Scripture Reference: Titus 2:11-15

Redemption

Imagine you were back in the first century, the slave-world of Paul’s day. There are a number of slaves in your congregation. They have heard the gospel, believed in Jesus, and are now saved. Among them is one whose situation is particularly distressing. He has a very cruel master and though becoming a Christian has made this slave a better worker, his master, if anything, is even more cruel to him. So you decide to try and secure his freedom. You offer to buy the man and his master agrees to sell him. What have you done for this slave? Simply put, you have redeemed him! By the payment of a price, a ransom, as it were, you have secured his freedom from the cruel tyranny to which he was subject.

It is that kind of transaction that helps us to understand Jesus’ death. He gave Himself for us to “redeem us,” or ransom us. He paid the price of His own life to obtain freedom for us. Paul tells us explicitly what that freedom was from: “all wickedness,” which literally means, all lawlessness. Think of the life you were living before your conversion. As far as the law of the land is concerned you may have been a law-abiding citizen. You didn’t steal cars, burgle houses, or do drugs. But as far as the law of God is concerned, it was an entirely different matter. At point after point your life was out of line with God’s law. It was full of things that the Law (of God) both forbids and condemns. Lawless! Therefore, it was precisely in order to set us free from such lawlessness that Jesus gave Himself as the ransom price for each and everyone of us.

Purification

His purpose in dying for us, however, went even beyond this. He “gave himself for us,” says Paul, “to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.” To be eager to do what is good is to be the very opposite of being lawless. A person who is eager to do good, in the New Testament sense of that term, is eager to please his Savior and to do what He would have him to do. He wants to obey, to serve, and to worship by his doing. Thus, it was to have just such a people for Himself that Jesus died. However, it was necessary that we first be purified. We needed to be cleansed from our sin as well as delivered from its enslaving power if we were to be Jesus’ special, good-doing people. That was only possible through Jesus’ sacrificial self-giving, we couldn’t do it on our own.

Until He Comes . . .

We might naturally ask, “Why is Paul telling us this in particular?” Primarily, to answer a very basic question: “How are we to live in the meantime, in this present age?” This present age continues. Christ still has to appear to fulfill the promise. How are we to conduct ourselves as we wait for the fulfilment of that blessed hope? Part of the answer has already been given in what has been said about the grace of God in salvation. However, now in Christ’s self-giving on Calvary, we have another part of it. Since Christ has given Himself for us to redeem and purify us, it is for each of us to fall in with that purpose and never seek to thwart it.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV © 2011 by Biblica, Inc.
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