We have all been slaves to something
“At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another.” Titus 3:3
Never underestimate the ability of us human beings to enslave each other and, indeed, to enslave ourselves. True, all countries have outlawed slavery today. But still slavery stalks us in many shapes and colors. Human trafficking is one form of modern slavery, of course. But on the other side of the spectrum lay many other forms of slavery, such as gambling, substance abuse, overextended debt, and pornography addiction.
People also suffer from emotional and psychological forms of slavery. We can be enslaved to bitterness, jealousy, hatred, bigotry, divisiveness, even self-hatred.
But the Bible teaches us that there is one form of slavery that transcends all others: spiritual slavery to sin. Ignoring this issue creates havoc in our lives, the Bible teaches us. Resolving this issue creates a foundation for resolving all other forms of slavery we may be experiencing.
The exodus of Israel from Egypt gives us a prime example of this truth that we must deal with our spiritual slavery to sin before we can truly be free from all other forms of slavery. The Israelites thought all of their problems were caused by their slavery to the Egyptians. But after God freed them from Egypt, the Israelites still faced deep, systemic spiritual dysfunction that rose to the surface time and again.
The Jews of Jesus’ day made the same mistake their ancestors did. They thought their primary problem was their subjugation to Rome and that the messiah was coming to deliver them from their political and social oppression and bring in the kingdom of Heaven on earth. Consequently, when Jesus made it clear that his kingdom required repentance and spiritual holiness, the nation rejected him.
Truth be told, admitting that we are enslaved to sin embarrasses us. For example, my most popular blog post by far, out of the hundreds on NewCommandment.org, is entitled: “Should You Tell Your Wife Immediately about Your Pornography Addiction?”1
Slavery to sin embarrasses us because it implies helplessness in the deepest level of our being. Our inability to stop sinning is the very definition of slavery. Only when we acknowledge our helplessness and our need for someone outside of ourselves to save us can we even begin to deal with our slavery to sin.
The Bible says that the one person who can redeem us from slavery to sin is Jesus Christ. Only by faith in him can he save us from slavery because only he has paid the price required for our redemption.
Redemption: God’s greatest good work of all
“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” Psalm 19:1
The Lord will lay bare his holy arm
in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
the salvation of our God. Isaiah 52:10
My childhood pastor liked to say that creation is merely God’s fingerpainting – the work of his hands. But redemption is God flexing his arm.
It is no accident that this promise in Isaiah 52:10, about the Lord laying “bare his holy arm” as he brings salvation to the world, occurs just a few verses before the famous prophecy of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, where Isaiah predicts in great detail what God bearing his “holy arm” to us means.
“Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.” Isaiah 53:1-6
Isaiah wrote this prophecy in the past tense – called the “prophetic perfect tense” – as though the predictions it describes had already happened. Prophets often used this technique to emphasize the certainty of their predictions. In reality, Isaiah penned his prophecy seven hundred years before the death of Christ on the cross. In this prophecy Isaiah vividly portrays God “flexing his arm” by providing a saving substitute who would bear “the iniquity of us all.” By describing this radical act of redeeming sinners and making us his children when we receive by faith this provision for our sin, Isaiah is telling us that redemption is God’s greatest good work of all.
But what is redemption and what does it mean to be redeemed?
Redemption in the New Testament
“The New Testament Greek word for ‘redemption’ is ἀπολύτρωσις (apolytrōsis). This term is derived from the root word λύτρον (lytron), which means ‘ransom” or “price of release.” It appears in several New Testament passages, including Ephesians 1:7, Colossians 1:14, and Hebrews 9:15, and it conveys the idea of being set free or delivered from bondage, often with the implication of a ransom being paid.2
In other words, the concept of redemption implies that someone is living in detrimental circumstances from which they cannot escape and another person comes to their rescue and graciously frees them from those circumstances at great cost to themselves.
Let’s take a closer look at how the New Testament writers used term ἀπολύτρωσις (apolytrōsis).
1. Redemption as physical release from adverse circumstances
- Hebrews 11:35 – “Women received back their dead by resurrection; and others were tortured, not accepting their release [redemption], so that they might obtain a better resurrection.”
- Luke 21:26-28 – “People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. At that time they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. When these things begin to take place, stand up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
- Romans 8:23 – “And not only this, but also we ourselves, having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our body.”
2. Our redemption as a spiritual release from God’s judgement because of our sin
- Colossians 1:13-14 – “For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Sometimes Paul conflates the past and future phases of our redemption into one grand vision. In Ephesians 1:13-14, even though we have not yet arrived at our final heavenly destination, Paul describes believers as though it has already happened: we are citizens of heaven and destined for heaven, but not yet residents of heaven, because of our redemption, that is, the forgiveness of our sins.
3. Our redemption as a past spiritual accomplishment
- Romans 3:22-26 – “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished— he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.”
In this passage, redemption is in the past tense and refers to believers as sinners who have fallen “short of the glory of God” and who have already been justified freely through the redemption that Christ accomplished on the cross.
4. Our redemption as a present spiritual possession
- 1 Corinthians 1:30 – “It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, holiness and redemption. Therefore, as it is written: “Let the one who boasts boast in the Lord.”
- Ephesians 1:7 – “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.”
In 1 Corinthians 1:30, Paul reminds believers that it is because of God’s wisdom that they have been saved through Christ Jesus. Then Paul describes this wisdom in three parts, one of which is redemption. Thus, redemption is an expression of God’s incomprehensible wisdom, and would never have been imagined or predicted by human wisdom. Therefore, no one can boast about their current position as one who is redeemed. It was accomplished by someone else alone: Jesus Christ.
In Ephesians 1:7, Paul sets “redemption through his blood” in this passage in apposition to “the forgiveness of our trespasses.” That is, we have been set free from God’s eternal wrath because of the blood of Christ. And this redemption has resulted in the complete and full forgiveness of our sins, which we have right now. All of this is an expression of God’s overflowing grace toward us.
5. Our redemption as a future spiritual reality
- Ephesians 1:13-14 – “When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.“
- Ephesians 4:30 – “Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption.”
- Hebrews 9:15 – “For this reason Christ is the mediator of a new covenant, that those who are called may receive the promised eternal inheritance—now that he has died as a ransom [redemption] to set them free from the sins committed under the first covenant.”
There is also a future tense to our redemption. While our redemption was accomplished in past history because Jesus Christ died on the cross for our sins, and is something we possess right now because our sins have been forgiven through faith in him and we now have eternal life, there are still certain aspects to our existence that need to be redeemed. For example, our mortal bodies will be transformed into immortal bodies, and our sinful nature, which all Christian still have, will be abolished once and for all when we are “presented faultless before his presence with exceeding joy.” (Jude 1:24)
This future reality is what the phrases “until the redemption of those who are God’s possession,” “sealed for the day of redemption,” and “the promised eternal inheritance–now that he has died as a ransom” refer to.
What God’s act of redeeming us teaches us about doing his good works
To do God’s good works, we must be functionally free from sin
“Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us” Hebrews 12:1
Of course, there is no such thing as a Christian who has no sin. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us,” John warns us in 1 John 1:8. But, as John promises us in verse 9, we can confess our sin when God makes us aware of it and thus we can continuously walk in fellowship with the living God on a daily basis. We can do this even though we are not fully aware of all of our “unrighteousness.”
This ongoing process of joyfully walking with God and responding to “issues” as he brings them up is the present tense of the three tenses of redemption, which are often stated this way: we have been redeemed from the penalty of sin, we are being redeemed from the power of sin, and we will be redeemed from the presence of sin.
Redemption from the power of sin is what the writer to the Hebrews calls throwing off “everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.” I call this process of throwing off “living functionally free from sin.”
Thus, if we are living in the throes of sin, we cannot do God’s good works until we confess our sin and begin walking once more in regular fellowship with the Lord God.
To do God’s good works, we must understand that God’s act of redeeming us is not just redemptive, but also exemplary
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” 1 John 3:16
Sometimes theologians emphasize the redemptive aspect of Christ’s death on the cross so much that they ignore another aspect of Christ’s death, namely that it is also an example for us to follow, as John clearly tells us in 1 John 3:16 – “And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters.” In addition, The Old Testament concept of a “kinsman redeemer,” someone who “rescues” a relative in need, also teaches us that God wants us to understand our redemption as exemplary and not just redemptive.3 However, in our case, the “kin” we are to be redeemers for are not just our physical relatives, but also our brothers and sisters in Christ. John continues: “If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 3:17-18)
One way to think about our relationship to God’s redemption of us as an example for us to follow is to compare it to Adam and Eve’s relationship to God creating the heavens and the earth. On the one hand, God had created all that they could see. But God also invited them to participate in his creation, albeit in a very small way, by being fruitful and filling the earth with human beings, and by tending the garden. In the same way, God has redeemed us from the penalty of sin, is redeeming us from the power of sin, and will redeem us from the presence of sin. But he also invites us to participate in his redemption, however small it may be, by “redeeming” those in need around us.
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