Word of Salvation – September 2024
The Wonder Of Redemption
Sermon by Harry Burggraaf B.D. on Ephesians 1:7
Scripture Readings: Exodus 6:1-8; 1Peter 1:17-21
Singing: O worship the King (BoW.104a)
I will sing of my Redeemer (BoW.392)
There is a fountain opened wide (BoW.411)
Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Someone has said that we live in an existential age!
Now that big word means different things to different people – but to ‘the man in the street’ it generally boils down to ‘doing my own thing’. What is important is not so much what I believe but what I do. The only valid truth is the truth of my experience.
And so we get today’s emphasis on present action, present experience, present sensation – you just analyse your T.V. programmes and the film titles and the conversation at work.
Perhaps this existential trend is most dramatically expressed in such ‘total’ and ‘now-sensations’ as the psychedelic trip, free sexuality, or the pulsing, vibrating, mind detaching music of such shows as Hair.
Now the great danger, the great danger, congregation is that this subtle, all pervading existential influence will also make inroads into the Christian church – will colour, for instance, our concept of the gospel. Perhaps it has already done so. For if you were to do a survey asking Christians what they understood by the gospel you might be unpleasantly surprised. Perhaps it would be good to ask ourselves that question too: What is the gospel? Can you state it in a nutshell?
– To many well-meaning but misinformed younger people of the ‘now-generation’ the answer would be “Jesus is the greatest man, living for him is the grooviest experience I’ve had.” Now of course knowing Jesus is the greatest – but that is not how scripture presents the gospel – that is the experiential and existential influence asserting itself.
– Other people would say, “You must be born again, accept Christ as Saviour, make a decision for him,” that is the gospel. Heard that statement before? But surely that is the response to the gospel an order, a command, an exhortation – not a message, not good news. Again there is an emphasis on my experience, my commitment – the subjective aspect.
– And then there is that insidious half-truth the reply you see on the posters and the bumper stickers – “Smile, Jesus loves you…!” “Honk if you love Jesus…!” “God loves you brother…!” But the Bible makes no such unqualified statement, for God hates sin and the unrepentant sinner.
– And of course some of us would want to let our Calvinisticheritage shine through so that we say, “The real core of the gospel is that God elects us to be his children!” Now that is true, but is it an adequate answer to the question, ’What is the gospel?’
No, the gospel, the good news, the evangel is summarised in some of those exalted, wonderful but very difficult and technical words from which we tend to shy away, but the understanding of which is vital in this existential age.
For instance 2Cor.5:19 is the gospel in a nutshell – “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself!” Reconciliation – Christ dealing with our separation, our alienation from God, our lostness, our antagonism – making us friends again.
Or there’s the gospel in summary is 1John2:2 (RSV) “Christ himself is the propitiation for our sins.” Propitiation – Christ paying the gift to remove the wrath, the holy anger of God, channelling Gods holy hatred for sin into himself and away from us.
Or the gospel in Hebrews 10:12 “But Christ having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time sat down at the right hand of God.” Sacrifice Christ offering himself to deal with our guilt and the fact that we are criminals before God.
And our text today is the gospel in brief: “In Christ we have redemption through his blood.” Redemption – Christ dealing with the bondage, the slavery, the imprisonment, the iron grip in which sin binds man.
All these are different aspects of that comprehensive truth that Christ died for our sins”. This is the gospel we need to know and to proclaim and never our existential commitment but God doing His thing, once for all in Christ.
Today we meditate for a while on God’s actions which are described by the word REDEMPTION and we consider…
the meaning of redemption
the means of redemption
the magnitude of redemption.
1. MEANING.
“In Him we have redemption through His blood.” – now that sounds like about the most theological phrase we could meet, so totally different from anything we meet in everyday language. Yet when Paul wrote these words he wasn’t writing in ‘tongues’ – people didn’t need theological spectacles or religious hearing aids to understand. The Greeks and Romans understood the word because it was used in common secular conversation. The Jews understood it because the concept of redemption was woven into the words, into the structure, into the very fabric of the Old Testament.
Redemption simply meant…
– setting free that which came to belong to another
– deliverance from evil or slavery by payment of a price.
On almost every page of the Old Testament we catch a glimpse or see a full scale scene of God’s redemptive work, God in action…
– the ray of hope in the dark garden of Eden after the fall when the redeemer is promised;
– the saving love of God to Noah as the rest of the world drowned in its rebellion and sin;
– the narrow escape of Lot as Sodom burned;
– the miraculous preservation of Joseph so that he could become the provider in time of drought;
– the deliverance of Israel as they groaned under the load of their Egyptian task masters;
– the return of the exiles after many weary years in Babylon;
– the slaughter of bulls and goats day in day out in the sacrificial system of the temple.
All these are of course redemptive events in themselves but they are also pictures or indicators of the great redemptive event – a man dragging a cross to a hill shaped like a skull; rough soldiers nailing him onto it; Calvary at 12.00 noon and utter darkness; the piercing cry “it is finished”; the tomb; the resurrection – all centering on Christ dying for the sins of the world.
In the Old Testament the meaning of redemption is best seen of course in that tremendous event The Exodus of Gods people out of the bondage of Egypt.
The Israelites suffering the incredible burden of slavery and oppression and God leading them out with a mighty, outstretched hand. In translation the same words are used to describe that event as Paul uses in our text:
Exodus.6:6 –
“Say therefore to the sons of Israel, I am the Lord and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgements.”
But the meaning is also illustrated in the smaller things in ordinary O.T. everyday life. (cf.Ex.21:28ff).
Imagine that you are a Jew living in Canaan just after the exodus out of Egypt. You’ve decided to take up dairy farming because the Jordan valley has some good grazing land. Now you’ve got a bull – a beautiful beast… won the first prize in the local Jerusalem show, lovely animal. There’s only one problem though he’s mean – and you know it. He’s gored several people and you just can’t turn your back on him. Goes for anything that’s got two legs and one day the tragedy happens. You’ve left the gate open and who should come along but your neighbours slave. The bull sees red and gores the man to death.
Not only does Old Testament law require that the bull should be destroyed but you too would be condemned to death for negligence.
A life for a life. No way out. Unless, unless – there was a wonderful provision in Israel whereby a man could save, could redeem, his life in such an instance by paying a ransom price – handing over a sum of money called a `kopher’. The kopher (literally ‘a covering’) in exchange for your life. In this case where the bull kills a slave the kopher, the ransom price would be 30 shekels of silver (a shekel is 11½ grams).
And this is the type of language Paul borrows when he says that we have redemption through Christ’s blood – the ransom price – the kopher in exchange for a life – idea.
In the same way the Greek and the Roman world would have understood what Paul was talking about.
In the world of that time slavery was a common institution – often the life of a slave was not easy as you’ll know if you’ve seen a film like Spartacus or Ben Hur. Slavery meant being bound, belonging to someone else for the rest of your life.
Once a slave always a slave – unless… unless…!
Under certain conditions there was a way out of slavery in Roman life. The slave, or someone for him could sometimes pay a sum of money in order to buy freedom – but in a strange way.
The slave would go to the local temple and hand the sum of money over to the priests who would offer it to the particular god of that temple. And so the slave could claim his life by payment of a price – ransom money – a ‘lutron’ they called it. The ‘lutron’ allowed him to go free – theoretically bound to and with duties to the god he paid – but nevertheless free.
Do you get the picture, congregation? This is the language Paul uses – he also uses the word ‘lutron’ to describe the work of Christ for us: Christ pays the ‘lutron’, the redemption price, that we might go free.
But even in the twentieth century we have adequate illustrations to get across the meaning of redemption especially when talking to non-Christians we should try and avoid theological jargon – (unlike the travelling minister who met someone in the country and said, “Are you lost brother?” “No,” replied the man, “I live right up the road, three houses away.”)
What better example than Minke Hanskamp – kidnapped by Thai rebels. No freedom, imprisoned – unless a ransom is paid: half a million dollars in exchange for her life.
Many modern theologians such as Bultmann, Robinson, Dodd, Tillich and even in Reformed Churches in Holland, deny this ‘ransom’ aspect of redemption. They see Christs death only as a manward thing, a means of deliverance – in the sense of an example for us to copy; as Christ died, so we put sin to death in our lives; his death makes us reconcilable, lovable, helps change our attitude to God, provides an opportunity for understanding ourselves – and existential thought has its day.
But the message of the text is that in Christ we HAVE redemption, we are actually freed from the curse of sin and death because Christ did something – he paid the ‘kopher’, he provided the ‘lutron’, he handed over the ransom price. Redemption is an objective fact, a once for all action which God accomplished in Christ.
– like the man with the bull we were condemned to death because “the wages of sin is death”, but Christ substituted his ‘kopher’, his own life so that we might go free;
– like the Roman slave we were under a master, the tyrant sin, but Christ paid the ‘lutron’ for our release;
– like Minke Hanscamp we were kidnapped by Thai rebels because life without God is life in Satan’s forces, but Christ paid the ransom price to end our imprisonment.
2. MEANS.
What price? What was the ransom price? And that brings us to our second point: the means of redemption.
No, the price was not thirty shekels of silver, not a sum of Roman denarii, paid into the temple treasury, not a half a million dollars – but the price of Christ’s own blood, the gift of his own life; as the apostle Peter puts it so explicitly: –
“You were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ.”
Many people have stumbled over this expression – “the blood of Christ” and a whole theology has grown up around it. People have gone to ridiculous lengths to explain the place of the blood in God’s plan of salvation, hymn writers and commentators have gone into gory details but there is nothing abstruse or mystical in the expression ‘blood of Christ’ – there is nothing intrinsically valuable in the blood itself. “Through Christ’s blood” merely means, by his death. The shedding of blood was a metaphorical and pictorial way for the Hebrews to indicate the offering up of life in death, often violent death.
And so the means of redemption is: his life for ours; his death a substitute for what we deserved; him taking the curse which would have crushed us; him bearing the brunt of the wrath of God under which we would have perished eternally; him being bound that we might be loosed; him being condemned that we might be acquitted.
How much does this knowledge still excite us? We’ve heard it so often – and sometimes, let’s admit it – sometimes the exhilarating news of the gospel becomes dull dogma to our ears.
But, congregation, consider once again the HIM of whom the text speaks – that divine man who left the glory of heaven nearly two thousand years ago, to enter into our space and time, our history, who lived and ate and endured and shared our existence, who healed and loved and did good, who was handed over to the police of that time and was publically hanged from a common gallows – that man was GOD ALMIGHTY – God himself as both victim and hero of the redemption drama – can we ever find that dogma dull? What then can ever be called exciting?
In Him, in Christ we have redemption – through his blood, his death. That is the means God used.
Notice that the text says we HAVE, or are HAVING redemption. The work is finished, there is nothing left for us to do but to accept the fact in believing gratitude and humble repentance.
Have we done that? Can each one of us here say: In Him I have redemption – his death, his kopher, his lutron has set me free – then we will want to exclaim with the hymn writer: –
O love how deep, how broad how high
it fills the heart with ecstasy
that God, the son of God should take
Our mortal form, for mortals’ sake.
For us to wicked men betrayed
Scourged, mocked, in purple robe arrayed,
He bore the shameful cross and death
For us at length gave up his breath.
To him whose boundless love has won
Redemption for us through his son
To God the Father, glory be
Both now and through eternity.
3. MAGNITUDE.
For oh, the magnitude, the height, the depth, the breadth of that redemption. It means the forgiveness for sin and the end of the imprisonment, the slavery to sin and death. It means the transfer from “the bondage of corruption” into the “glorious liberty of the sons of God”.
It takes the derelict alcoholic from his park bench and gives him a new life; it transforms the drug addict into a useful citizen; it gives anew wholeness to a broken marriage; it gives us the freedom to do Gods will; the power to overcome temptation for that is the positive side of redemption. And so Peter can say, “Be holy yourself also in all your behaviour…. conduct yourself in fear during the time of your stay upon earth knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things… but with the precious blood of Christ.”
The benefits of redemption are not just future, but here and now also. We enjoy the present benefits of an action completed in the past and the scope of redemption is all our life…
– Our relationships with others are redeemed in Christ – they should not carry the marks of sinful bondage.
– Our session meetings, youth club gatherings, bible studies are redeemed in Christ – are there still marks of slavery?
– Our choice of vocation, our work, our recreation – redeemed through his blood – do they evidence the new freedom which that means.
If only you and I could discover each day again the excitement of what it means to be free to live for God.
But one day we surely will. That day – at a time appointed by the Father – Christ the Redeemer will come again and take all those for whom the ransom has been paid to join in a new song of the saints in heaven:
“Worthy art Thou to take the book and break its seals;
For thou wast slain and didst purchase,
didst redeem for God with Thy blood
men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation.
And thou hast made them to be a kingdom
and priests to our God, and they will reign upon the earth.
Will you be in the choir…?
Are you practising already now?