The Accomplishments of Christ’s Death: Redemption

We have been studying the death of Christ on the cross. We have gone through 25 of the 33 stages that took place between a Christ can being convicted by Pilate up to his physical death on the cross, and we are pausing to look at the accomplishments of Christ's death on the cross. That is, His spiritual death, which occurred between 12 noon and 3pm. We have looked at the important teaching of Scripture on substitution that is fundamental for understanding the other aspects of what Christ did on the cross.

In this interlude were looking at five things that Christ did on the cross: the substitutionary aspect of His death, that He died for us, the Scripture says; second, redemption that was provided for by Christ on the cross, which focuses on a payment. Whenever you hear the word redemption you think of the word payment; there is a price that is paid. Because that price is paid, the result of that is the next word, cancellation. The technical theological word, which is rarely used anymore today in either everyday language or theological language, is expiation, which means the canceling of a debt. The debt is canceled because the payment is provided and paid for.

The result of the cancellation of the debt is forgiveness. There is forgiveness for all because the cancellation was for all because this took place on the cross and is related to that aspect of Christ's work on the cross, which is directed toward the Father and is providing an objective payment for sin so that nothing is left for the individual.

That leads to the last aspect, and that is satisfaction. Christ's right to coming to work righteousness and justice of God is satisfied by Christ's payment. This is the biblical teaching of propitiation, again another word that is somewhat antiquated, not used in everyday language and not familiar to many people, but they can understand the word satisfaction pretty well.

These are the five things that we are looking at in terms of understanding what Christ accomplished on the cross for all of mankind, for all of humanity.

Last week we looked at what the Bible teaches about substitutionary atonement. The key verse was 2 Corinthians 5:21. The idea there, to be sin for us: that substitutionary idea expressed through that English preposition for. That is so important. Christ's transaction on the cross means that we no longer can do what He did. He paid the penalty on our behalf. That is the purpose of it: "that we might become the righteousness of God in Him".

We learn from other things that to have His righteousness means that we must believe in Him, that He died for us. It doesn't mean that His righteousness is automatically imputed are counted to us—we have to believe to receive that—but the payment which is the basis for that justification has been made.

This idea of substitution is pictured in the Old Testament in the sacrifices where the person coming in bringing the sacrifice lays his hand on the head of the animal, the sheep, the goat, the bullock, whatever, and recites his sins to God so that they are transferred from him to the sacrifice. Then the sacrifice is taken takes place, the animal is killed on behalf of the individual. It is an object lesson teaching that death is the penalty for sin, and that that must be accomplished; there must be a death to have forgiveness of sin; but we are told by the writer of Hebrews that this didn't actually provide that, it was a picture of what Christ would do in the future, a picture of what the Messiah would do when He came in order to make atonement.

Remember that last time I told you that in the Hebrew the word kaphar there really doesn't mean atonement per se. That was a made up English theological word. In the LXX and it is often translated with the word KATHARIZO, which means cleansing. It is the provision of that cleansing from sin, which relates it to the objective forgiveness of God because the penalty is paid.

I looked at several points last week and under the last few I focused on these prepositions. For example, in 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". That word "for" is translated with the Greek preposition ANTI, which means in the place of and instead of, so this idea of substitution is clearly taught not only by the pictures of the Old Testament but by the prepositions of the New Testament.

The word LUTRON, which is translated ransom, is part of a whole word group based on that root that has the idea of paying a price, and it's often translated paying a ransom for many. So that word indicates substitution and relates that to redemption. That's what that payment of a price is.

A second preposition HUPER is in Romans 5:8, "God demonstrates his own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died as a substitute for us"—HUPER plus the genitive object of the preposition indicates substitution. Christ died in our place. That same preposition is used in 2 Corinthians 5:21.

In summary, and this is important. I repeat this again and again to get it into your mind that there are three problems that every human being faces born into a fallen world. The first is the judicial penalty of spiritual death. When Adam ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he died spiritually. There was a separation that occurred between him and God. He didn't die physically for over 900 years. In fact the penalty that is stated in Genesis 2:17 is not the penalty of physical death, it is the penalty of spiritual death, and it is seen that that has gone into effect by the time God walked in the garden with Adam and Eve. They ran and hid. They had already tried to cover their nakedness with fig leaves; they were aware that something had occurred and that they were separated from God, and when they heard God they were afraid; they were spiritually dead.

Then God outlines consequences of that spiritual death in Genesis 3:14ff, the last of which is to "from dust you came and to dust you will return". So the judicial penalty is spiritual death. The reality of that is that when every human being since that point has been born they are born spiritually dead, except for Jesus Christ because of the virgin birth. That is our experience; that is our reality. We are born spiritually dead, separated from God, and we are born unrighteous. We are corrupt; we do not have righteousness in order to get to heaven or to have a relationship with God. We have to be spiritually alive and we have to have perfect righteousness.

Christ's death on the cross doesn't make us spiritually alive, it doesn't regenerate us and it doesn't make us righteous. What it does do is pay for the legal penalty of spiritual death. Christ paid that penalty, that substitutionary work, on the cross. But the spiritual death problem is solved by regeneration and is limited to those who believe in Christ. This is why Jesus says to Nicodemus, no one can come into the kingdom of heaven unless has been born again. There must be that rebirth, he must move from spiritual death to spiritual life. Then the lack of righteousness problem is solved by the fact that the instant we trust Christ as Savior His righteousness is imputed to us as 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, that the righteousness of God might be found in us. When we believe in Jesus. God gives us Christ's righteousness. That's the transaction that takes place.

What were looking at, though, is those facets of Christ's death that relate to that first category of the payment or sin, and they come under different designations because each focuses on a different facet.

We are now looking at what the Bible teaches about redemption. The key verse for substitution was 2 Corinthians 5:21, a great verse to memorize. The second key verse, that is, the key verse related to redemption, is 1 Peter 1:18 and 19, "knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things such as silver and gold, from your aimless or your empty manner of life by tradition from your fathers …" That is, the rabbinical tradition that somehow you could pay for your sins by your good works. "… but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot".

That takes us back to what we studied at the beginning, those Old Testament prophecies and pictures called types of Christ that portray different aspects of what would be accomplished by the Messiah when He came. He is identified as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world by John the Baptist. And it is at His death that He fulfills that imagery and that typology of a sacrifice. He is sacrificed like the lamb. Since the lamb was without spot or blemish, He is without spot or blemish. He is impeccable; He has no sin.

In the Lord's Table we observed earlier that that unleavened bread pictures the perfect humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ qualifying Him to go to the cross.

We look at what was accomplished on the cross. We have a barrier between man and God, and that barrier is composed of different facets. The basic problem is sin that separates us. The second problem is the penalty of sin. The third problem is the character of God. Those three are positional, as is the last one, our position in Adam. But spiritual death, our problem of being unrighteous, and the problem of our position in Adam, don't change until we believe. But those first three, the sin problem, the penalty of sin, and the character of God, are resolved by the work of Christ, directed toward God the Father. These are covered under the aspects of unlimited atonement or substitutionary atonement, and redemption and expiation.

As we look at redemption it's important to go back and look at the words that are used in the original language. Basically, in the Old Testament you only have two words; in the New Testament you have two word groups. In the Old Testament we have a great picture in the word ga'al that relates to the noun gael, which is a kinsman redeemer. Ga'al is the verb for redeem, it means to purchase. We saw that picture in the Old Testament that is provided for Israel that if there is someone who is a slave, they had incurred a debt, that can be redeemed by someone who is a blood relative. And the picture there is that for our payment of sin to be accomplished it has to be paid for by a human being. An angel couldn't do it, and if Jesus had come just as deity He could not pay the penalty, like had to substitute for like. That is the emphasis under the picture of the kinsman redeemer.

The other word that is the more predominant word in the Old Testament is the word of padah, which emphasizes the payment of a price. That's what runs to the doctrine of redemption. Redemption is a financial term for an exchange of one thing for another, where you pay the price. That's the idea in redemption.

The New Testament has a number of different words but they're all based on two roots. There is the root LUTROO. There are various forms of that, depending on the prefixes and different things. Six different words are used there to emphasize the payment of a price, especially to purchase something or to purchase the release of a slave, to release somebody from slavery. That's the LUTROO group. The AGORAZO so group has a little different emphasis. In English we have the word "agoraphobia", which is somebody who has a fear of going out into public places, or the fear of being in the marketplace. The AGORA was the marketplace; that was the term. So if you go to the market on any given day, you go to the grocery store or whatever, you go to Walmart where you get just about anything, then that's going to the AGORA, as it was in the ancient world where you bought anything from hard goods to groceries. So the of the idea of the verb is to go purchase something. But it was often used for purchasing someone's freedom, or someone who was a slave from the slave market. That was the idea.

The Bible is using these two words that are very common in everyday language for purchasing things and applies that to understanding what is happening at the cross, that there is a financial type transaction that occurs there. It's very interesting how many of the words related to sin and related to the payment of sin, are financial the words for forgiveness. Both words of CHARIZOMAI and APHIEMI relate to canceling a debt. They were used in banking systems. And that is applied to the believer, that his sin the sin penalty is a debt that has to be paid. That transaction was paid at the cross through that redemption price.

The idea of redemption in the Old Testament is pictured by what happened at the original Passover. It's the 10th plague in the series of plagues that led to the freedom of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. So there you have all those images. They were slaves in Egypt. There is a payment that is paid, and that, for their freedom was the lamb that was without spot or blemish, the Passover lamb that was slaughtered and the blood applied to the door of their homes. God passed over so that He did not take the life of the firstborn in Israel, whereas He took the life of the firstborn in Egypt.

Deuteronomy 15:15 says, "and you shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you. Therefore I command you this day…" So what that immediately brings to our attention is this imagery of slavery; that we are, as Paul talks about us in Romans 6, born in slavery to our sin nature. We are born with one master, the sin nature. The sin nature controls, the sin nature dominates; we can't do anything that isn't a product of the sin nature because the sin nature is that the controlling feature of every human being's life. The sin nature can produce relatively good things and the sin nature can produce horrible evil wicked things, but that picture of slavery and redemption purchasing the slaves freedom is the picture that we see in the Passover in Deuteronomy 15:15.

Because of that God earns the title in the Old Testament of the Redeemer. He is the Redeemer, the holy one, the unique one of Israel; and this is used in Isaiah 48:17. Isaiah 44:22 uses a slightly different terminology. But this is the picture that takes place, as we'll see in the New Testament in Colossians 2:12-14. God says, "I have wiped out your transgressions". The counterpart to the Greek in Colossians 2:12-14 that the debt is canceled, it is wiped out. God deals with, eradicates the sin problem; He cleanses from sin. At this time Israel is in rebellion to Him and so His message is, "Returned to me, for I have purchased you". When did that happen? In the history of Israel that purchase price occurs at the Passover. They have been bought with a price, so they are to now follow the Lord; they are His.

Several points on redemption: First of all, redemption looks at salvation from the standpoint of the complete payment of sins. It is complete it; nothing can be added to it. This is why Jesus says TETELESTAI. It is complete it; it was completed in the past. That perfect tense verb indicates something that isn't continuing to be completed but has already been completed. It was finished in the past but the results continue. So when Jesus says TETELESTAI it indicates that payment is complete.

We can't add to it. In fact, if we try to add to it then we destroy the grace nature of Christ's salvation and were not saved. So faith plus anything faith plus baptism, faith plus doing good faith plus discipleship, any of these terms that come along today, distort grace and you're not saved because you're trying to do something in addition to what Christ did on the cross. Whenever a person tries do something to add to what Christ did on the cross they are in essence blaspheming the work of Christ on the cross. They are saying it wasn't enough: I'm good enough to add something to what the perfect Savior provided on the cross. That is why they are not saved by believing a faith-plus-something gospel.

1 Peter 1:18 tells us that this redemption was accomplished by the "precious blood of Christ". The term "blood of Christ" is an idiom, a picture again, of the violent shedding of blood, a violent form of death. It is not the blood in and of itself, the properties of the blood the plasma, the hemoglobin of the red cells, white cells; that's not what's efficacious, because this is a metaphor, a picture of something that happens in terms of physical death.

We have passages such as Genesis 9:6 when God is speaking the two Noah giving him the blank covenant and he says, "If anyone sheds man's blood, by man his blood shall be shed". That idiom of the shedding of blood pictures a violent kind of death; it pictures murder. It doesn't just restrict it to a murder where blood is shed; it is picturing a murder. It can be accomplished through some sort of head trauma where there's no bleeding, or it could picture somebody who takes poison. Any of those things would fit the category of a violent form of death. That's the image there. The blood of Christ pictures a violent form of death and it ultimately pictures, not the physical death, but the spiritual death.

When God the father imputed to Christ our sins from 12 noon to 3pm, when darkness is on the face of the earth, during that time Jesus was not separated from God in terms of his Trinitarian relationship to God, but in judicially He is separated from God. He still one with God in terms of the Trinity, that's not fragmented, but He is judicially separated, and that is spiritual death. He died spiritually on the cross, but it is on our behalf. So 1 Peter 1:18,19 are key verses.

Lewis Sperry Chafer founder of Dallas Theological Seminary, and for whom Chafer Theological Seminary is named, said, "Redemption is an act of God by which He Himself pays as a ransom the price of human sin, which the outraged holiness and government of God requires".

He talks about the requirement of God's holiness: His righteousness and His justice. That last part connects redemption to what we will talk about as satisfaction in the fourth of the five things that were talking about in terms of Christ's work on the cross. All of these are interconnected but they are distinct works of Christ on the cross.

Second thing that we see is that the Old Testament imagery of slavery in Egypt forms the background to teach about our slavery to sin. So just as the Israelites were slaves to the Egyptians, we are born slaves to sin. Paul talks about this Roman 6:6 he uses the phrase that "we should no longer be slaves to sin". Why? Because of salvation that tyranny of the sin nature is broken. Before that we were slaves to sin. In Romans 6:17, Paul says, "but God be thanked, that though you were slaves of sin …" That is the unbeliever. He is a slave to sin. In Romans 6:20, again Paul says, "for when you were slaves of sin". We are born in that slave market to sin. We are all enslaved to our sin nature with no option but to do what the sin nature dictates, whether it's morality or immorality, whether it is the relative good deeds that any human being can produce, or whether it is evil and wickedness.

This is also referred to in Galatians where Paul says, "to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons". The word for redeem is EXAGORAZO, which means to purchase out of the marketplace. We are purchased out of that slave market of sin.

We have learned from the Scripture that redemption becomes the basis for our justification. This is in Romans 3:24, "being justified freely by his grace through—that's the means that justification is accomplished, "the redemption", that is, through the payment made by Jesus Christ.

We learn is that redemption, then, becomes the basis for our sanctification. That is our positional sanctification and also our experiential sanctification. That is used an analogy related to the love husbands are to have for their wives, and that is compared to Christ's love for the church. He gave Himself for her—that is substitutionary atonement, substitutionary redemption—for the purpose that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the Word. This is related to our spiritual life after salvation. So because He is paid the price we are able to live for him and grow spiritually.

Redemption is directly tied to the forgiveness of sin. We have seen that forgiveness is the means by which justification is accomplished. We have seen that redemption is the basis for our post-salvation spiritual life and spiritual growth and sanctification. And then it is directly tied to forgiveness of sins.

Redemption does doesn't just hang out there in isolation. We've also seen it is connected to propitiation, but it's connected to forgiveness; that is the payment price that leads to the remission of sin.

Two passages are important here. Ephesians 1:7. Paul says, "In Him we have redemption through His blood". Again we see the emphasis of his death as the payment price for sin—the redemption, the forgiveness of sin. A lot of people can get confused on this and I remember it wasn't until I studied an important passages that we will get to little later on in Colossians 2:12-14 where that forgiveness is talked about in Colossians 2:13 is explained as having taken place when the certificate of death was canceled, taken out of the way and nailed to the cross. So forgiveness here isn't talking about our experience of forgiveness at the time of faith in Christ. It's not talking about our post-salvation forgiveness. It is talking about the payment for sin that cancels the debt at the cross. This occurred historically in 33 AD and is the basis for the doctrine and the teaching of unlimited atonement or unlimited redemption.

Colossians 1:14 says the same thing: "in whom (that is, in Christ) we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sin". Paying the price cancels the debt, so that payment of sin is something objectively real that cancels that so that sin is no longer the issue for anyone. If you talk to an unbeliever he needs understand he is spiritually dead, but the issue is not how bad he is. The issue isn't telling him he's got to confess all the sins he's ever committed. He doesn't have to recite and feel guilty about every horrible thing that he's done. His personal sin isn't the issue because that's been paid for the cross. The issue is what Christ did for him and will he accept that payment or not; will he believe in Christ or not?

Hebrews 9:12 says, "with His own blood (that is, by His death) He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption". There's nothing that can be added to Christ's work.

So thinking through what we what we've looked at already. Redemption pays the price; redemption cancels the debt. That's forgiveness. That word forgiveness APHIEMI that used in Ephesians 1:7 and Colossians 1:17 is a financial term that says this debt has been canceled. And that is the focus of what is called expiation, the cancellation of our sins.

And Colossians 2:14. What I have done here is expand the translation because what you have is a string of participles in the Greek, and usually translators translate them as a raw participle without showing what they mean, and verbally. I have tried to add that. So it begins, "And you [that is, when you were dead, emphasizing that at the time that we trust Christ we are dead] when we were dead"—in that status of being dead—"in our trespasses and the uncircumcision of our flesh, He has made alive together with Him". He makes us alive together with Him when we trust in Him. We are born again by faith. We go from being spiritually dead to spiritually alive by that faith in Him.

Then there is a participle related to forgiveness. The verb's CHARIZOMAI, which also talks about the cancellation of a debt. That's the idea there. It is a financial term and is used in the parables. Jesus uses it one time to refer to the landowner who cancels a debt that was to be paid. It is that cancellation of a debt idea.

"He has made us alive together with him". Now how do we understand that next verb? It's causal. He makes us alive. He can regenerate us because He has already canceled the debt. He canceled the debt, which is the legal guilt of our trespasses, that legal penalty of spiritual death. And then it says, another participle, He canceled the debt when he wiped out that handwriting of requirements, that certificate of death, that was against us. So he is able to regenerate us because He has canceled or forgiven our sin, our trespasses, when He wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us. And when did He do that? He did it when He nailed it to the cross. That's a historical event, it's not when you and I trust Jesus.

He canceled the debt by nailing it to the cross. That's a historical reality. This is one of the greatest passages that is not well taught or understood a lot of times. It emphasizes that Christ paid the penalty for everyone, believer and unbeliever, on the cross, so that sin is no longer the issue, only faith in Christ.

Redemption then not only applies to salvation, but it is going to apply to our bodies eventually: they are to be redeemed in the resurrection, Ephesians 1:14—referring to the Holy Spirit as the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession to the praise of his glory; and that is the redemption of our body, Romans 8:23.

So in terms of the practical significant application of this, in 1 Corinthians 6:20, Paul says, "For you were bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body". He paid a price, so that when we trust in him we read realize that we are no longer ours, we have been purchased out of that slave market of sin. There's no intermediate owner. We don't get freedom because Christ paid the price; we are now His. We go from being under the mastership of the sin nature to being under Christ's mastership. He is the one who is now our master. That's why Paul says that we are to no longer live as slaves of sin, but slaves of righteousness. But it's not Lordship salvation, which is what is often taught today, because we can choose not to be slaves of righteousness and slaves of Christ. We are bought by Him; we are owned by Him, but we can still be rebellious slaves, and many Christians are that way. They are thankful they have been freed from slavery to the sin nature, and they use that as an excuse to sin. That's also what Paul talks about in Romans chapter 6.

The endgame for redemption is first of all realizing our sins are canceled, the penalty is paid, and all that we need for salvation is to trust in Christ; and second, once we do that we are now owned by the Lord Jesus Christ for a purpose: that we glorify Him in our lives today

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