Christian Foundations - Redemption
Bible Facts Newspaper Article (Ian C. Kurylyk)

"With the LORD there is mercy, and with him is plenteous redemption" (Psalm 130:7b). Redemption is a word that is key to understanding true Bible Christianity. The theme goes all through the Scriptures. God's people are revealed there to be those whom He has redeemed. "Now these are thy servants and thy people, whom thou hast redeemed by thy great power, and by thy strong hand" (Nehemiah 1:10).

To redeem is to buy back, to purchase. This teaching helps us to understand God's work of salvation from sin. The Bible teaches us that mankind's sin is a slave master, a prison house, a bondage. The sinner is sold under sin, in the slave market of sin. He is unable to free himself. Sin has robbed the human race and left each one without the means to pay his own debt or to save himself.

Man needs God. He is the only one that can solve the great problem of bondage to sin. His Word teaches that God has paid the required price and that this price was the death of His own dear Son Who died on the cross and rose again. That is why so many Scriptures refer to the Christ as redeemer. Zacharias rejoiced in the knowledge that the time for His birth had arrived. "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel; for he hath visited and redeemed his people, And hath raised up an horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David" (Luke 1:68-69)

So much which professes to be Christianity today starts off with people as though redemption is unnecessary and calls for good living. The Bible, however, starts with the problem of a sin-debt we cannot pay and spiritual slavery. It does not tell us be a good boy and you'll go to heaven. It tells us the blood Jesus shed on the cross was the payment needed to purchase forgiveness and freedom from the slave market of sin. "In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins" (Colossians 1:14). The real beginning as a Christian comes when a person respond to the offer of Salvation through Jesus Christ and accepts by faith the payment he made for us.