REDEMPTION: PART 2

There are two aspects of what it means for us to be redeemed through the blood of Jesus that are highlighted in the New Testament. Firstly, to be redeemed means that we have been set free from our slavery to sin. And secondly, it means that we have been restored to the One to whom we rightfully belong. The blood of Jesus is the 'price' that was paid both to secure our freedom from captivity to Satan, sin and death and to 'buy us back' for God as His rightful possession.

The price of freedom

Jesus spoke of giving His life as a 'ransom for many'. A ransom is a price that is paid to secure the freedom of another. We associate this with kidnappers who demand a ransom for releasing someone they are holding captive and returning them to their country, family or friends. In Jesus' day a ransom was most associated with purchasing the freedom of someone who had been sold into slavery, for example, to pay off their debts.

So how does this apply to us? What is it that the blood of Jesus sets us free from? Paul says that: 'Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us' (Galatians 3: 13). We have been set free, Paul says, from the curse of the law - from the just condemnation that it brings upon all who break it. We have been set free from the sentence of death that would still be hanging over us and that would have resulted in our eternal separation from God had our sins not been atoned for.

But that is not all for Paul says that 'through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death' (Romans 8: 2). Sin is like a powerful force which prevents us from doing the good things we ought to and perhaps even want to do and instead keeps us doing the bad things we ought not to and perhaps do not even want to do. We are held in its powerful grip. But because of the death of Jesus, the Spirit who gives life is now living in us enabling us to overcome the powerful grip of sin in our lives.

The Bible sees us as slaves to sin. The problem is not just that we sin and need forgiveness. The problem is that 'everyone who sins is a slave to sin' (John 8: 34). We are held captive under its controlling power and need to be set free. But the Good News is that Jesus has come to 'proclaim liberty to the captives' (Luke 4: 18). The death of Jesus releases us not only from the just condemnation that our sin deserves but also from its powerful grip on our lives. Paul tells his readers that by being united to Christ they 'are no longer slaves to sin'. Rather, they 'have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness' (Romans 6: 6, 18).

Behind our captivity, of course, is Satan since it was he who first tempted Adam and Eve to sin with the result that we are all now slaves to sin and under sentence of death. John tells us that 'the whole world is under the control of the evil one' (1 John 5: 13). The situation we are in is ultimately his doing. It is he who holds us captive through the power of sin in our lives and facing death as the inevitable consequence of this. It is as if Satan holds us as his prisoners on death row.

In Luke 11: 21-22 Jesus says: 'When a strong man, fully armed, guards his own house, his possessions are safe. But when someone stronger attacks and overpowers him, he takes away the armour in which the man trusted and divides up his plunder'. Here Jesus is referring to Satan as the 'strong man' and to Himself as the One who enters the house and plunders the place.

'Of course, before Satan allows his domain to be 'plundered,' he must be incapacitated. Jesus...had come to the earth, to what is essentially Satan’s 'house' (1 John 5: 19) in order to bind Satan and plunder his 'goods', which are the souls of men (John 17: 15; Luke 4: 18; Ephesians 4: 8). Satan is strong, and he holds possessions that he guards jealously. But Jesus is the One who was and is stronger than the strong man. He is the only One who can bind the strong man and rescue us from his clutches (John 12: 31).1

As a result of the atonement, Satan no longer has any hold over us. The power of sin in our lives has been broken and the death sentence against us has been cancelled. We have been set free. The death of Jesus is the ransom price that has been paid in order to secure our freedom - from Satan, sin and death. And Jesus assures us that: 'If the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed' (John 8: 36).

But there is one question arising from this that sometimes causes confusion. The question is: 'To whom is the ransom paid?' If it is Satan that holds us captive, does this mean that Jesus pays the ransom price of his blood to Satan in order that he will set us free? Is it Satan that demands that this price is paid before he will set us free? The answer in both cases is a definite 'no'.

There is no need for us to think of the ransom being paid to Satan. The fact is that Satan does not have the authority in and of himself either to hold us captive or to set us free. As the book of Job makes clear, Satan can only do what God permits him to do. It is God who has handed us over to Satan's control, as a result of our sin, and it is God who sets us free once the price for sin has been paid. Satan may be the jailer but he operates under the authority of the Judge. It is in the Judge's power both to hand prisoners over to him and to release them from him.

We can think of the blood of Jesus, therefore, as the price that is paid not to Satan but to God since, as our Judge, He is the One who is able to grant us our freedom. Once atonement for our sins has been made to His complete satisfaction, God has the power to release us from the prison in which we were held and He is perfectly justified in doing so. Satan has no say in the matter whatsoever.

Picking up on Jesus' own words, Paul says that Christ: 'gave himself as a ransom for all' (1 Timothy 2: 6). This shows that Paul clearly does not regard the 'many' Jesus spoke of as in any way restricting the benefits of His atoning death to some but not others. Paul affirms that Christ has purchased this freedom - from Satan, sin and death - for all who believe.

How Does The Death Of Jesus Set Us Free?

So far we have seen that the death of Jesus was like a ransom paid to God the righteous Judge to secure our freedom from captivity to Satan, sin and death. But how exactly does the death of Jesus secures our freedom? In what way does it so satisfy God that He is now able to drop all the charges against us?

We have already suggested that it was because Jesus accomplished for us what Adam had failed to accomplish that God is satisfied with the price He paid for our redemption. His life of perfect obedience enables Him to become the head of a new humanity so that in Him we are now able to become all that God had intended us to be but never could be because of Adam's disobedience. As we have argued, atonement is not about God seeking retribution for the sins we have committed; it is about God Himself taking the initiative to put right what was wrong; to fix what was broken as a result of our rebellion against Him. It is about God in Christ providing the means by which everything that was lost as result of the fall can be restored to Him, to us and to creation itself so that no one needs any longer to be punished for our sins. It is because Jesus has so comprehensively dealt with the offense of our sin and all of its consequences that God is now able to set us free from the captivity in which we were held - to Satan, sin and death. 

It was not because Jesus was punished in our place that we have been set free. It was not because God needed someone to vent His wrath upon in order for Him to be able to forgive us. It is rather because Jesus has made atonement for our sins, putting right what was wrong and restoring to God all that was lost, that God is able justly to forgive us. The atoning death of Christ is the means by which humanity and all of creation can be restored to its original sate and purpose. It is because in Christ we can now become all that we were meant to be and one day take our place with Him as rulers over a renewed creation that God has declared His sacrifice of atonement to be sufficient to cover all our sins. 

Because the death of Jesus sets us free from the controlling power of Satan, sin and death in our lives it is represented in the New Testament as having achieved a great victory over Satan and all the forces of evil. 

As we have seen in a previous chapter, the authors of the New Testament are clear that it was not God who inflicted the violence of the cross upon Jesus. It was wicked men under the influence of demonic principalities and powers who did so. The violence that Jesus endured on the cross was stirred up by Satan and all the demonic forces at his disposal (as God knew it would be) in an all-out attempt to destroy Jesus, the One they recognised as the Holy One of God. What they did not realise, however, was that God's intention was to use their evil schemes against them and that by enduring all the suffering that they inflicted upon Him Jesus was in fact being obedient to the Father, submitting Himself completely to His will in order that He might be able to offer up His life of perfect obedience as a sacrifice of atonement for our sins. Brian Zahnd therefore in my view correctly says:

'The crucifixion is not what God inflicts upon Jesus in order to forgive; the crucifixion is what God endures in Christ as he forgives. The monstrous aspects of Good Friday are of entirely human origin. What is divine about Good Friday is the completely unprecedented picture of a crucified God responding to His torturers with love and mercy.'2

The crucifixion is in fact what Jesus had to endure in order to defeat the powers of darkness. They threw everything they had at Him but He fought against them and won - not through a display of superior strength but through a display of self-giving love. It was by offering up to God a life of perfect obedience on our behalf that He defeated them. Had he retaliated when he was mocked and beaten, had he returned insult for insult or violence for violence He could not have been the perfect, spotless lamb of God who would 'take away the sins of the world'. He had to live as God required right to the end. He had to model what He Himself had taught about loving and forgiving one's enemies even from the cross. And it is because He continued to live in perfect obedience to the Father in spite of all the suffering that was inflicted upon Him as a result that He was able to fulfill the purpose for which He had come and secure our release from the powers of darkness.

The fact is that through His sinless life and sacrificial death on the cross, Jesus fought against the powers of darkness on our behalf and won a decisive victory over them for us. Just as David represented the people of Israel in their battle with the Philistines and won the victory for them, so Jesus represented us in our battle with the powers of darkness and won the victory for us. Just as David won freedom from the Philistines for his people, so Jesus won freedom from captivity to Satan, sin and death for us. Because He fought the battle on our behalf, the benefits of His victory become ours through being united with Him by faith.

This is the heart of what is known as the Christus Victor theory of the atonement which according to Gustaf Aulén is the view that the death of Jesus was a 'victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil.'3 According to Aulén this view goes back to the Church Fathers and was the dominant view of the atonement for the first thousand years of the church's history. NT Wright sees it as central to our understanding of the cross. He claims that it is essentially how the gospel writers and indeed Jesus Himself understood and explained the meaning of His death. He says:

'I have heard Christians say that on the cross God embraced the use of violence to solve the problem of human sinfulness and that this therefore legitimates us in embracing violence and (when I hear that) I want to say, 'Excuse me - you're just not reading the text! The point of that narrative is to say that all the evil and wickedness and violence of the world converged onto this one point which was Jesus and the point of that was not that this is how violence is always going to be but that this was the ultimate defeat of violence. It did its worst to him and he in consequence was able to exhaust its force.'4

Paul puts it this way in Colossians 2: 15: 

'He (Jesus) disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them triumphing over them in the cross'. 

It looked like the 'principalities and powers' had won but Paul claims that by resisting them to the point of death it was Jesus who came out triumphant. They did their worst to Jesus, thinking that by having Him nailed to a cross they would be rid of Him forever. And when He died they must have thought they had won but they had not! Because what Satan and his cohorts did not know was that by resisting them to the end Jesus had fulfilled the secret purpose of His coming - which was to live a life of perfect obedience to the Father so as to give that life as a sacrifice of atonement for us - thus releasing us from their grip and destroying their power over us. It was in His death that Jesus, far from being defeated, won the victory for us. In His resurrection the victory He had won was announced to the world. And through the gift of the Spirit that victory is shared with His people. 

Elsewhere Paul says: 

'We declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory' (1 Corinthians 2: 7-8).

This is sometimes called the 'fishhook' theory of the atonement. The idea is that the Son of God living on earth was like a bate which Satan found too hard to resist. What a victory it would be for him to destroy the Son of God! But having swallowed the bate, he found himself caught on the hidden hook of God's secret plan and reeled in to his utter destruction. 

What does this mean for us?

The Good News for those in Christ is that Satan has been soundly defeated. Jesus entered into battle against our greatest foe on our behalf and won. And the victory Jesus won, and all the benefits that result from it, He now shares with us.

However Satan has not yet been destroyed. He is still active in opposing God's purposes and attacking God's people. We may experience his attacks directly - physically, mentally or emotionally - or through painful circumstances he brings our way. We may continue to experience his influence in the sinful habits and desires, ways of thinking and patterns of behaviour that have become ingrained in us as part of our sinful nature. And we may be exposed to his influence in various aspects of our culture and through the principalities and powers, institutions and structures of this world. Whether it is through the world, the flesh or the devil himself that we encounter his influence, we are to resist him at all costs as Jesus did. And John reminds us of the great truth that we are able to do so because: 'the one who is in you is greater than the one who is in the world' (1 John 4: 4).

Satan may continue to deceive (Matthew 24: 24), to tempt (Hebrews 4: 15) and to accuse (Revelation 12: 10); he may still prowl around 'like a roaring lion seeking someone to devour' (1 Peter 5: 8); he may still aim 'to steal, destroy and kill' (John 10: 10); he may still aim his 'flaming arrows' at us (Ephesians 6: 16) and we may still have a fierce battle to face - but it is a battle with a defeated foe. All we have to do is to 'stand firm' (Ephesians 6: 14) with all the armour that God provides.

But the battle will not be easy. Paul warns us that just as Jesus endured suffering on account of His obedience to the Father, so 'everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted'. We will become a target for the enemy's attacks just as Jesus did. And Jesus tells His followers: 'In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world' (John 16: 33). 

The death of Jesus was a decisive victory over the powers of darkness. It is a victory that He now shares with us and becomes ours through faith in Him. It is therefore as we 'put on the full armour of God' and prepare to take our stand 'against the devil's schemes' (Ephesians 6: 11) that we can discover God's mighty power at work within us (Ephesians 6: 10) and learn to say with Paul: 'Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ' (1 Corinthians 15: 57). 

Notes

1. https://www.gotquestions.org/bind-the-strongman.html

2. Sinners In The Hands Of A Loving God by Brian Zahnd

3. Christus Victor: An Historical Study of the Three Main Types of the Idea of Atonement by Gustav Aulén, translated by AG Hebert 

4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IA8CY5iC_ww