We “redeem” coupons and gift certificates, but what does that word mean? Why is being “redeemed by Jesus” so important to the Christian faith?
The Oxford Dictionary says redeem means: “gain or regain possession of (something) in exchange for payment” or “compensate for the faults or bad aspects of (something).” I’ve always heard it to mean the first meaning in Christianity, so I’ll focus on that definition here.
Redeemed By Jesus
If Jesus redeemed us, what did he pay in exchange for us and what had us in their possession that we needed to be redeemed? As 1 Peter 1:13-23 states, we were held by the earthly life, the sinful life of this world. Through Jesus’ blood on the cross, he bought us back from Satan and the sinful world to be pure in God’s sight.
Let’s Step Back A Bit
The Bible begins with Adam and Eve being created and sinning. God said he would forgive sin through faith in the coming savior. Offerings of animals, specifically sheep and lambs, were offered to God as a request that God forgive the petitioner’s sin and listen to a plea for help. That simplifies the Old Testament A LOT, but it gets us to my point. God required a sacrifice of blood to purify sinners in his sight. The blood of the millions of animals didn’t purify anyone in God’s sight. Only the faith in the blood represented by each sacrifice purified the sinner.
Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us,
Galations 3:13a
Jesus Christ left heaven and became human to be that sacrifice. His perfect, sinless life led to his death on the cross, an innocent man. His sacrifice of his innocent blood covered our sins and reclaimed us from Satan and hell to live a pure life in God’s sight and heaven after we die.
This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement through faith in his blood.
Romans 3:22-25a
Psalm 49: 7-9 says that no man can redeem another man from death. Sinful people can’t save other sinful people. We can die in someone’s place, but that someone will still die someday. Jesus was pure. “the wages of sin is death”, and only Jesus had the purity to pay the wages for other people. God freely gives us redemption from sin through Jesus because we can not earn it ourselves.
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace
Ephesians 1:7
Thank you God for that!