Redemption is Ours
Apple Podcasts Redemption Is Ours — Episode 255
This week, we continue our series, Getting the Gospel Right, by turning from the plight of man and our captivity to sin to the redemption that is ours in Jesus Christ, our Lord, and His atoning death.
The idea of redemption in Scripture is not really all that complex. Redemption is a release effected by the payment of a ransom—a buying back, a purchasing, a deliverance from captivity. We are slaves to sin and desperately in need of emancipation, of redemption, of being freed, of having our ransom paid. Jesus Christ paid that ransom with the shedding of His blood.
Romans 3 describes both our desperate plight and the beauty of our redemption. None is righteous; all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. Yet those who believe are “justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,” whom God put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This is redemption: liberation procured by the payment of a ransom.
Romans 8 carries this beautiful truth forward: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” Because of Jesus Christ—His shed blood on the cross, His death, burial, resurrection, and ascension—there is no condemnation for those who are in Him. The law of the Spirit of life has set us free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses. He gave Himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness, and the Son of Man came “to give his life as a ransom for many.” Christ liberates those who were enslaved to sin through the price of His own life.
We are unworthy, but Jesus Christ, our Lord, is our sufficiency. It is His finished work alone that transforms us from the captivity of sin to the freedom that we enjoy in Him. We should rightly see the seriousness of our sin, but we don't stop there. We rest in the freedom from captivity provided for us in Christ through His redemptive work on the cross.