What is the best gift you could receive this Christmas?
The Christmas shopping season is mercifully coming to an end. For weeks, many of us have been bombarded with bargains through media ads, emails, text messages, and other means of communication. Retailers do this because they know nearly everyone is looking for a bargain.
It’s true. The human tendency is to look for the best product at the cheapest price. We sure do like a bargain, even when giving to others at Christmas.
Yet, consider the fact that God did the exact opposite of bargain shop at Christmas. We search for the best product at the lowest cost. God, in seeking to save the lost, went looking for a broken product, so to speak, and was willing to pay the highest price. God gave us, the worst of sinners, the gift of His precious, unique, one and only Son, who is of infinite worth.
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Over the past two posts, we have seen why this gift was so marvelous. God not only gave us Jesus, but wisdom, righteousness, and holiness. It is in Jesus that we understand true wisdom and obtain His righteousness that gives us a right standing before God. And it is in Jesus that we are set apart as holy, and that we learn to reflect that reality in our daily living.
As we conclude our Christmas series, we look at the fourth gift we received when God gave us Jesus (1 Corinthians 1:30). When God gave His Son, He also gave us the gift of redemption. Christians use this word regularly, but I wonder if we truly understand the depth of its meaning.
The first thing about redemption is its great cost.
We use the word redeem much differently than the Jews and Greeks of antiquity. For example, we might use it in the sense of redeeming something for a prize, or of giving something meaningless, meaning (or worthless, value). Redemption is also used as a broad term to encompass God’s dealings with humanity to bring about salvation. Others define redemption in terms of deliverance of captives.
To a certain extent, all these uses are correct, but there is one central feature missing, namely, the idea of a ransom price. In Greco-Roman culture, redemption did not merely entail deliverance from bondage to a certain master, but deliverance from bondage through payment of a significant price. Sometimes slaves were redeemed by a god through the religious institutions of the day. In such cases, the temple of that deity would pay the redemption price, and the slave would become a servant of that God.
Redemption had a similar meaning within Jewish culture. It meant to release from servitude, slavery, or even the sentence of death, by payment of a price. When the Israelites came out of Egypt, God required that every first born be sacrificially offered to Him. However, it was unthinkable that firstborn human beings should be sacrificed; therefore, they were redeemed with a monetary price. An exchange was made, and the person who was under a death sentence was set free.
In the New Testament, we see clearly that redemption in Christ was costly. Paul writes that Christ took the death we deserved so we could be set free (Titus 2:14). Paul also highlights that God redeemed us through Jesus’s shed blood, this time emphasizing the sacrificial and atoning nature of it (Ephesians 1:7). The most powerful description, though, is where Peter reminds us that we were redeemed with the blood of Christ, the spotless lamb without any blemishes (1 Peter 1:18). Redeeming sinners was not a bargain for God. Redemption was costly.
Redemption was not only costly; it also freed Christians from bondage to an evil tyrant desiring to destroy us.
When Jesus told the Jews that the truth would set them free, they objected that they had never been enslaved. In some respects, we are of the same mind. We don’t realize that we are by nature enslaved. However, according to Scripture, we in our natural condition are enslaved to several adversaries.
We are enslaved to sin. Those outside of Christ serve sin, and they are captive with no hope of release by their own power, effort, or abilities (John 8:34). We are enslaved to death, too. Because of sin, death has unbreakable power over us (Romans 5:12-14). No matter how hard we try, we cannot avoid death. Death is an unrelenting slave master over humanity. Because of death, we are also enslaved to fear (Hebrews 2:15). Lastly, we are enslaved by the devil, and we are held captive to do his will (2 Timothy 2:26). That is our natural condition, and no one can escape that bondage unless rescued by means of redemption.
The glorious news of redemption is Christ came to set us free from all these things. Jesus came into this world to set us free from our slavery to sin, death, fear, and the devil. Through His death, He took our sin upon Himself and set us free. On the cross, He died so death no longer reigns over us. Fear has been defeated because Jesus took our punishment and has set us free from Satan’s mastery. Through our redemption in Christ, we have been transferred from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.
Redemption also enables us to serve.
This point is counter-intuitive for people because they think of redemption as freedom to do whatever they want. However, in ancient culture, redemption often meant being freed from an evil master to serve a benevolent master. In that sense, then, this terminology would have carried great meaning to the original audiences. They would have understood being redeemed by God as being set free from an evil master to serve the Lord.
As we read through the New Testament, this concept comes up repeatedly. The idea of redemption is freedom to love, serve, and obey God’s commands (Galatians 5:13). Believers have been set free through Christ’s blood, not to serve ourselves, but to belong to Jesus as a people who are eager to do what is good and right (Titus 2:14). We are now free to serve, love, obey, and glorify God (1 Corinthians 6:20)! We couldn’t do any of these things before receiving this gift, but now we have been set free to do them.
Finally, redemption will be fully realized at the resurrection.
As long as we are in bodies of flesh, our redemption is not complete (Romans 8:23). Even when we are with the Lord in spirit, awaiting resurrection, our redemption still will not be finalized. Only when the Lord comes on the final day, and we are raised from the dead, will we experience the fullness of our redemption.
Imagine what it will mean to once and forever be free from sin, death, anxiety and fear, and Satan’s schemes? What a glorious thought! When our Lord was born as a baby, He came to purchase our redemption. When He comes again in glory, He will come to consummate it.
Do we value the gift of Jesus? Do we realize the precious worth of His blood? My prayer is that the truth of redemption would draw us into worship and gratitude this Christmas season, and that our worship would overflow in acts of love and service to Christ, to His people, and to those who do not believe in His saving work. The more we understand in this great truth of redemption, the more joyfully and faithfully we will serve the baby who was born in the lowly manger on that first Christmas to set us free.
Dr. Robb Brunansky is the Pastor-Teacher of Desert Hills Bible Church in Glendale, Arizona. Follow him on Twitter at @RobbBrunansky.
