The full collection of passages, bearing on this subject in every possible way, given us last month by the class, affords material for fully arriving at the meaning and different uses of the word “redemption” in Scripture.
As we have so often had to say before, we can but touch the surface the few remarks we may make, and we trust that our readers will make further researches for themselves.
Whenever a subject of interest is worked out, we should feel greatly obliged to any of our correspondents who will send short papers giving further, and different practical views of the subject, than the brief remarks we give monthly ourselves.
We find then here that God and man both redeem.
Man redeems always by money
by the death and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
Respecting this we should be very glad to know the true typical bearing of the acts of those who, being already redeemed by God, and being His property, redeemed themselves from His service by the payment of five shekels each. (See Q. 74.)
We now pass on to consider more in detail the redemption of Christ.
In this we notice seven distinct points.
1. Redemption is through the giving of Christ’s life.
Not through His life, holy and spotless as it was, before it was yielded up in death, for without shedding of blood, there is no redemption. It was the purity and perfection of His life that fitted Him to be our redemption. Not that this was its only value. As we are taught in the meat offering, all the beauty and perfection of Christ’s life ascended in perfect fragrance to His Father. It was a great thing that the Second Man should perfectly glorify God on the earth before He gave His life for the race who had ever dishonored Him. It is well to be perfectly clear as to what the life of Christ did accomplish, and as to what it did not accomplish. Confusion on this point is sure to lead us into some unscriptural errors.
2. Through redemption we are freely justified, or accounted righteous. It is therefore on account of Christ’s death, not of His life before the cross, that we are reckoned, or accounted righteous. God’s righteousness is manifested in the sacrifice of Christ for sin, and it is through this that He is enabled to justify every sinner that believes. Christ, doubtless, was perfectly righteous throughout His life, but it was as a perfect man, not as God, and hence this righteousness is never spoken of as God’s righteousness, though the One who fulfilled it was as truly God as He was man.
3. This redemption is eternal in its character, herein differing from all sacrifices under the law, which required to be repeated. If a Christian therefore sins, he does not require fresh redemption through the blood of Christ, but the cleansing application of the water of the word, leading to confession and restoration, not redemption. To be redeemed is to be redeemed forever.
4. We are redeemed from the curse of the law. A broken law requires death, and keeping it was the sole means of life. This curse here passed on Christ, and we are delivered from death by His redemption. Hence to put the Christian again under law as a means of life is to deny one great aspect of redemption. The Christian is dead to the law by the body of Christ, not that he should break it, but (though no longer under its penalty) that he should fulfill it, not in the oldness of the letter, but in the newness of the spirit.
5. We are redeemed from all iniquity. Christ’s work not only changes our position and standing, but is to have a practical effect on our state and ways. If we do not remember this, we turn the grace of God into lasciviousness. Romans 6 enforces this point strongly, and it is most important, for after all, it is by a man’s fruits, not by his faith, that we are to know him. When Israel were redeemed out of Egypt, they were to put away all their strange gods. Indeed, all their daily life was changed even down to their daily food.
6. The redemption of our bodies is still future. It is this for which we wait. The new jewel is still in the old casket, but the day will soon come when our bodies will be as perfectly like Christ’s as our new life is now. The point at present is to bring the new life out of the old bodies, and to manifest the power of Christ in the earthen vessel, which is, alas too often a hindrance to, rather than a vehicle for, the display of the light within. Hence so much stress is laid in Scripture on the literal use of the members of our bodies, for it is only through them that we can manifest Christ. In one respect only do we positively know that our new bodies will differ from our Lord’s: the marks in His hands, feet, and side, will ever distinguish the Savior from the saved.
7. Our inheritance is to be redeemed. We do not exactly know the full meaning of this. Everything is God’s, but He has not yet fully, as He will hereafter, made good His right. When He does, it will be in, or through, or by means of the saints. He will inherit all. Hence in one sense the inheritance will be theirs; in another, God’s. Ephesians 18.
Such are a few salient points connected with our redemption as wrought out in Christ. Well may we say even after such a brief review— “What manner of persons ought we to be in all holy conversation and godliness!”