Redemption has the meaning of setting slaves free from an owner by the payment of a ransom price. Paul mentions here that Jesus has liberated his people from a hostile power, described in the previous verse as the power of darkness. He makes a connection between the hold that that power had on them and the fact that they were guilty sinners.
The power of darkness is the devil, and he has a hold on sinners in the sense that he can demand punishment for their sins. He knows that sinners deserve punishment and that God will judge them for their sins and pronounce the sentence that sin deserves. It would have seemed impossible for that situation to be changed.
Paul, however, knows that God provided the way for sinners to experience deliverance from this awful outcome. He had revealed how he would do this in several Old Testament passages such as Isaiah 53, but as Peter says, even the prophets who foretold this deliverance did not fully appreciate what they were predicting.
Jesus paid the ransom price when he died on the cross as a sacrifice for his people’s sins. When they believe in him through responding to the gospel, they are forgiven all their sins. God, the judge who otherwise would have condemned them, now freely pardons them because Jesus paid the penalty.
It is important to note the present tense of the verb, that believers have redemption, the forgiveness of their sins. As Christians, they no longer are enslaved, imprisoned in a dungeon awaiting punishment. Rather they are now subjects in the kingdom of Christ. The devil no longer has any claim on them in connection to the penalty their sins deserved. They have been redeemed from their sinful state and brought into his amazing, delightful, eternal kingdom.
No comments:
Post a Comment