The Spiritual Blessings of God’s Glorious Grace: Redemption
The Letter to the Ephesians • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Why are we RCC?
Eph 1:7-8
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace
which He lavished on us. In all wisdom and insight
I. The Accomplishments of Redemption
I. The Accomplishments of Redemption
This is somewhat backwards, I know, but the flow of the two sentences leads us to see the accomplishments and then the acts that lead to those accomplishments. First we need to define redemption and say that redemption is a broad and a narrow word in theology. Broadly, redemption is all the works of Christ accomplished that are summed up by his death, burial and resurrection. I would say we could categorically include glorification as the works of redemption. Let me show you what I mean.
Election and adoption look ahead to redemption, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. They are the initial stages of what we call REDEMPTIVE HISTORY as the Son of God becomes man in his incarnation, he lives a perfect life in perfect obedience, dies on cross in his atonement, and then rise from death to life in his resurrection. These are all considered acts of redemption because they move towards the goal of God saving acts bringing glory to himself.
Paul looks ahead to the renewal of the earth and our bodies in Romans 8 and categorizes it as acts of redemption.
20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now. 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.
So why is the word redemption portrayed as this broad term for the saving works of Jesus? It comes down to the components of redemption and what it does and what is accomplishes.
Defining Redemption: the payment of a price in order to provide freedom of something of someone. Most literally it is defined in the GK as ransom or a ransom price.
God established this theme in the OT scriptures, Look with me at Exodus 21:28-30
28 “If an ox gores a man or a woman to death, the ox shall surely be stoned and its flesh shall not be eaten; but the owner of the ox shall go unpunished. 29 “If, however, an ox was previously in the habit of goring and its owner has been warned, yet he does not confine it and it kills a man or a woman, the ox shall be stoned and its owner also shall be put to death. 30 “If a ransom is demanded of him, then he shall give for the redemption of his life whatever is demanded of him.
Here we see an example of redemption set up in the history of Israel where a negligent owner of an ox would not be punished for an accidental goring of some person. But it there was a history of that killing with the ox that you owned, the only way for the owner not to be punished, was to pay a ransom price to but your freedom.
In that law in Israel, was the theme of bondage to the law, guilt under the law, and a price that must be paid from that bondage. Thus God is called the redeemer or one who pays a ransom to set those who are captivity free.
23 “And what one nation on the earth is like Your people Israel, whom God went to redeem for Himself as a people and to make a name for Himself, and to do a great thing for You and awesome things for Your land, before Your people whom You have redeemed for Yourself from Egypt, from nations and their gods?
Therefore, looking forward to the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, we see Paul’s argument for the accomplishments of redemption. Let’s look at two of them:
A. Freedom
A. Freedom
27 “Then they will see the Son of Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory. 28 “But when these things begin to take place, straighten up and lift up your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
When we understand redemption in the church, we should look at it from a spiritual and physical sense. Spiritually, our redemption in Christ is the payment that was made with his life so we could enjoy the freedoms salvation offers. First of all that freedom is from the bondage of sin and death. Sin enslaves the person without Christ. Sin is our master and we exist in this nature that we are born into to do whatever our master desires.
16 Do you not know that when you present yourselves to someone as slaves for obedience, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death, or of obedience resulting in righteousness? 17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves of sin, you became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching to which you were committed, 18 and having been freed from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.
Our liberation from sin came when Jesus Christ, in all his perfection, lived the live of sinlessness, obeying the law in every respect and dying upon the cross so that his life was the necessary sacrifice to atone for sin.
1 Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2 For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death.
The greatest picture of the redemption in all of the bible is the story of Israel being rescued or redeemed from bondage in Egypt. In this great story of deliverance, the shedding of blood of the lamb that was put on the doorposts of those Jews in Egpyt would be the escape or freedom that they needed to not be consumed by the wrath of God that came against the firstborn in Egpyt.
13 ‘The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.
So also Christ, giving up himself up as our ransom, His life was the price that was paid to deliver us from the bondage of sin which leads to death.
Now friends, the great works of redemption remind us that we are not slaves to sin and death anymore. We are free men and women because of Christ. Sin is no longer our master, so therefore, we should live as free men. We should trust the power of Christ and turn from sin, knowing it does not have power over us.
If you were incarcerated for a crime and the prison sentence was carried out by time served, would you continue to live in your jail cell, eating jail food, being confined to the walls of your cell, by your own choice? NO! The moment you are given you release papers, you are out that dungeon, enjoying the sun on your face and the ability to move freely throughout the world. This freedom is joy and satisfaction.
But the second accomplishment to be noted in Eph 1 is forgiveness
B. Forgiveness
B. Forgiveness
Tied to the freedom we receive from the Lord through the works of redemption is the concept of forgiveness. Using the metaphor of the prisoner, the freedom from prison comes to him with a acquittal of the charges or the sentence debt has been paid. Forgiveness comes to the sinner when Christ cleanses us from the legal and spiritual effects of the nature of sin. We are legally no longer under condemnation, justified by his grace, which means that our sin debt is no longer charged to our account.
1 How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, Whose sin is covered! 2 How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity, And in whose spirit there is no deceit!
The great accomplishment of forgiveness in Christ is that He made a way for all your sins, all your rebellion to be pardoned. You and I can be blessed in him through faith so that our sins are no longer charged to our account. From the perspective of our relationship with God, the Bible says “he remembers them no more” and that he casts them “as far as the east is to the west”. An aspect of forgiveness is the the cleansing aspect of the sinner. You are cleansed by the blood of the Lamb. An our purity is necessary for out admittance into the presence of God and our representation in a world as God’s people. God purifies a people who are stained by sin in order to show mercy and love for his own glory.
14 who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.
God’s forgiveness in Christ means that no murder, no rape, no lie, no anger, no theft, no abandonment, no harsh word, no lustful thought or act is too great a sin that God cannot forgive. His power is supreme over all and his forgiveness is not limited. The only unforgivable sin is the sin of rejecting God by the end of your life. Only at your death is it too late to experience forgiveness.
But that forgiveness comes at a cost to God. They are not just sins swept under the rug or sins overlooked by a merciful God. The debt of sin that each individual incurs is NOT imputed or laid upon the believer in Christ at judgment, but they are laid upon another. They are imputed or charged to the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf. He bore the weight of sin and death.
The song we will sing at the conclusion of this sermon is Jesus Thank you. The chorus states,
Your blood has washed away my sin…Jesus Thank You. The Father’s wrath completely satisfied, Jesus thank you, once your enemy, not seated at your table, Jesus thank you.
II. The Acts of Redemption
II. The Acts of Redemption
Now we ask HOW did are the fruits of redemption accomplished? What method did Jesus bring about forgiveness and freedom for the undeserving sinner? What does the text say?
The answer: “Through His Blood”
If you were not a Christian, you would not think about or use the word blood so much in your vocabulary. Most unbelievers, outside of those in the medical profession, live their days without talking about blood but for the Christian, its a vital word in our lives. One reason is that the Bible puts special emphasis on blood because blood = life. As life is created by God and blood part of the vitality of the creature’s life, then so blood is important to the world.
The first occurence of the word blood in the Bible is in Genesis 4 when Cain killed his brother Abel and the blood or life of this creation of God was crying out to God. But the first life that was taken in the history of this world was actually the animal that God used to make clothing for Adam and Eve in their guilt and shame.
With life and blood being expressed at ultimately vital and important to God, then his holiness is extolled when we see that life must be taken in order to appease the wrath of God because His holiness is offended by sin. In other words, God demands life, or blood, as a way to bring about removing the offense against his holiness. It sounds extreme, but it is God saying my holiness is offended by sin and life is the only way to appease my anger. Some human life is taken to appease the anger of God against sin.
A generation of Israel died in the wilderness because of this rebellion and sin against God as they worshipped the idols of their making instead of Him. Ananias and Sapphira died because their covetous and deceitful hearts led them to lie to the HS and the church.
But with the giving of life, God provided a substitute to atone for sin. He introduced the sacrificial system which allowed the life of a creature to be the substitute for the sin of the human. In other words, God taught the people that atonement comes through the shedding of blood for the forgiveness of sin.
A. Cleansing
A. Cleansing
22 And according to the Law, one may almost say, all things are cleansed with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no forgiveness. 23 Therefore it was necessary for the copies of the things in the heavens to be cleansed with these, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
In the OT, the aspect of cleansing with blood was carried out in the ceremonial laws for the priesthood. We read the priests would prepare themselves to carry out the holy funtions of the priesthood by taking the blood of slain animals and sprinkling that blood on the altar, on the other instruments in the temple to be used, as well as even putting blood on themselves as a cleansing aspect. It signifying them turning from sin and the animal that was slain to provide the blood, was bearing that sin debt for them.
Of course, we know that they continually had to perform such a ritual, because the blood of the animal was not sufficient to cover their sins eternally. Therefore Jesus becomes to true sacrifice for sin. His life (his blood) as both God and man was exactly what we needed for our sins to be washed away. Two aspects of the acts of the atonement that provide our redemption that I want to teach you. The first is the covering of the sinner in teh blood or life of Christ so that His life given as a sacrificial substitute for us…cleanses us from all unrighteousness.
10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
That big word here PROPITIATION means to cover. Blood was poured on the ark of the covenant by the priests on the day of atonement in the act of asking for forgiveness for the people for their sins. Jesus’s life was given on the cross to be the substitutionary sacrifice to cleanse us and provide forgiveness.
22 let us draw near with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.
Notice the language in Heb 10…..washed and sprinkled…drawing our minds back to the blood and life of Christ given for us.
B. Appeasement
B. Appeasement
Secondly, the atonement provides appeasement. As the cleansing of our sins accomplishes our forgiveness, the appeasing of God’s wrath provides our freedom. Again, this is pictured in the OT sacricicial system when on the day of atonement, one animal was slain by the priests and offered as a sin offering. But there was a second animal, the scape-goat and the priests was ceremonially place his hands on the goat and send it out into the wilderness signifying that the sins of the people transferred to this animal was driven away into the wilderness.
22 “The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness.
One goat is slain. Another goat bear their inquiries as the substitute. Both aspects of the atonement of the sacrificial system is combined fully and completely in the work of Christ. He bears the wrath of God against the sins of the people and his life is taken from him so that sin can be atoned for and forgiven. Through this act, freedom and forgiveness are accomplished by the acts of redemption through our Redeemer, Jesus Christ.
24 and He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed.
This is the great doctrine of the atonement for our sins. But I want us to consider one more aspect:
The extent of the atonement:
When we get to this doctrine of Christ’s substitutionary death, we have to ask for whom did Christ die?
This is where we see great disagreement in the church. On one side, we see that the bible says
2 and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
I want you to focus on propitiation for those “of the whole world.” Does this mean that Jesus sacrificed atoned for the sins of all people?
Let me read another verse:
18 So then as through one transgression there resulted condemnation to all men, even so through one act of righteousness there resulted justification of life to all men.
Similarly, Paul says in romans 5 that Adam universally led the race of men into sin, but is he stating that Christ led humanity out of sin by his act of justification? Are all men justified in Christ?
This would be the argument of the universalist who says that in the end, all will be saved. But if all will be saved, then Jesus, who spoke the condemnation of wicked in hell would be deemed a liar and false prophet. Why even create a place like hell if all are justified and all sin is atoned for.
Instead, we can say rightly that while all are not saved and all are not atoned for, Christ’s atonement was unlimited in its ability to save. In others words, Jesus’s perfect life that was sacrificed on the cross had the capacity to save the entire human race throughout all history, if that was God’s plan. But it is not.
Instead, the answer to the question “for whom did Christ die” falls back to our passage in Ephesians 1. The redemptive work of Christ that is spoken of in v 7 is applied only to those spoken of in v 3 and 4- the elect. This often called the limited atonement or effective atonement of Christ. Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient to save the world from its sin, but God’s plan was merely to save some and not all. You cannot divorce v 7 from v 3-4. Those who were elected from teh foundation of the world, were redeemed by the blood of the lamb.
If Christ’s blood is applied to all people, then people in hell had the blood of Christ applied to them as well. Some argue that blood or sacrifice did not become effective because those people lacked faith. These who hold this position state that Christ makes the atonement available but our faith activates the effectiveness of that redemptive work. This idea is a disgrace to the preciousness of the life and blood of Christ. It has been said many many theologians that we cannot consider such a thought because “not one ounce of the Savior blood is wasted or goes unused.” Nor does our faith activate anything. Instead, we must be activated by regeneration in order to even produce faith.
John Murray states,
Christ did not come to put men in a redeemable position but to redeem to himself a people. We have the same result when we properly analyse the meaning of expiation, propitiation, and reconciliation. Christ did not come to make sins expiable. He came to expiate sins—“when he made purification of sins, he sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high” (Heb. 1:3). Christ did not come to make God reconcilable. He reconciled us to God by his own blood.
John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1955), 63.
Jesus said,
38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 39 “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day.
We could rephrase these verses by expounding on them
This is the will of Him who sent me, that all (of the elect) that he has given me (as the Son), I lose nothing (because I have redeemed them and they dwell eternally secure in me thereby) I raise them up on the last day.
Church, these doctrine gives us the ultimate confidence in a finished work in Christ. He know that he that predestines the church, will call the church to salvation. Those called to believe will be justified by faith. Those with faith will be sanctified and will be glorified at the return of Christ.
We respond, knowing that these riches are lavished upon us in Christ and we therefore we worship him with the simply song that we will sing, Jesus Thank you. I hope and pray that you have been saved and therfore you with grateful hearts can sing these words. if you doubt that He has saved you, then turn to him in confident faith today and trust that no sin can keep you God’s saving grace. Believe in him today.