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In Him we have redemption
through His blood,
the forgiveness of sins,
in accordance with the riches of God's grace.
(Ephesians 1:7) |
A friend asked me a follow-up question regarding last week's Rest Stop The Meaning of Redemption: "Can you give me a definition of that word redemption? What does it mean to say we are redeemed? Redeemed from what?"
I really appreciate my friend asking the question which helped me realize last week's Rest Stop did not explicitly define redemption. Last week's Rest Stop can be accessed throught the following link:
So, this week's Rest Stop seeks to biblically and more explicitly define redemption.
I had an opportunity to share these truths in a sermon at the Bar None Cowboy Church in Owings, South Carolina this past Thursday evening. You can watch a 2-minute video excerpt from my sermon at the following YouTube link, which was posted by one of the church members.
Romans 6:20 is a good,
succinct description of the sinful state and imprisoned state that everyone is born into:
You were slaves to sin.
Sin in this verse is revealed as a power, a personified
power. This personified power was first revealed by God to Cain in Genesis 4:7: "Sin lies at your door, and its desire is for you."
Sin is a slave master of those who aren't related to Christ. People apart from Christ sin because they are in bondage to the power of sin. They sin because that is their nature.
Christ came to buy us
back from the slavery and bondage of our old slave master sin. Christ is
now the Christian's Lord and Master!
Galatians 3:13 says, Christ has redeemed us
from the curse of the law. We were cursed under the law in the sense
that we could never live up to God's holy law and the resulting sins warranted
our death.
Galatians 4:4-5 says, The Son was born under the law in order to
redeem us who were under the law. Why
was Christ born under the law with us?
To redeem us! To rescue us! To ransom us!
As noted in last week's Rest Stop, redemption was through the blood of Christ. I don't see anywhere in Scripture where His blood was a payment to Satan. Satan was defeated by Christ through His cross and resurrection. His blood was received as a sufficient satisfaction of God the Father's wrath toward sin.
Not by the blood of goats and calves,
but with His own blood
He entered the Most Holy Place
once for all,
having obtained eternal redemption.
(Hebrews 9:12)
Romans 6:14 assures us that redemption has indeed been victoriously accomplished by Christ: For
you are no longer under law, but under grace.
What an awesome truth to
meditate upon that Jesus Christ came from the realms of glory to live under the law with us in order to
rescue us and to take us back with Him to be under grace with Him in the realms
of glory!
And He did this for us and in us through His cross and resurrection. Christ died for us resulted in the forgiveness of our sins. We died and were risen with Christ resulted in the freedom from sin. Sin was the slave master of our old man. Christ is our Lord and Master of our new man.
So, we were redeemed
from the slavery of sin and the curse of the law. Redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.
Redemption (part 2) 
