“And because of him you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption.”
“In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace”
“He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved son. In whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Our three “L”s form a nucleus of Spiritual identity. They speak to the essential Life of Jesus Christ, God’s Love shared in us and the Holy Spirit’s Light to guide our glorification in Jesus producing His fruit.
Redemption makes possible God’s love in our hearts. All we are and all we have is because God is love. We are his because He made us, we are His because He bought us and we are His because we responded to His grace giving ourselves back to him in faith He provides. Paul put it this way, everything from Him, nothing from us.
Our New Testament word “redemption” is translated from several different Greek words. They generally communicate two things, first, we become the personal possession of Jesus and second, we are no longer entangled with the things or person previously controlling us. This absolute agape love is possible only with eternal authority. It is an undertaking making us God’s possession so that we become what we are intended to be. This is what God’s love does!
Humanly speaking, we don’t have the power or authority to love at this level. This is one of God’s greatest miracles. We are given power to be who the resurrected Jesus is, 1John 4:17, and we are completed through His love in us. This is the nature of redemption, His love in us!
Becoming the personal possession of Jesus, He created us a new Spiritual person so that our center of being is set free from the former self and is established into His eternal kingdom. This means we now have the power and authority to put to death, in our body, the fleshly things Jesus has already nailed to the cross. This process we will discuss under sanctification. Redemption is being released from the grip of the flesh and making sanctification possible. We have been given the resurrection power of Jesus so that we can execute the sin residing in our body with His authority.
Redemption flows from God’s love enabling grace. Grace is everything that enables us to be like Christ. Redemption also provides our capacity to respond in God’s love to God’s grace with faith He also provides. Grace is God’s gift and faith is our response to God’s gift of grace. Our faith is also possible only as a measure of God’s grace to each of us.
Lets consider each of four Greek words translated redemption so we have a better context for our scriptural usage and understanding of the word redemption.
The first Greek word we should look at is taken from the Greek Agora, a public assembly place where things were bought and sold. It became the place were you would buy or sell a slave. The Greek verb for redemption was the same root word for buying a slave, αγοραζω, agoradzo. Τhe word picture is Jesus going into the agora and buying us because we were slaves to sin. This was our natural condition since Adam, our human head, placed humanity into this sin condition. The law was given to show how inadequate we are to be as righteous as God is. Under law we are condemned because of our sinful state.
The second Greek word is a form of the above word with “out” placed in front of it, εξαγοραζω or ex-agoradzo. This word explains that a slave has been bought out of the market place and set free. The slave is no longer considered bonded but freed from the slave market and does not have to fear being placed back into the market again.
This is a great illustration of being created new in Christ Jesus and released form the grip of the flesh. We have been given the resurrection power of Jesus so that we can put to death the sin residing in our body. Jesus is the second Adam and our Spiritual head. Under the second Adam, Jesus, we are reconciled back to God and offered His sinless righteousness. Jesus is the source for this incorruptible eternal, righteous life both now and forevermore.
The third Greek word translated redemption is lutrao (λυτροω) meaning to set free by ransom. Visualize your wrists bound together with twine when someone takes a knife and cuts the rope that binds you. A price has been paid to set you free. Some scholars interpret exagordzo as the money being paid and lutrao as the physical release. The emphasis with this word is the personal experience of being set free by redemption.
The fourth Greek word used for redemption is a form of the above, lutao, with a “from” prefix, απολυτροω. This places a stronger emphasis on the freedom that is ours because we are in Christ Jesus. This word is used for redemption in each of the three verses quoted above in our preface and establishes firmly a condition concerning our redemption. In 1Cor. 1:30, It is of God that we are in Christ Jesus and because of Christ we have redemption. In Eph. 1:7, we have redemption through His blood according to the riches of His grace. In Colossians 1:13, in Christ we have redemption and forgivness of sin.
Jesus is showing His love for us in redemption because while we were still sinners He died for us and then pours this very same love into our own hearts through the Holy Spirit when we enter into fellowship through His own creation within us. We not only become the personal possession of Jesus Christ but also there is a new purpose and direction. This is in contrast to what we were before being redeemed and driven by self interests.
Redemption is in correspondence with our Love Leaf. All of our leafs need to be open to the Son, receiving His light. Keep in mind that our objective is to produce Spiritual fruit. Our fruit is the product His Life, Love and Light being nurtured within His fellowship.
In addition to being created Spiritually with a new inner being, we also are now under God’s watchful eye and nothing occurs in our circumstances He does not manage in one way or another. Satan can not harm a hair on our head without going through our Shepherd Father. No one is able to pluck us out from the hand of our heavenly Father or Jesus because they are one.
So by being redeemed, we not only have a newly created inner being that is Spirit based but we are also protected from external attack because we are part of God’s personal family through His resurrected Son, our living Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. These meanings are contained in the collective four Greeks words from which redeemed appears in our New Testament.
Redemption also corresponds to the elements of our soul. Our heart is not only filled with His love but our mind is equipped with the capacity to begin a journey of understanding our sin in comparison to the purity of Christ’s sinless righteousness. We are also given the Spiritual sense to make spiritual choices by seeing the truth discerning good from evil.
To these elements God provides grace to respond with choices that glorify Him in us. As we make righteous choices we grow our capacity to receive more and more grace. This is the journey of faith opened to us because have accepted the work of love Jesus has performed on our behalf. He has redeemed us and brought us into this personal relationship with God the Father through His work on the cross. We consume grace by making faith choices. This expands our capacity to grow in both grace and faith. We glorifying Him by consuming grace which He in turn provides more grace upon grace.
This is the nature of faith. When we allow God’s grace to pervade our soul and have a consciousness of our reality in Christ, we can express behavior that is not limited to the constructs of time and space. We are simply bringing into time what already exists in eternity.
We are making visible what is not seen with physical eyes. Faith is the staff in our hand that can disarm the Egyptian of his spear and become the instrument of his death. God is looking for overcomers. Redemption places us into this position of growing our faith.
The act of redemption by God finds in us compassion in the heart, the reason of mind and the will to act in faith directing our whole body to learn obedience, honor and worship in the One who paid the price to set us free and make us His own.