Chamblin:

REDEMPTION

Both before and during Paul’s time, both within and beyond the Bible, to redeem typically meant to secure a release from some bondage or penalty by the payment of a ransom-price.⁴⁵ In accord with what was just said about righteousness, Paul declares that redemption occurs in Christ (Col. 1:14) and that Christ is the very embodiment of redemption (1 Cor. 1:30).

As with other aspects of salvation considered thus far, it is preeminently in the cross that Christ does his redeeming work.⁴⁶ His death is the ransom-price that secures the liberation of others. Here “the man Christ Jesus . . . gave himself as a ransom for all” (1 Tim. 2:6; cf. Titus 2:14).⁴⁷ Christians “were bought at a price” (1 Cor. 6:20; 7:23)–Christ’s sacrificial death (1:18-31; 5:7; 11:23-26; 15:3). Sinners are “justified freely by [God’s] grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented him as a sacrifice of atonement . . . in his blood (Rom. 3:24-25 NIV). The shedding of blood signals not just the gift of life but the loss of life.⁴⁸ By the language of redemption, Paul does not imply that the ransom-price was paid to someone, whether to God or to the devil; his focus is on redemption’s costliness, both to God and to Christ. A principal reason for its costliness to Christ is that he “became sin” so that sinners might be justified (Rom. 3:24-26; 2 Cor. 5:21). “In [Christ] we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins . . .” (Eph. 1:7; cf. Col. 1:14).⁴⁹ As in any instance of genuine forgiveness, the offended part absorbs the wrong and thus prevents it from spreading and multiplying.⁵⁰

In his death Christ the Redeemer liberates his people from bondage to Sin and its agencies, together with all the consequences of such bondage. God, “by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and as a sin offering, condemned Sin in the flesh (Rom. 8:3)–in the very “body of [Jesus’l flesh through death” (Col. 1:22). “God did not redeem flesh by an act of incarnation; he destroyed flesh by an act of condemnation.”⁵¹ Moreover, by nailing sinners’ certificate of indebtedness to the cross, Jesus “disarmed the rulers and authorities [and] made a public spectacle” of them (Col. 2:13-15).⁵²

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