ANNOUNCER: What is redemption? And how is it different from the forgiveness of sins or even regeneration? What did redemption mean to the Israelites? What should it mean to us? A discussion about redemption is just ahead. This is Grace in Focus, friend, we’re glad you’re here. We come to you weekdays from the Grace Evangelical Society. Our website is faithalone.org. There you can find our store, where you can acquire our recently published Old Testament Commentary, Volume 1, or you might also be interested in Bob Wilkin’s latest book, The Gospel Is Still Under Siege. Also at the website you can find many articles that we’ve published for your reading and study about just about anything theological. That’s faithalone.org. 

And now with today’s question and answer discussion, here are Bob Wilkin and David Renfro. 

BOB: I’m here with Renfro, David R. I think I messed that up, didn’t I? 

DAVID: It’s “the most holy right reverend.” 

BOB: You’re right. 

DAVID: You missed it by that much. 

BOB: I think that’s Anglican or something. 

DAVID: Yeah, pretty much. 

BOB: Probably. David and I are going to be talking today about the biblical concept of redemption. And redemption is a very popular topic in Christian circles and evangelical circles. But I would also argue it’s very much misunderstood because many people think redemption is more or less the equivalent of the new birth. It’s more or less equivalent to regeneration. And that’s not the case. They’re not exactly the same. 

DAVID: No. The New Testament and even the Old Testament which the New Testament concept is based on. If anything, it’s a consequence or a benefit of believing in Jesus for everlasting life. It’s something that comes along with it, but it’s not the same thing. 

BOB: Right. So let’s take an example. In the Old Testament. Israel was redeemed. What does the Old Testament say about Israel’s redemption? 

DAVID: Well, it’s interesting because before the Exodus, the Lord is talking to Moses in Exodus 6:6. He says, “Therefore say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord, I am Yahweh. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from their bondage. And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments.” 

BOB: Okay. So notice the redemption is set within the context of deliverance from bondage. The Israelis were literally in one sense, slaves of Egypt. In fact, when you have the ten plagues which you wrote about in our magazine, instead of the Pharaoh going, you know what, I’m gonna lighten their burdens so they’ll stay, he made their burdens worse so they would stay, right? He made it harder on them so they would complain against Moses, which they did, of course. But God kept ratcheting up the plagues and ultimately Pharaoh did let them go and then thought better of it and sent his armies to chase after them and his armies ended up being wiped out in the Red Sea. 

DAVID: Yeah, that whole story is fascinating to me. In a way, Israel is quote, redeemed many times during the Exodus, during the 40-year traveling from Egypt to the Promised Land. And one of them is, of course, the plagues allowed them that the very first deliverance from being slaves to the Egyptians. But then, like you say, the Egyptians chased after them and they were cornered on one side by the Red Sea and the other by the Egyptian army. And what I love about that passage, I think it’s Exodus 15, it’s all the leaders in Israel came to Moses and said, oh, you did such a great job. What are we gonna do? Are we just gonna die out here and become part of the desert dust? And they just complain and complain. And I love what Moses said, and I’m paraphrasing here, the Hebrew’s really strong in there. He essentially tells these guys, stand there, shut up and watch what happens. And of course, that’s when the Lord opens up the Red Sea, they cross on dry land, which is an incredible, natural miracle showing God’s absolute sovereignty over the natural world. And then, when the Egyptians start chasing them through on the same dry land, once the Israelites have gotten on the other side, he closes the water over. 

BOB: Okay, now after ten miraculous plagues, which were horrible, and the last one, God’s spares, he passes over the people of Israel, but takes the firstborn of all the Egyptians, of their children and also of their animals. After all that, and then they come to the Red Sea and they’re complaining, and then there’s this amazing opening of the Red Sea, they walk through on dry land. Then on top of all that, the Egyptians are surely, when they come to Kadesh Barnea and send in the twelve spies, sure they go, let’s go, God’s with us. We’re gonna do it. 

DAVID: Talk about men of faith. No, they’re not. 

BOB: What actually happened? They were set free from bondage to Egypt, but what did they say we should do? Didn’t they say, let’s go back to bondage in Egypt? 

DAVID: I’d rather be a slave in Egypt than be out here in the middle of nowhere. That’s pretty much what they said. 

BOB: And didn’t they complain about their kids? 

DAVID: Over and over again. It wasn’t just once or twice. It was over and over again. Like when they were out of water or they ran out of food or something negative happened, they just griped and complained all the time. By the way, after seeing all those incredible miracles, including the crossing of the Red Sea. 

BOB: And it’s only Joshua and Caleb who remember all that God had done and said, look, God’s for us who can be against us. If God says go up and take the land, let’s go take the land. But they listen to the other ten spies and they’re talking about raising up new leaders and going back to Egypt. And I think this illustrates the New Testament principle of redemption. We’ve been set free from another kind of bondage. 

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BOB: We’ve been set free from another kind of bondage. We’re no longer as believers in Jesus Christ, slaves of sin. The unbeliever is. That’s why Jesus said, if you do not believe I am he, you will die in your sins. He means die as a slave of sin. You’re going to go all the way to the grave as a slave of sin because that’s in John 8:24. And they go on to say, well, we’ve never been in bondage to anyone. And He says, you’re a slave of sin.

DAVID: I think it’s ironic that the nonbeliever, who is a slave to sin like you say, a slave. But guess what? They’ll say, I’m free and you Christians are just, you know, you got to follow all these commandments and, but I’m free to do whatever I want. 

BOB: And what you are is you’re a slave.

DAVID: A slave to sin. 

BOB: Remember Bob Dylan? You got to serve somebody. You’re going to either serve the Lord or you’re going to serve the devil. 

DAVID: I think you’ve got to say that in a different key than what you just said. And don’t you don’t want me to sing, I’ll break the microphone. 

BOB: Okay. My point is, you see this, for example, in Romans 6, even though the words redemption or redeemer are not there, the concept is there. And what he basically says is, you used to be slaves of sin. But you’ve now been set free and now you’re slaves of righteousness. He’s talking about slaves of righteousness in your position. And then he gives a series of commands. Consider yourselves dead to sin. Reckon yourselves dead to sin. And he says, don’t present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present your members to God as instruments of righteousness. What he’s saying is believers have Kadesh Barnea experiences where we are tempted to go back to bondage. 

DAVID: And guess what? We choose to do that. 

BOB: Hopefully we don’t. But in our experience, Paul says we’ve got to walk according to the spirit, Romans 8, or in the spirit, the book of Galatians, in order to experience this freedom. And so when we talk about the redemption of a Christian, it’s not identical to the new birth. The new birth means part of the benefits of the new birth as we’ve been set free from sin’s bondage. But whether we’re going to experience that victory depends on whether we’re walking legalistically, walking in the flesh, or whether we’re walking spiritually with a spiritual mindset. Remember Romans 12 too? Don’t be conformed to this world. But how are we transformed? 

DAVID: By the renewal of…

BOB: Our minds. It’s a mind game. 

DAVID: It is a mind game. 

BOB: In fact, was it Lindsell who wrote The Battle For the Bible? And I think you can argue that really Christianity is a battle for the mind. It is. In other words, if our thinking is in line with God’s thinking, then our behavior is transformed. But if our thinking is in line with the world’s thinking, then our behavior looks like that of the world. That’s 1 Corinthians 3:1-4. The believers in Corinth still had carnal mindsets. And when Paul talks about the spiritually-minded believer in 1 Corinthians 2:16, he says, we have the mind of Christ. We think the way Christ thinks. 

So it seems to me that the key to us experiencing the redemption that we have, in other words, we’ve been set free. We’re no longer slaves in our position. But in order to experience that in our daily walk, we need to abandon legalism. And we need to look to Christ. And we need to be looking to Him moment by moment. And look to His soon return. We’re to be watchful Christians. We’re to be watching for His soon return. And all of that keeps us spiritually-minded. 

DAVID: Right. What I love, too, is, believe it or not, there’s more than one Hebrew word for redeem. One of them is padah. And the other one is ga’al, which the Go‘el is the kinsman-redeemer. 

BOB: Yeah, I remember that, like in Ruth. 

DAVID: That’s why sometimes that’s where Hebrew kind of helps, because the two are pretty synonymous. 

BOB: So the kinsman-redeemer was redeeming. 

DAVID: Right. He would redeem a family member. 

BOB: Like Boaz redeemed Ruth. By, well, basically, he had to raise up children for Ruth’s husband who died. 

DAVID: Yeah, it’s interesting that redemption in a lot of cases in the Old Testament has nothing to do with salvation. It has to do with some aspect of our physical life or our situation here on earth. 

BOB; Like slaves could be redeemed by a relative paying the price to redeem them.

DAVID: Yeah, you know, back then there was a law that said if somebody had a brother that was killed, the brother could take the life of the killer. But that’s part of redeeming. And I think that’s very interesting that they allowed that back then. 

BOB: Yeah, the manslayer, unless he was in one of the cities of refuge, then the relative could take his life. Well, very good. Thank you all for listening. And let’s remember to keep grace in focus.

ANNOUNCER: Would you be interested in some free ebooks on topics you hear on this program? Well, if you are, you need to come visit us at faithalone.org. That’s faithalone.org. We would love to hear from you. Maybe you’ve got a question, comment, or some feedback. If you do, please don’t hesitate to send us a message. Here’s our email address. It’s radio@faithalone.org. That’s radio@faithalone.org.

On our next episode: imprecatory psalms, what are they and why? Please be sure to join us again, and in the meantime, let’s keep grace in focus.