Sit
206. Redemption in Christ
To
redeem means to purchase and put
something back where it originally belonged. God has purchased us off of the slave block of sin and
Satan. Roman slaves were sold off
of a slave block with a spear stuck in the beam over their head. It was said that they were “sold under
the spear.” Paul likens this to
our being sold under sin as slaves.
Romans 7:14 says, “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am
carnal, sold under sin.”
Ephesians 1:7 (KJV) says, “In whom we have redemption
through his blood, the forgiveness of
sins, according to the riches of his grace.”
We
need to know what privileges, advantages and RESPONSIBILITIES this purchase
implies. This purchase is not a future tense issue; rather it is past
tense. This has already happened.
We already have been translated out of the Kingdom of darkness and been
translated into the Kingdom of God.
“He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed
us into the kingdom of the Son of His love” (Colossians 1:13).
Acts 26:18 says, “to open their eyes, in order to turn them
from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may
receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified
by faith in Me.”
E.W. Kenyon, in his book The
Bible in Light of Redemption - Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing, chapter 20,
covers this entire subject in a beautiful way. This quote is copyrighted material used by permission
only from Kenyon’s Gospel Publishing Society.
REDEMPTION
The Object of the
Incarnation
THE OBJECT of
the Incarnation was that man might BE given the right to become a child of God
(John 1:12). Man could only become
a child of God by receiving the nature of God. Therefore Christ came that man might receive Eternal Life
(John 10:10).
Man could
receive Eternal Life only after he had been legally redeemed from Satan's
authority (Col. 1:13-14).
Therefore the
step in our study after the Incarnation is Redemption, which was really the
object of the Incarnation. We have
seen that the qualifications of man's Redeemer demanded an Incarnate One. Now we shall study how the Incarnate
One legally redeemed man from the authority of Satan, and made it possible for
him to receive the nature of God.
Man's
Redemption is legal. It swings
around the law of Identification.
Identification is twofold.
It includes man's Identification with Adam and his Identification with
Christ.
The entire
plan of Redemption revolves around this twofold identification of man with Adam
and with Christ.
Paul's
Revelation
God gave to
Paul the revelation of the finished work of Redemption and the present ministry
of Christ. Paul speaks of the fact
that this revelation was given to him, in the following scriptures:
Romans 16:25-26. He calls it "my gospel." It
is a revelation of Jesus Christ, not from man but from God. Galatians 1:6-17. This tells where Paul received his
revelation. It is a revelation
that had been kept silent but now has been made known.
Ephesians 3:1-12. He reveals that his understanding in
the mystery of Christ that had not been known to other generations was due to
the fact that he received it by revelation.
Within this revelation which
Paul received, as the basic foundation was the revelation of man's
identification with Adam and with Christ.
When a child of God grasps clearly this two-fold identification, the
foundation has been laid for the renewing of his mind.
Before we
study this revelation of identification we shall study why it was necessary for
a revelation of Redemption to have been given after Christ had arisen, and
ascended to the Father.
Necessity
of Paul's Revelation
We saw in the
first lesson of this course that there exist two kinds of knowledge. One kind of knowledge is the knowledge
of natural man. It is derived by
means of the five senses of the physical body. The other kind of knowledge is that which is given to man by
the Holy Spirit. It is called
Revelation knowledge. The Word of
God is this Revelation.
In the
Incarnation the Revelation of Christ that was given to man was given to him on
the level of the senses of his physical body.
John said in I
John 1:1-2, "That which we have heard, that which we have seen with our
eyes, that which we beheld, and our hands handled, concerning the Word of
Life."
Man saw with
his physical eyes Christ and His deeds.
The life of
the Son of God, man saw lived before him.
He heard with his ears the words that He spoke, and he could touch Him
with his hands. The knowledge that
man possessed of Christ during His life on earth was gained purely by his
physical senses. This physical
revelation of Christ was not
alone sufficient for man's faith in Christ as the Son of God or his
understanding of Redemption in Him.
Matthew 16:15-17. Peter made his declaration that Christ
was the Son of God. Then Christ
made a strange statement. He said:
"Flesh and blood has not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in
heaven." That which Peter had seen, that which he had heard, and that
which he had handled concerning the life of Christ, by means of the five senses
of his nervous system (which lay embedded within his flesh) had not given this
knowledge.
It had come as
a special revelation from the Father.
However, it was only a temporary Revelation, for when Peter saw with his
sense of sight the death of Christ and perhaps handled His lifeless body, all
hope fled from his heart.
The Death
and Resurrection of Christ as
the Disciples Saw It
The disciples
knew the meaning of the Crucifixion of Christ, His Burial, and His Resurrection, only through their
physical senses.
They saw the
beating of Christ; they saw the nails driven into His hands and feet. They heard His words, "My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me." They saw and handled His body in the
process of embalming it, as it was laid away for burial.
They saw the
stone rolled away from the tomb and the empty grave clothes. They saw and heard and handled the
resurrected body of Christ. They
saw Him ascend into Heaven.
This physical
knowledge, however, gave to them no insight into the meaning of the spiritual
significance of Christ's death, burial, and Resurrection. In the crucifixion of Christ, they saw
only His physical suffering. They
knew nothing of the spiritual suffering of Christ as His spirit was made
sin. They knew not where Christ's
spirit was or what He was doing during the time His physical body lay in the
tomb. They knew nothing of the
conquering of Satan by Christ in His Resurrection. They knew nothing of the Ascension of Christ with His own
blood into the Holy of Holies.
They knew nothing of the ministry of Christ at the Father's right hand
after He had left them.
A Revelation
Needed
It was
necessary that the Holy Spirit reveal the complete Redemption that was wrought
in the Spirit of Christ in His Death, Burial and Resurrection.
I Corinthians
2:6-16 speaks of this Revelation-this wisdom, as it is called. Verses 9-10, "Things which eye saw
not, and ear heard not unto us God revealed them through the Spirit."
This Revelation that was
needed could not be given until after Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came to
guide them into all truth.
Now that we
have seen the necessity of a Revelation of Redemption, we shall study
Identification, the heart of the Revelation of Redemption.
Identification
with Adam
Romans 5:
12-21 gives to us a clear picture of Identification.
Genesis 3
gives to us Adam's sin of High Treason, but for 4,000 years revelation had been
silent upon this subject. Now,
Paul reveals that the human race was identified with Adam in his transgression.
Romans
5:12, "Therefore, as through one man sin entered into the world, and death
through sin; and so death passed unto all men." The death that entered
Adam passed unto all men.
We notice
here that it is not only physical death, but spiritual death, the nature of
Satan.
Romans
5:14-19. This death ever reigned
over those who had not committed high treason, for by the one, or through
identification with him, the many had died.
Romans
5:18. Through identification with
Adam the judgment came upon all men.
Adam's
judgment became the judgment of every man. Romans 5:19.
Through Adam, or because of Identification with him, all men were made
sinners.
So Paul
reveals that down through the ages and to the present day, sin has reigned in
the realm of death where Satan is Lord, because of the fact that the human race
was identified with the first man, Adam.
There are
two sides to Redemption, the legal and the vital. The legal is what God did for us in Christ; the vital is
what God does in us in Christ. So
also there is a legal side and a vital side to the fall of man. The legal is what Satan did to us in
Adam and the vital is what Satan does in us when by nature we are children of
wrath.
Vitally,
we were not in the garden with Adam; but legally, his death, his bondage, his
judgment and all that spiritual death made him, became ours.
Now God
has redeemed man completely from every result of Adam's treason through the
identification of the human race with His Son. This is the message that this revelation is bringing to us
in Romans 5:12-21.
If the Lordship of Satan over
the human was due to the identification of humanity with Adam in his crime of
high treason, it is legally possible for the works of Satan to be destroyed by
the identification of the human race with the Son of God, the second Adam.
Christ's
Identification with Man's Humanity
We shall now
study the steps whereby the Son of God and humanity became identified in the
legal side of man's redemption.
The first step
was Christ's identification with our humanity. This took place in His Incarnation. John 1:14 and Hebrews 2:14, "Since
then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Himself in like
manner partook of the same."
As we saw in
our last lesson, He walked as the first man should have walked, doing the will of the
Father-God.
This, however,
was not a complete identification with man. He had not identified Himself with the nature of man. If Christ had partaken of the nature
that reigned in the spirit of man at His Incarnation, He would have been
spiritually dead during His earthly ministry. He could not have revealed Him to man. Therefore, His identification with the
spirit nature was during His Crucifixion, when the time had come for Him to fulfill
the purpose for which He had come into the world.
Isaiah
53:4-6. The direct translation
from the Hebrew into the English reads as follows: "Surely our diseases he
did bear and our pains he carried;
"Whereas
we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our
transgressions; he was crushed because of our iniquities. The chastisement of our welfare was
upon him and with his stripes we were healed. All we like sheep have gone astray and the Lord hath laid on
him the iniquity of us all."
This
translation is taken from the Jewish translation of the Old Testament.
Christ's
Identification with Man's Sin Nature
The Revelation
that Paul received in II Corinthians 5:21 is that God actually made Him to
become sin for us.
He not only
bore our sins, but the sin-nature itself was laid upon Him, until He became all
that spiritual death had made man.
In the mind of
God, it is not Christ who hung on the Cross, but it is the human race. So each one of us may say with Paul,
"I was crucified with Christ" (Galatians 2:20).
In the garden
we were not with Adam vitally, but we were legally. In the same manner we were not on the Cross vitally with
Christ, but we were there legally.
The identification of the human race with Christ was just as complete as
was its identification with Adam.
Now that the
Identification of Christ with humanity was complete, the steps in Redemption
began.
The first step
was to pay man's penalty. The
judgment that was man's fell upon Him and He was forsaken of God.
Isaiah 53:8,
"By oppression and judgment He was taken away: And as for His, generation,
who did reason. For He was cut off out of the land of the living. For the transgression of my people to
whom the stroke was due."
The judgment,
the stroke, was due man; but it fell upon Him, because they had become one,
He died under
our judgment and we died with Him.
And as He paid our penalty in Hell we were identified with Him. Psalm 88 gives to us the picture of a
righteous man in Hell upon whom all the wrath of God lay bard. The wrath of God lay hard upon Him,
because He was one with us in identification.
Acts 2:24-28
shows to us the suffering of Christ in Hell. It tells us that His soul was not left in Hell (verse 27)
but that God raised Him up, having loosed the pangs of death. The Greek word "pangs" means
"intense suffering," showing that when Christ was raised His spirit
was loosed from the intense suffering that He bore as our sin-substitute.
Christ
suffered until God could justify the human race.
I Timothy 3:16
reveals that Christ was justified in Spirit. He, in identification, had become so utterly one with us
that He Himself needed justification when man's penalty was paid. (Rotherham
says that Christ was declared righteous in spirit.)
The next step
in Redemption was that He who had been made sin be begotten of God.
Hebrews 1:5,
in speaking of the resurrection of Christ, says that the Father-God said to
Him, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee."
Acts 13:33,
"That God hath fulfilled the same unto our children, in that He raised up
Jesus; as also it is written in the second Psalm, Thou art my Son, this day
have I begotten thee."
Jesus Christ,
when man's penalty had been paid, had to be born of God and pass from death
into life just as man, because He had become identified with our Spiritual
Death. After Christ had been
justified in spirit and born of God, He conquered Satan as a man. It is evident that Satan tried to hold
Christ within his authority. Satan
did hold Christ until God could declare man righteous.
Romans 6:9
(Rotherham), "Who was delivered up for our offenses and raised on account
of the declaring us righteous." When we were declared righteous, I
Timothy 3:16 reveals, He was made righteous. Then He was begotten of God, and in the power of His Deity,
He met Satan and triumphed over him as a man.
Colossians
2:15, "Having put off himself the principalities and the powers, He made a
show of them openly triumphing over them in it." He displayed them as His
conquests. Christ was the first
man to free Himself from Satan's grasp and triumph over him. When He arose as a man, Satan's forces
were put under His feet. (Ephesians 1:20-23).”
Now
that we understand the great gift and privilege, we need to understand our
responsibility.
1
Corinthians 6:19 says, “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the
Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and you are not your own?”
We
are no longer slaves to Satan, and God will not demand our slavery to Him.
We do
have a free will, which should be exercised now to become a love slave to
Jesus. “And having been set free from sin, you became slaves of righteousness.”
(Romans 6:18).
We should no longer seek our own ways, our own will, our
own comfort, our own prosperity, our own anything! We should seek first the Kingdom of God and His
righteousness, and all things that we need, will be added to us (Matthew 6:33).
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