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree”),
Galatians 4:5, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.
1 Peter 1:18-21, knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. 20 He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you 21 who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
The imagery shadowing Peter's words here comes from Exodus chapter 12.
Exodus 12:1-14, Now the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying,
2 “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you.
3 Speak to all the congregation of Israel, saying: ‘On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb, according to the house of his father, a lamb for a household.
4 And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbor next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. 7 And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it.
8 Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat it raw, nor boiled at all with water, but roasted in fire—its head with its legs and its entrails. 10 You shall let none of it remain until morning, and what remains of it until morning you shall burn with fire. 11 And thus you shall eat it: with a belt on your waist, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. So you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
12 ‘For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord.
13 Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 14 ‘So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as a feast by an everlasting ordinance.
That describes God initiating the Passover which, is still celebrated by Jews even today.
One of the patriarchs of Israel, Joseph had been sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers. He then became Prime Minister of Egypt alongside the Pharaoh Ramses II. During a severe famine in Israel, the family of Jacob, Joseph's father, seventy strong came to Egypt to survive. There was food in Egypt but not in Israel.
These Jewish people, these Hebrew people began to dwell in Goshen, Egypt. They lived there and raised their crops and their herds there and they began to multiply.
Exodus 1:7, But the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
They had explosive growth and they multiplied to several million people.
As the population grew but their status begins to deteriorate, and they became slaves since the Egyptians feared them.
Because they had become so powerful and were so blessed by their God. So, Pharaoh forced them into making bricks for his great buildings that he was building. However, this concentrated labour, this slavery made them stronger, and continued to increase.
God heard their cry and in God’s time, after 400 years, He called them to come out of Egypt to establish them in the promised land and establish them as a nation.
But Pharaoh refused to release the people, so God unleashed on Egypt plague after plague, a series of ten plagues culminating in the final plague which was the supernatural execution of the firstborn animal, the firstborn in every family.
The firstborn in the family was the heir to everything the family possessed. The tragic judgment made the Egyptian to let the Israelites go and several million people exited Egypt. When they crossed the Red Sea and Pharaoh then changed his mind, chasing them and having his entire army drowned in the Red sea.
The death angel was going to move through Egypt and kill the firstborn child in every house on this huge race of Egyptians. To be spared from this cruel judgment the Hebrews to kill a lamb of the first year without a blemish, without a spot, offered as a sacrifice to the Lord. Take its blood and put on the door top of the door and on the sides. So, when the Angel of Death passes the house it sees the blood and know that they had obeyed God and spare their firstborn.
On the 10th Day of the month of Nissan, they brought the Lamb into their home and on the 14th day evening, the killed the lamb and put the blood on their door post as the Lord commanded them. When evening came the people gathered around the table,
➢ they had their sandals on,➢ they had their loins girded, meaning ready to get out,➢ they had the belt cinching their garments together,➢ they had their staffs in their hands ready to walk and hike,➢ they ate quickly/ hastily and➢ they were not in a relaxed position.
The lamb's life was given in place of the life of the firstborn, and the lamb died as a substitute. It is a substitutionary death, that paid the price God required and redeemed the firstborn from death.
The blood of the lamb that redeemed the family from divine judgment. The death of a lamb that paid the price to satisfy God and the angel passed by.
When the Angel started to slay the firstborn in Egypt they heard the cry of the families. The Egyptians urged the Israelites to leave from there, so the people left in a hurry with gold and silver from them.
God thereby had decreed that this Passover would be celebrated every year! It became memorial to remind Israel that they were delivered from devastating judgment through a lamb who died in their place and paid the price to ransom them as a redeeming, ransoming substitute.
This become the overriding theme of the Old Testament sacrificial system. And throughout the Old Testament time, even into the life of Christ in the New Testament, millions and millions and millions of lambs were slain in this blood-letting sacrifice which pictured substitutionary death which was a price paid to ransom sinners.
This what was behind Peter's words in his first letter!
All that was imagery leads to the cross and we are redeemed by the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. The ransom price required by God was death, the ransom price required by God was death. Jesus died that the death angel might pass us by.
The word "redeemed" by the way, just as a note there in verse 18, alutroo or lutroo, this form of it, alutrothete means to be set free by a ransom paid.
The noun form means a ransom.
It's a technical term for a price paid to buy back somebody headed for judgment, to buy back particularly a prisoner of war or to buy a slave's freedom.
To understand the Christian faith then is to understand redemption, ransom, substitutionary death, that's at the heart of what we must understand.
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