The Elements of Redemption - The Redemption Price

"...by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.  7In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace 8which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, 9having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself, 10that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth-in Him." (Ephesians 1:6b-10)

The price of redemption is His blood. It cost the blood of the Son of God to buy men back from the slave market of sin (cf. Lev. 17:11; Heb. 9:22).  There is no other substance or action of sufficient value or purity before God so as to pay the debt that is outstanding against the people of God.  Only the blood of Jesus was sufficiently valuable and sufficiently pure to pay that debt.

Shedding of blood is a metonym for death, which is the penalty and the price of sin. Christ’s own death, by the shedding of His blood, was the substitute for our death. That which we deserved and could not save ourselves from, the beloved Savior, though He did not deserve it, took upon Himself. He made payment for what otherwise would have condemned us to death and hell.

The blood of sacrificial animals was continually offered on the altars of the Tabernacle and then the Temple. But that blood was never able, and was never intended, to cleanse the offerers from sin. Those animals were only symbolic, typical substitutes. As the writer of Hebrews explains, “It is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb. 10:4). But in the shedding of His blood, “we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all” (10:10). He “gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma” (Eph. 5:2). The Savior Himself said that His blood was “poured out for many for forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28). As the writer of Hebrews explains, Christ’s sacrifice was “not through the blood of goats and calves, but through His own blood, He entered the holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled, sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?” (Heb. 9:12-14).

It is the blood of Christ, and the cleansing that it secures for the elect that paves the way for the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to those self-same children of God.  Christ’s blood pays for the offense of the sins of those who believe and removes the guilt of the imputation of Adam’s sin to men.  In turn, the righteousness of Christ is imputed to the believer by decree of God, completing the transaction and establishing the believer on acceptable grounds for god to allow into His family and into His presence.

We “were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold,… but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ” (1 Pet. 1:18-19). No wonder John saw the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders singing, “Worthy art Thou to take the book, and to break its seals; for Thou wast slain, and didst purchase for God with Thy blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation. And Thou hast made them to be a kingdom and priests to our God; and they will reign upon the earth” (Rev. 5:8-10).

The “redemption which is in Christ Jesus … in His blood through faith” (Rom. 3:24-25) has paid the price for those enslaved by sin, bought them out of the slave market where they were in bondage, and set them free as liberated sons of God. In their freedom they are in union with Jesus Christ and receive every good thing that He is and has. His death frees believers from sin’s guilt, condemnation, bondage, power, penalty, and—some glorious day—even from its presence.