Redemption

Bought free

To redeem is to buy back or set free at a cost. In the Old Testament God brought Israel out of slavery in Egypt with the promise, "I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment" (Exodus 6:6). The law allowed a poor Israelite who had sold himself to be bought back by a relative (Leviticus 25:48). The verb is gaal (גָּאַל), and the relative who redeems is the go'el, the ‘kinsman-redeemer’, like Boaz in the book of Ruth. Job could say, "I know that my Redeemer lives" (Job 19:25).

The New Testament applies the picture to Christ. Jesus came "to give His life as a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45); the word is lutron (λύτρον), the price paid to free a captive. Paul speaks of apolutrōsis (ἀπολύτρωσις), release by ransom, and writes, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us" (Galatians 3:13). Peter names the price:

For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life you inherited from your forefathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or spot.

1 Peter 1:18–19

Already and not yet

Redemption is first release from sin: "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses" (Ephesians 1:7). And the one set free now belongs to a new master: "you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body" (1 Corinthians 6:20). God sent his Son "to redeem those under the law, that we might receive our adoption as sons" (Galatians 4:5). Redemption does not stop at releasing a slave; it brings him into the family (see adoption).

Something is still to come. Even we who have the Spirit "groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" (Romans 8:23). Forgiveness is ours already; release from death, body and all, lies ahead.

To whom was the ransom paid?

Scripture never says. Origen and some other Fathers explained the ransom as paid to the devil, who held humanity captive; others, such as Gregory of Nazianzus, rejected the idea. In the eleventh century Anselm set it aside, arguing that the devil had no just claim on humanity, and explained Christ's death instead as satisfaction for the honour sin had taken from God Anselm, Cur Deus Homo. Many theologians today hold that the picture's point is not a party to a transaction but the greatness of the price and the freedom it bought. With the Westminster Shorter Catechism, which calls Christ "the only Redeemer of God's elect" Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 21, the churches confess together that the price of our redemption was Christ himself. For the wider setting see atonement and the lesson The cross and atonement.